Time Has Never Stood Still

PAPL president and CEO speaks about his project management consultancy’s legacy, future and adaptability.

PVN Associates Pvt. Ltd. (also known as PAPL Corp.) was founded in Chennai as a partnership firm in 2007 by P.V. Narayanan and colleagues Kalavathi Rajagopalan and your author to provide vertical-transportation (VT) specialty services. After spending about 45 years in the industry and successfully running PVN Associates for nearly 10, Narayanan retired in 2016 after passing the leadership to the next generation. The partnership firm transformed into a limited liability private company in 2016. Narayanan passed away on August 20, 2020, leaving behind a legacy he created with great passion. Also among the company’s leadership is Ramani Krishnamurthy, senior executive vice president.

PAPL is proud to have built a culture based on anticipating and understanding client needs, then working in close partnership with them and architects to make their designs more valuable. The company has grown multifold, adding new operating territories and more verticals, including VT modernization, VT due diligence and planning/engineering for car parking systems (CPSes).

The world is transforming itself rapidly. This is revolutionizing our lives in many ways. In accordance with this change, PAPL has been ensuring faster adaptation of technology, specifically in the VT industry. Since 2007, it has been a trusted partner to numerous builders, architects and consultants, ensuring safe and reliable VT in their buildings and providing advisory and auditing services that include planning, engineering, inspecting, testing witnessing and certification for VT and CPSes. The company was part of the construction of many iconic buildings across India, starting from the concept design to the handing-over stage. 

Interior circulation in buildings is complex. People and materials move throughout, using elevators, escalators, moving walks and CPSes. This equipment has become an integral part of life and plays a major role in the success of a building as a place to work, live or receive service. It is part of every built environment and no longer a luxury. Planning for it and its pattern of usage should address both quality and quantity of service, apart from being safe and sound equipment meeting regulatory requirements.

Certifications and Accreditations 

PAPL also provides inspection services, which involve a critical examination of VT and CPS installation. The company is an inspection body accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Certifying Bodies (NABCB) as an independent and impartial inspection body in compliance with ISO/IEC 17020:2012 in the exclusive domain of elevators, escalators, moving walks and CPSes. As VT is the lifeline of most buildings, it is important to ensure its safety and compliance to provide safe, reliable and efficient movement of both people and materials. 

In PAPL’s accreditation by NABCB, a constituent of the Quality Council of India, it demonstrated it has the necessary competence for specified inspection tasks. It is reassessed regularly to ensure continued compliance with requirements and to check that the required standard of operation is being maintained.

e-Comply

As the world embraces increasing digitization, it is more essential now than ever to be able to adapt to the constantly changing procurement landscape. PAPL has introduced online systems designed to seamlessly integrate VT processes into the ecosystem in which it operates. e-Comply is a testimony to our intent to successfully adapt cloud-based systems for faster, effective and transparent solutions in this technologically driven environment. With wider acceptance for digital platforms and processes, digital documentation has gained legal traction. 

e-Comply forms an integral part of project collaboration and its associated digital documentation. It is a flexible tool for VT engineers, providing enough bandwidth to create, track and manage specifications for elevators, escalators and moving walks for projects of any type and of any scale. Adequate steps have been taken to ensure security of the system and provide real-time monitoring of progress. It also enables nonstandard specifications and provides customer-specific requirements to be incorporated for the VT vendor’s comprehension. Its purposes are standardization of the specifying process and uniformity of vendor compliance with specifications. The vendor evaluation is in real time, and ratings are generated objectively. The system also provides the vendor’s extent of compliance as it progresses with the compliance process.

As the boundaries of this platform continue to evolve, PAPL is constantly focusing on technologies to enable access anywhere, anytime and using any device in a secure environment. e-Comply includes:

• Adequately formatted specifications with exclusive sections dedicated to every aspect of the VT equipment covering dimensions, finishes, safety, signalization and operational requirements

• A simplified process that ensures all requirements are covered just by selection; the process ensures no critical specification is missed.

• Flexibility that ensures incorporation of new requirements, both at template and document levels.

• Allows incorporation of client- and project-specific requirements

• Verification and approval that involve a three-layer online collaborative process ensuring correctness at the specifications release stage

• Defining timelines for the project, site-related works and technical data sheet for comparison of design parameters

• Tender drawing upload

• Pre-compliance technical queries to ensure faster technical compliance

• Standard compliance process to ensure evenness in compliance by multiple vendors

• Allowing vendors to upgrade equipment or specifications

• Allowing vendors to get to know the extent of compliance for each section in real time, which ensures no item goes unnoticed

• Providing vendors with their scores upon submission

• Consolidated dashboards, where all vendor details are displayed, for clients and PAPL engineers

• Vendor rating based on compliance

• Instant report generation upon completion of compliance by vendors, covering comparative statements, vendor deviation list, upgrades, etc.

• e-Comply would benefit the procurement process by:

• Eliminating human error in preparation and validation of specifications, vendor compliance submission and compliance evaluation 

• Providing a secure process

• Enabling faster compliance, comparative statements and vendor ratings

• Providing uniformity in compliance to make evaluation more objective

• Enabling transparent decision making

• Report generation at client end. 

Future Focus

PAPL plans to allocate and deploy resources in becoming a global player in VT consulting and inspection. With great ambitions for growth, its management has plans to expand the company’s portfolio into other services, especially in the environment, health and safety (EHS) and sustainability fronts, both across India and the world.