Bardhaman Case

¶ … radial lakes or a repetitive grid are better, the objectives of this plan need to be understood, because these two options come with different advantages and disadvantages. At the heart of this decision is going to be the look and feel of the final community. A community with a more luxurious feel can be marketed at a higher price point, but there needs to be a market for that. The radial plan provides more acreage to residences and fewer to infrastructure.

This means that the community looks better, but at the same time there might be more issues with capacity, in particular on the roadways within the community. The grid plan has few acres dedicated to residences and more to infrastructure. While not as physically beautiful, this plan is perhaps more functional with a better balance between the infrastructure and the residences. I recommend the DellaForma grid plan. With more space for roadways, this plan will have fewer traffic jams, making it more attractive.

Further, this plan provides more schools, a police station and other elements associated with higher quality of life. It also provides more green space -- quality of life can be sold at a higher price, something the DellaForma plan offers, despite having less space dedicated to residences. 2. The critical success factor groupings are comprehension, competence, commitment and communication. I found that comprehension was really the driver here. The elements of comprehension are use of facts, knowing what the client wants, and prioritization of client's goals.

For me as the client, I find that DellaForma has more closely aligned its design with my vision for a community that can be sold at a premium. The Bardhaman project is to build a community that will attract people. If we give them a quality of life not much different from any other urban Indian experience, they will not buy.

However, if we provide a high quality of life with greenspace, lots of businesses, schools, safety and other aspects that are attractive, this will attract people to move out here. Additionally, having fewer acres dedicated to residential will actually provide an opportunity to market Bardhaman as an exclusive community as well. In terms of competence, I found that both bids were satisfactory on the competence issue. They both seemed to understand the concept and were able to execute a quality design.

If there was a difference here, it is that Malone dedicated a lot of space to the hospital but none to police, a taxi stand or a hotel. To me, these were oversights because there are things that every town should have in order to enhance the quality of life. While the edge in competence would therefore go to DellaForma, I do not think competence was a major deciding factor. Commitment is another critical success factor. Planning is one thing, but control is also important.

This is India -- bringing things on time, on budget and to spec is not exactly an easy task. Both bids were roughly equal in this respect, providing us with pro-formas that can be used as part of the financial controls for the project. I also felt that the priorities of our organization were interpreted differently by the two companies, but not in a way that separated them in terms of quality. Lastly, communication is a critical success factor, especially as we are based in Calcutta, and this remoteness.