Title - ‘Tender for Kochi metro soon’

The tender process for the main work of the Kochi metro project will commence soon, even if the final central nod gets delayed, ‘Metroman’ E Sreedharan said on Saturday.“Only if we float tenders now, can we start the work as soon as the monsoon gets over. I’ll wait for two weeks and then even if the central nod still hasn’t come we’ll go ahead with the tender process,” he said on the sidelines of a conference on ‘Project Management - A Life Skill’ here.He dismissed apprehensions of traffic getting hit by the metro works. “When we started the North RoB, a lot of people said the city will some to a standstill. But nothing happened and the work is progressing smoothly.”On the Calicut monorail project, Sreedharan said he would submit a detailed project report to the government next week.Earlier at the conference, Sreedhran spoke about the complex projects he undertook – the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro, and how he focused on an organization culture of responsibility to the stakeholders including the public, which helped to complete the projects on time.Meanwhile at another function, Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Sudhir Krishna, suggested that KMRL, with the assistance of GCDA, should develop a transportation network as part of city planning.At a meeting of key heads of agencies involved in the city development projects, Krishna asked them to work on a master plan of the city.