Towards Large Scale Dissemination of Sustainable Building Materials and Technologies (Oct 1998)

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Towards Large Scale Dissemination of Sustainable Building Materials and Technologies

Shrastant Patara, October 1998

There is an acute housing shortage in India coupled with a perceptible shift towards energy intensive materials like cement, steel, aluminum and PVC. The inevitable growth of population and societal expectations over the next few decades will require significant augmentation in the supply of building materials. The construction sector also accounts for 22% of CO2 emissions in the country and already consumes a disproportionately large share of non-renwable energy. Future generations will face insurmountable environmental problems unless technological course corrections are made.

"Sustainable building materials and technologies" are without doubt the road along which we, as a nation and perhaps the whole world, must travel but it is not easy to define our destination in terms of tangible results, particularly for the poor. Development Alternatives believes that sustainable building materials and technologies must ultimately result in over 30 million houses being built and hundereds of thousands of jobs being created without destroying the environment. Given the futility of the state trying to build these houses and employing more people, latent demand in this sector can only be activated if building materials are made more cost-effective and easily available through an efficient delivery system.

Our approach

In its Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) sponsored Building Materials Programme(BMP), DA’s approach presupposes the need for continuous growth in this sector, without which none of the above results can be acheived. Augmentation of supply is based on sustainable production systems that integrate:

Issues affecting local availability of resources and their potential for renewability
Basic human needs and equitable access to resources
Resource efficiency and material intensity of production
Factors affecting scale, labour efficiency and material movement.

The BMP is being implemented by DA and its partners at both local and national levels with support from SKAT - the Swiss Centre for Development Cooperation in Technology and Management. In order to learn from the experience of resource management and institutional support mechanisms in a less developed market, the Bundelkhand region in central India has been selected for pilot introduction of technologies. Building upon previous work, a much larger geographical canvas is being used to explore mass marketing systems for Micro Concrete Roofing technology and technology promoters have been engaged to put Compressed Earth Block technology on a commercial fast track. All of these initiatives are complementary in nature and will ultimately lead to the development of technology packages and management systems for large scale decentralized delivery of building materials.

Technologies selected

Technology selection is the first milestone that needs to be crossed before sustainable technology packages can be developed and disseminated. It is constrained by the limitations of desk research and can at best be a sound analytical assessment of what products and technologies might be suitable in a region. However, our experience has shown that if the selection process is based on a serious understanding of people’s needs, material resources, energy, skill availability and competing products in the region, the likelihood of technologies being accepted in the area is quite high. The specific technologies selected in 1995 in the DA-SDC BMP were:

Large scale dissemination strategy

Elements of the approach described above and the strong desire to maximise impact have been used by the project team to weave a coherent large scale dissemination strategy that has, while evolving continuously, stood upto logical scrutiny over the past three years.

The first phase of the dissemination strategy is to establish technical feasibility. Each technology is adapted to achieve initial techno-economic viability and enviro-social soundness. On the basis of feedback received from trials, potential benefits to the user, the entrepreneur and the environment are maximized. The elements of this phase consist of:

Technology appraisal
Acquisition of basic know-how
Prototype system development
Optimization with respect to people, resource and environmental factors

Decentralized production systems hold the key to sustainable economic development. DA has therefore placed great emphasis on designing profit making technology packages for micro-enterprises. The technology packages consist of:

Product profile, technical specifications
Hardware-equipment, accessories, etc.
Software-training manuals, construction process
Marketing know-how and business support services

In the BMP, technical aspects are integrated with human issues to define a complete technology system. The selected technology packages go through a rigorous Ecological, Social, Technological and Financial rating process in order to assess impacts of these technologies in the region.

The feasibility phase is followed by a dissemination preparation phase which involves:

Lead enterprise development
Establishment of support service providers
Establishing business networks

The MCR technology package went through an intensive dissemination preparation phase (April 1993 - Dec. 1997). Key aspects included technology positioning, micro-enterprise development and an in-depth market study.

Technology positioning - MCR leads the way

Large scale dissemination can only be market based. In fact in a sustainable commercial environment it must be market driven.

Each technology package is designed to ensure that its product meets price specifications of the mass market, which in India, has low levels of surplus cash for house building. Durability and affordability or in other words, "Value for Money", are important criteria in positioning a technology.

