Author: Dipal Mehta

Every serious crisis inside a construction or infrastructure company arrives with the same peculiar quality: in hindsight, it looked obvious. A cost overrun that should have been flagged eighteen months earlier. A safety incident preceded by three near-misses that were each individually explained

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a construction site when something is wrong and everyone can feel it, but nobody says so out loud. I have stood in that silence more than once — at a concrete pour where

Somewhere in my second decade in this industry, I sat through a compliance training session where a young company secretary walked us through a new SEBI disclosure requirement using a slide titled “Checklist for Compliance.” I remember thinking, even then, that the word

I still remember the first board meeting I sat in as a director rather than as the engineer presenting to the board. For twenty years, I had been the person walking into that room with a project update, a set of drawings, and

Ask most boards where they expect financial fraud to originate in a construction company, and the answer usually points toward procurement, subcontractor billing, or executive-level related-party transactions. Few boards instinctively think about the site store — the shed where cement bags, steel reinforcement,

Every construction professional I know carries a private list of mega-projects they study the way a surgeon studies a case gone wrong — not for entertainment, but because the failure teaches more than a hundred successes ever could. Over twenty-three years, mine has

There is a particular kind of contract clause that every experienced subcontractor in this industry has learned to recognize on sight — payment terms that stretch to ninety or a hundred and twenty days, “pay when paid” language that quietly shifts the developer’s

I have spent the better part of my career standing in places most board members never visit. I have walked shuttering platforms forty metres above ground before the concrete was poured. I have stood in a foundation pit at 2 a.m. because the

A board member of a listed infrastructure company once told me that the moment he felt most exposed in his entire tenure was not during a cost overrun or a safety incident. It was during a board meeting where a tribunal ruling, delivered

I have stood at the edge of a site three separate times in my career while a stretcher was carried out. Two of those workers went home to their families, eventually, after long recoveries. One did not. Twenty-three years in this industry means