Bahrain mining and stone company, the Bramco Group, set new technological standards by readying the stonework design and also installation for the flooring, the lifts and lobby areas at the Indira Gandhi International Airport's new Terminal 3 (T3), in New Delhi.

Up to 34 million people a year will be walking over granite flooring laid by the Bahrain firm at the newly opened T3, which was officially inaugurated on Saturday. The airport opens for business on July 14.

Bramco had set new technological standards during the project as well as being the only key contractor led by a woman boss.

Bramco Group president Kanika Dewan led an 800-strong international group made up of engineers and workers from Bahrain, India, Germany, Romania, Italy and the Middle East. She was the only woman - and youngest member - in the top team that built the showpiece T3.

The company had won the bid to handle all the stonework design and installation for the flooring, the lifts and lobby areas. It was commissioned by managing company Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) and main contractors GMR.

T3, which sprawls over 5.4m square feet, is reportedly the world's second largest terminal in size and, with a passenger handling capacity of 34 million a year, it will be the world's sixth largest, in terms of capacity.

'The challenge was not merely the task of laying 1,030,000 square metres of stone, in a project fraught with delays in just 14 months,' said Dewan.

'The real test was whether we would be able to maintain the highest aesthetic standards and blemish-less material consistency, over the massive area.

'We had to bore massive holes in the mountains of Saudi Arabia to mine 12,000 cubic metres of the best quality granite to ensure the same texture and colour variation, throughout.'

Here are some of the technical highlights of the project:

*12,000 cubic metres of the best quality granite was mined in Saudi Arabian mountains for the project.

*500 sqm of stone was processed at the Bramco factory in Bahrain every day.

*The stone was impregnated with customised pressure guns, developed by Akemi Lab, Germany.

*The Bramco Group used a pioneering technology to fix the stone, for the first time in India - a proprietary screed was developed by a renowned Italian company for this purpose.

* Specially designed plastic spacers were used to ensure uniform space and alignment between the stones.

*Another first was that in order to ensure timely completion of the project in the face of delays, the granite flooring was done even as the super-structure was being built.

'I've worked 20 hours a day non-stop, to meet this challenge. Today, as I see the project come alive, I am proud that all the passion, zeal and effort has been worth the while,' said an elated Dewan.

She said her professional exposure in the Middle East had been a great advantage in handling the working environment in India.

'The Bramco Group has offices all over the world but since we are headquartered in Bahrain, I think I have absorbed a lot of my work culture from here,' she said.

'You have the best of the West and East here - the Western emphasis on up-to-date facilities and tools for work and the Middle Eastern flexibility that lets you connect emotionally with your workplace, your colleagues at work and your work itself.

'India today works at an aggressive international pace very similar to the US. It's all very legal and everything is documented, so really it's much easier to work in modern India if you have international exposure,' she added.-TradeArabia News Service