The total length of operational metro projects in India presently stands at about 440 km and is growing. Cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurugram, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow and the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) where they are already operational, are simultaneously adding on to their existing route networks.

The $1billion US-based engineering and construction management company, Louis Berger, has been active in India for over 20 years. The New Jersey-based corporation is engaged in a slewof projects, including bridges, tunnels, roads, highways, railways, and transit, aviation and smart cities.

Kochi Metro is the first Indian metro to have communication-based train control (CBTC) signalling system. Our trains are unattended train operation (UTO) compatible.

In what should have been a major story that was buried under other headlines, India achieved a significant milestone in its Digital India programme when 100,000-gram panchayats, or village councils, across the country were connected through a high-speed optical fibre network called BharatNet.

RaIn an interaction with INFRASTRUCTURE TODAY, Katsunori Ushiku, Managing Director, Mitsubishi Electric India (MEI), said that for transportation systems, the company is targeting an annual revenue of US $170 million in India by 2020, partly by strengthening sales and maintenance services for subways and trains, to meet the growing global demand for transportation infrastructure.

Until recently, we used to talk about the cost of funds being too high and, as you are aware, some infrastructure projects have a long gestation period. There is a period of construction and then there are cost overruns and delays.

The air travel boom in India has thrown up a new set of challenges before the country's aviation sector. The airport infrastructure needs to be ramped up on priority for the growth momentum to be sustained in the long term.

Utilities will have to take intelligent decisions in terms of providing, managing and sustaining themselves in the wake of copious amounts of data that get generated by smart grids of the future. Analytics will play a fundamental role in grid asset maintenance and optimisation.

Project delays, time and cost overrun in infrastructure projects, delays in regulatory approvals and contractual disputes are some of the challenges faced in implementing a project in India.