Individual products are also analyzed with reference to competing products to identify gaps within which the product can rapidly establish its position. For example, early market studies for MCR technology found a large gap between thatch or country tile roofing and asbestos or G.I. sheets. The technology adaptation team focused its efforts on meeting the cost specifications of this niche i.e. a roof between Rs. 150 Rs. 200 per square meter. This segment was broken into quite easily by the first few producers and has accounted for the bulk of sales made in rural areas and small towns.

Marketing through development of micro-enterprises

Micro-enterprises are the most efficient and sustainable way to deliver sustainable building materials on a widespread scale at a rapid rate. The BMP has therefore focused its efforts on the development of viable enterprise models.

Each technology package goes through a "lead enterprise" stage in which the project team interacts closely with entrepreneurs on technical, market and financial aspects to formulate a replicable enterprise package. Lead enterprises are also instrumental in establishing primary market acceptability of the products and defining scope of other value adding services such as roofing.

These activities lay the foundation for market expansion in the large scale dissemination phase.

Market potential

Identification of suitable regions and assessment of market potential are vital steps in the technology dissemination process. SDC and DA commissioned HOLTEC Consulting Pvt. Ltd. part of the Holderbank Group, to conduct a study of MCR Tiles in ten regions of India. it was confirmed that commercialization of MCR production and marketing is a significant business opportunity. The study predicted demand for 202 MCR enterprise by the end of 1998. On a national scale this would translate into 2500-3600 production units being established over the next five years. Put together, they would be capable of installing 15 million sq. mt. of roofing worth 3 billion rupees every year.

A market potential study for Bundelkhand based on census trends and likely shifts in product choice revealed that out of an estimated 344000 new houses required between 1996 and 2000:

15,480 will use brunt bricks fired with VSBK technology
3,096 will use concrete blocks
1,720 will use compressed earth blocks
11,696 will use MCR tiles
5,848 will use ferrocement roofing channels

Successful completion of the dissemination preparation phase sets the stage for the large scale dissemination phase, in which the major steps are Market Development, Technology Liberation and finally Project Disengagement.

Market development

In the initial stages of technology promotion, success in marketing of MCR was designed through decentralized initiatives; primarily micro enterprises that produced and sold an average of 4000 - 5000 tiles per month with very little promotional effort. Expanding upon their success, TARA Crete Building Products demonstrated the impact that active market development could have on latent demand in the Jhansi area. Their operation is currently logging sales of approximately 12,000 tiles per month and is still growing

The Project Resource Centre located at TARAGram near Jhansi has developed the market for all its building products: MCR tiles, FC roofing channels and concrete products. This has been achieved by offering building solutions to house owners, institutional users and district agencies which include a package pf services; including design and construction. Such initiatives have focused on rural and peri urban areas.

Market expansion

The BMP is now engaged in creating greater diversity in terms of product use, delivery mechanisms and scales of marketing operations according to the nature of specific markets and enterprise profiles and commercial technology promoters. The scale of production is optimized according to the specific business model.

The strategy for market expansion is based on the evolution of the MCR technology package to meet the needs of not only the micro-enterprise but larger scale marketing operations as well. Our partners, COMTRUST have planned a 2000 tile per factory for their high volume, high quality market in South India, Vishwakarma Industries envisages a chain of outlets in Punjab and TARA-BKF is franchising MCR production and sales in Bhopal and Dehradun.

Looking ahead towards liberation

Development Alternatives has attempted to position all the building products-technology combinations within a framework: the Market-Technology matrix. The products which have high acceptability in the market are burnt bricks and concrete products; both being produced at several levels of technology which coexist in different regions in India. Micro concrete roofing tiles have established market acceptability only in limited reigns. The new products invariably use energy efficient processes and new technologies. The design of the dissemination strategy is highly dependent on the position of the product in the Market-Technology Matrix. It defines the market conditions and technology combinations selected for the Building Materials Project. The MCR and CEB modules are based on technologies that have achieved market acceptability in selected regions. The thrust of technology promotion will be with Commercial Technology Promoters in high potential regions and well developed markets. These include Product Marketing Companies, Franchise Companies, Technology Suppliers and Industrial Consultancy Organizations. The specific role of New Technologies is that they offer high potential in less developed markets for:

Augmenting Supply
Resource Efficiently Energy and CO2
Waste Utilization
Local Market Development

The consolidation of a set of these technologies will be achieved through the Bundelkhand module which will identify and strengthen local initiatives through compliemtanry set of Institutional Technology Promoters.

Development Alternatives has designed the BMP in a manner that both substantive outputs are achieved and pools of competence are built within a partner network which can, in the future, manage the development and dissemination of other sustainable building technology packages.

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