For building roads across the country, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) hands out contracts to various companies. One of them has achieved something remarkable. A team from Patel Infrastructure Limited started laying road-paving concrete on a four-lane highway at 8 am on February 1, 2021. The team spread 14,613 cubic metres of concrete by the same hour of the next day, covering a total of 10.32km of road (2.58km times four).

There’s another way of looking at the achievement. With the four-lane expressway measuring 18.75 metres in width, as much as 48,711 square metres of concrete was used in 24 hours. All the numbers helped the contractor bag world record – for the maximum amount of road-paving concrete laid in 24 hours. The feat has already been recognized by the India Book of Records, and the Golden Book of World Records.

The stretch of tarmac in question is part of the greenfield Delhi-Vadodara-Mumbai eight-lane expressway project. And, the world’s largest fully-automatic concrete paver machine played a vital role in registering the world record. According to the latest official figures, the highway mentioned above has about 260km of stretch pending completion. The NHAI aims to deliver the project by the end of March 2021.

The per-day road-paving speed is on the up. From April 2020 to January 15, 2021, NHAI has constructed 8,169km of National Highways. That’s about 28.16km every day. During the same period in the previous fiscal, 7,573km of roads were built at a speed of 26.11km per day. With the increase in pace, NHAI is hopeful to meet the 11,000km target by March 31, 2021.

Here’s a list of some flagship roads and highway construction projects which are in the pipeline:

• Bengaluru – Chennai Expressway: 278km will be initiated before the end of March 2021; construction will commence in next fiscal.
• Delhi – Dehradun Economic Corridor: Work on a 210km stretch will start within the current fiscal; construction to begin in 2021-22.
• Kapur – Lucknow Expressway: A 63km expressway that provides an alternate route to NHG27 will be initiated in 2021-22.
• Chennai – Salem Corridor: Construction of 277km expressway will start in next fiscal.
• Raipur – Vishakhapatnam: Contracts to cover 464km of road, passing through Chhattisgarh, Odisha and North Andhra Pradesh will be awarded before March 31, 2021. The construction, however, will commence in 2021-22.
• Amritsar – Jamnagar and Delhi – Katra: Construction to start in next fiscal.