Now, pre-engineered buildings!

With a client list that reads who's who of India Inc -- from Reliance Industries, Hindustan Lever, Skoda and Tata Motors to Unicef, Airports Authority of India and the DMRC -- a range of sleek but sturdy structures are all set to change the Indian skyline.

The next time you are at a sleek Reliance Energy kiosk in Gujarat, look around. Chances are, you are standing under a 'pre-engineered building.'

A building that came out of neatly numbered crates with precisely defined spans; every column the exact dimension of its neighbour, having rolled out of the same factory. A building that took a mere two weeks to erect.

Forbes chose pre-engineered building for a different reason -- when the company wanted to rebuild its 100-year-old textile plant in Madhya Pradesh, it chose pre-engineered buildings because it was easy to erect over the old teak and asbestos structure without damaging it, or causing to lose man-hours at the factory. And it could be done in a matter of weeks.

When the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation wanted a contemporary look for its stations, it went for pre-engineered buildings. The sleek stations and the workshops were not just smart and easy to erect, but, also, practically maintenance-free.

PEBs, as pre-engineered buildings are known in the industry jargon, have been around for a long time, but in India they have taken off only over the last couple of years. And the growth has been phenomenal: Just about every kind of non-residential building is experimenting with PEBs -- airports, railway stations, factories, power plants  and petrol pumps.

According to estimates, the Rs 450-crore (Rs 4.50 billion) industry is expected to zoom to Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) by 2011, while the number of fabricators is expected to rise to 250 from the present three in the organised and in the unorganised sector.

And now, a Mumbai builder and a Canadian firm are reported to be exploring the option of building multi-storeyed PEB residences.

Among those setting up shop is the Australian steel major Bluescope Steel. Bluescope is putting up three plants in Chennai, Pune and New Delhi with an investment of Rs 340 crore (Rs 3.40 billion).

Said Bluescope Steel CEO and Managing Director, Kirby Adams, "We are encouraged by the opportunities offered by the Indian market and we expect these plants to cater to the growing markets in the south, west and north Indian markets." Bluescope is also negotiating with Tata Steel for a JV to start a metal coating and paintline facility in India.

One of the reasons for the spurt in PEBs, said P K Nagaraj CEO of Tiger Steel, one of the three players in the organised sector, is the projected increase in steel capacities in the country from the current 35 million tonnes to 65 million tonnes by 2010.

"The easier availability of steel combined with all the advantages that PEBs have to offer, we expect will grow the market by 30-40 per cent a year over the next five years," says Nagaraj.

The advantages that PEBs offer range from savings in steel cost to the extent of 30 per cent of the construction cost and 7-8 per cent in freight cost, as well as energy saving by 15 per cent.

Besides being quick and easy to erect, the buildings are also eco-friendly as 95 per cent of the building material can be recycled. And of course, they have proven earthquake resistant properties.

That is the reason Unicef chose PEBs for rehabilitation after the Gujarat earthquakes. Schools, residences, hospitals and anganwadis were built using factory-made steel frames, sheets and claddings, which were simply assembled on site.

The complete project of 800 residences, 20 anganwadis, 100 hospitals and 300 schools was built in a span of just three months and has withstood the subsequent shocks.

Says R V Rajan, CEO of Kirby Building Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Kuwait-based Al Ghanim group, which executed the Unicef project, "One major advantage that PEBs enjoy over traditional RCC constructions is being lighter they are more flexible. So when quakes hit these buildings, they tend to absorb the shocks better."

Kirby is the biggest player in the Indian market today with a sales turnover of Rs 340 crore last year. The company plans to double its existing capacity to 75,000 tonnes by the next year.

Said Rajan, "Since you can build anything with PEBs, literally, sky is the limit as far PEBs are concerned."