L&T chief on how to overcome Covid disruption | Economic Times

Arguably the most challenging disruption of the century, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and restrictions led to a never-before-experienced disrpution of labour, and economic turmoil of unprecedented proportions, sending most business plans and strategies into almost a chaos. But true to the cliché, crisis also presents opportunities.All engineering and construction (E&C) companies are used to cyclical downturns. But Covid has been an extraordinarily difficult time, and it called for swift and thoughtful actions to manage costs, stabilise supply chains, maintain liquidity, take care of our entire workforce as well as help common Indians to tide over and emerge from the crisis.When the people of this country were facing oxygen shortage, we went on a war footing to build medical grade oxygen generation units and donated 40 large-scale Oxygen Generating units to various hospitals across the country. With an increasing need for a safer and smarter cities during this crisis, our Smart World and Communication business unit leveraged different technologies to equip many city administrations to ensure Covid-appropriate bahaviour by the citizens.The skilled and unskilled labour, who toil on the ground to help build the infrastructure, was provided with safe and hygienic accommodation with basic necessities including medical aid at their camping sites during the lockdowns. Once the lockdowns were lifted, the foremost challenge was to ensure the safety and security of our workforces spread across the project sites all over the country.Opportunity to reflectThe health crisis presented an opportunity for businesses to pause, reflect, and realign their safety standards to Covid-appropriate changes. Unlike the first Covid wave when exodus of workers was experienced by all construction and infrastructure companies including L&T, this time we were able to successfully retain around 70% of our contracted workforce at project sites due to our conscious safety efforts.Throughout the first and the second wave of the pandemic, we have ensured that our employees receive proactive medical care, by setting up our own quarantine centres, hospital tie-ups, doctors on call, availability of nursing and care, supply of healthy and nutritious food etc. We have also launched consistent communication campaigns such as #L&TCares #SafewithL&T #YourChoice to ensure employees and workforce are following Covid-appropriate behavior and are enrolling in vaccination drives. We kept them safe, healthy, engaged, and motivated. As a result, the infection numbers at L&T sites and facilities have been negligible, while they continued to focus on their mission of serving the clients.The diversity of businesses and the scale of operations, with its wide array of high and mighty complex engineering, construction, technology, defence projects, required L&T to unleash transformation on the one hand and ensure business continuity on the other. Our digitalization journey that began since early 2016, got further boost during this period as every possible technology like IOT, Cloud, Mobility, Drones, BIM, AR, VR, Analytics, AI, and ML were exploited further in service of the infrastructure building efforts. We continued to help our clients tide over situations in the post-lockdown scenarios with a renewed zeal to continue with our nation building mission.We believe that this crisis has made us stronger and more humane. It has taught us more about the importance of agility, stability, inter-dependence, and trust. At this unprecedented time in history, our response to Covid-19 has been empathetic and transformative. Companies that emerge from this crisis with solid finances, a resilient supply chain, skilled workers and safe environment to execute work, will be well-placed to pivot and seize new opportunities.The writer is the Chief Executive Officer of Larsen & Toubro. The opinions expressed in this piece are that of the writer and do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.