SRM Contractors Wins Rs 138.37 Crore MoRTH Landslide Contract in Uttarakhand

SRM Contractors has won a Rs 138.37 crore EPC contract from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to treat four landslide locations on hill roads in Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand. Added together, the four stretches come to less than a kilometre of road. So this is slope work, not road building, and the machines it needs are drill rigs, rock breakers and concrete pumps, not graders and pavers.

What SRM Contractors disclosed

SRM, a road contractor based in Jammu and listed on the NSE and BSE, filed the order on Monday. Free Press Journal and Kalkine India both reported the same value, sites and 18-month term, and Kalkine reproduced the four chainages from the filing’s annexure. The filing does not describe the treatment design. Whether the work is anchors, soil nailing, walls, netting or drainage is not public yet. No bid estimate or rival bids have been published either.

How much road does Rs 138 crore cover here?

By chainage, the four stretches measure 225 m, 200 m, 360 m and 100 m, which is 885 m in all. That works out to about Rs 156 crore per km, or roughly Rs 35 crore per site. No highway widening job comes near that rate. Almost all of the money goes into the hillside above and below the road, not into the carriageway.

What it means for buyers

Landslide treatment on Himalayan roads usually mixes drilling for rock anchors or soil nails, shotcrete, wire mesh or rockfall netting, retaining and breast walls, and drains to carry water off the slope. Most of that is drilling and placing concrete. Expect crawler drill rigs, hydraulic rock breakers for scaling loose rock, concrete pumps for shotcrete and wall pours where a mixer cannot get close, and compact to mid-size excavators for cutting benches and clearing debris. Road width and tight bends limit machine size on these routes, so around 21 tonnes is the practical upper limit.

Three of the four sites lie within about 1.2 km of each other near Tintola. One crew and one plant set-up can work all three, with the Pithoragarh-Tawaghat site as a separate front. On remote sites like these, machines usually come in once and stay until the job ends, and the cost of hauling spares and diesel up the valley is part of the contract price.

Our take: this is specialist work, and SRM will probably use its own hill crews and drill rigs. Local owners are more likely to get hire work for excavators, tippers and transit mixers than to see new machines bought. The monsoon stops most slope work, so the useful months run roughly from October to June. Our road construction equipment guide covers the wider fleet that hill packages draw on.

FAQ

What contract did SRM Contractors win?

A Rs 138.37 crore EPC contract from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways to treat four landslide locations in Uttarakhand. It must be finished within 18 months of the appointed date.

Where are the four landslide sites?

One is on the Pithoragarh-Tawaghat road between Ch. 102.66 km and Ch. 102.885 km, near an NHPC power plant. The other three are near Tintola on the Tawaghat-Ghatiabagarh section of NH-09, between Ch. 4.680 km and Ch. 5.833 km.

Which machines does landslide treatment need?

Usually drill rigs for anchors or nails, rock breakers, concrete pumps for shotcrete, transit mixers and small to mid-size excavators. The filing does not give the design, so the exact mix is not yet known.

Related on DesiMachines: The NH-10 Rangpo-Ranipool upgrade in Sikkim and its slope-protection scope

Source: Free Press Journal

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