With inflation pushing up project costs and consumer forums penalising builders for delayed delivery of flats, many developers are now hiring the services of foreign project management consultancy companies and techno construction firms for faster implementation of projects, which come with cost advantages.

Some of these foreign companies include Australia's Sterling Construction System (SCS), Meva global leaders in framework solutions known for constructing an entire floor in three days and large project management consultancy companies like Leighton of Australia and Turner of the US.

"We focus on rapid, reliable and cost effective construction. Having successfully used our technology in Australia, West Asia, Vietnam, Philippines and other countries, we have the capability in India to complete projects at half the time of traditional mode of construction and with 10 to 15 per cent cost advantage for large scale projects," said Salman Sayeed, Vice-Chairman SCS Ltd.

Sterling, which is now involved in two projects in Maharahstra includ ing a large-scale low cost home project in Karjat, applies its proprietary "concrete building" technology in erecting walls and building floors.

The system is based on pre-engineered formwork systems to build walls. In such cases bricks and traditional labour intensive methods like putting columns, beams and plastering are not used to save time and cost.

"The four inches thick walls are made of solid concrete as compared to 8 to 9 inches walls through the traditional route. Thus the buyers get 10 to 12 per cent extra carpet area," said Sayeed.

Such construction is of high quality and reliable. The buildings have lower maintenance cost to the consumer for example SCS building will never have plaster cracks on the building facades, which are always evident in conventional buildings.

"Speeding up construction for a demand driven market like India is the need of the hour and technology based companies like us have a bright future," Sayeed added.

Meva for example has been deployed by Kashliwal's Shri Ram Urban Infrastructure to build India's first green residential building called Palais Rayole in Worli, Mumbai.

Some of the renowned projects executed by MEVA include the world's tallest tower Burj Dubai Skyward (532 slabs poured in a three-day cycle), and the structural works for the Tower of Dubai. Meva as said earlier has the capability to construct one floor in only three days.