TN engg students, faculty to get enrolled in Centre’s Light House project for city

CHENNAI: Taking construction technology to another step, students and faculty from IIT, NIT, engineering, planning, and architecture colleges in Tamil Nadu will be soon enrolling as Technograhis as a part of Light House Projects (LHPs) launched by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

Accordingly, the MoHUA has set up a live laboratory in Chennai for candidates to register themselves as ‘Technograhis’ for learning, consultation, generation of ideas and solutions, experimentation, innovation, and technical awareness.

State Higher Education principal secretary D Karthikeyan has instructed the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) to take necessary steps to guide and instruct

both the students and faculty to utilise the opportunity to deliver ready-to-live houses at an expedited phase as compared to the conventional construction system.

A senior official from DOTE told DT Next that the lab would help the stakeholders in getting the latest technologies to adapt them as per the current demand and requirements. “Technograhis will get regular updates daily from the sites for information dissemination,”

he added.

He also pointed out that the Centre has established lighthouse projects in six places including Chennai, Ranchi, Rajkot, Agartala, Indore and Lucknow.

“The experts in the labs have already demonstrated that ready-tolive houses could be constructed within 12 months as compared to the conventional system, which would take a minimum of two years,” he said.

Stating that the first volume of the e-newsletter which captures the progress of the projects at each location has been released, the official said: “Twelve such e-newsletters will be released every month to inform the students, faculty, stakeholders and public about the development works. It will also promote healthy competition among the six states.”

Explaining the Light House project, which is a model housing scheme, he said, “About 1,000 houses at each location are being built with allied infrastructure facilities.”

“This technology revolution is cost-effective, environment-friendly, disaster-resilient and promotes speedier construction”, he said adding “the initiative will prove to be a major push towards technical transformation across the country”.