THE HEART of the Capital, Connaught Place, will soon house the nerve-
centre of
the Delhi Metro. By mid-August, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation
(DMRC) will
shift its central operations control centre and corporate office to
Metro Bhawan on Barakhamba Road.

"The new Metro Bhawan is now ready and our corporate office and
operations
control centre would be shifted there by the middle of next month,"
said DMRC
spokesman Anuj Dayal. Construction of the eight-storey building,
situated behind
the Super Bazar building in Connaught Place, started two years back.

"Our officers are scattered all over Delhi, with the corporate office
at NBCC
Place in Pragati Vihar and OCC at Shastri Park and many other field
offices. Our
officials were wasting a lot of time commuting between the different
offices and
keeping Delhi's traffic in mind, it was leading to huge loss of time,"
Dayal said.

"Our present OCC would be shifted here, from where operations across
the Metro
network could be controlled. There would be a backup OCC also, which
would be
useful when our Phase II, spread across 128 kms, becomes operational,"
he said,
adding one OCC would not be sufficient for such a large network.

The building is environmentally friendly and has also been earmarked
for silver
award by the Government of India."We have taken extensive power saving
measures
like using natural light as much as possible and the air-conditioning
would
automatically turn off when an area is not in use.

Latest building management system has been used in the Bhawan," he
said. The
Metro Bhawan would also have an auditorium to seat 300 people,
something the present DMRC office doesn't have.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/32/20080809/1053/tnl-metro-gets-a-swank-new-...
tml

Sat, Aug 9 12:55 AM