Shortlisted for Sustainable Infrastructure Award 

Integrated Master Plan & Design for Hyderabad Pharma City, Telangana State, India

​

Project Background 

Telangana state industrial infrastructure corporation (TSIIC) has set out to implement a dedicated industrial area for the pharmaceutical sector with well-integrated physical, environmental, social, and technical infrastructure to optimize economies of scale in such an infrastructure intensive industry. 

​

Designed as a smart city, the masterplan will capitalise Hyderabad’s reputation as India's bulk drug pharmaceutical capital. The Hyderabad Pharma City (HPC) will improve the pharmaceutical industry whilst serving as a catalyst for the region's overall growth. It will create an integrated industry-friendly environment for emerging sectors to attract international and domestic investment. 

​

The project is approved as the first National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) in the state of Telangana. The project area spans approximately 7,810 ha with phase 1 implementation for over 3,600 ha. 

​

The HPC site has dynamic urban-suburban-rural connectivity with the major regional growth centers of Hyderabad, Bangalore, Nagpur, Warangal, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Pune. The site is well connected with Hyderabad city and its hinterland through all major modes of transport with the nearest airport 30km away.

​

The HPC masterplan captures a grand vision to break away from the traditional notion of an industrial city, by creating a sustainable and liveable industrial eco-system. The key driver for the project was to move the thriving but polluting, bulk drugs manufacturing industries away from the urban centre of Hyderabad and consolidate them in a dedicated industrial zone, well integrated with physical, social, and environmental infrastructure. The development will also incorporate zero liquid discharge, district cooling, district heating (using recycled water), sustainable waste management and central service tunnels.

​

The Challenge: 

SMEC has worked alongside parent company Surbana Jurong to lead the masterplan vision, concept, detailed infrastructure planning. The team is also overseeing responsibility for procurement, BOQ support and construction supervision. 

​

SJ/SMEC developed a common infrastructure framework to monitor and control all sources of potential environmental pollution, including the operation and maintenance of complex infrastructure and utility services on site. The infrastructure design included roads, power, potable water, storm water, recycled water, and wastewater. SJ/SMEC is also designing some key buildings and campuses.

​

The Solution 

The centralization of shared utilities will allow for higher value, state of the art facilities with best-in-class technology - leveraging on economies of scale. The underlying idea is that all the potential sources of pollution be removed from individual plots and centralised at designated locations that are demarcated after multicriteria suitability analysis. 

​

Spatial planning has been envisioned with concurrent activation of catalytic activities in each zone and each phase of the project, so that the entire region may benefit from the facilities planned within Pharma city, especially the neighbouring settlements and villages.

Climate change adaptability measures have been incorporated in the project to study and address issues like flash floods, heat waves, water stress, judicious & clean energy, human comfort, and livability.

​

SJ/SMEC developed an integrated master planning and infrastructure planning approach to drive a higher value proposition, offsetting and sharing peak demands and embedding a mechanism to ‘reduce- reuse-recycle’ by design, across all utility sectors.

Pilot projects have been proposed to help pioneer a co-dependent and integrated master plan.

​

Computational Fluid Dynamic simulation was deployed to test and inform the spatial and infrastructure plan. The aim was to find the ‘least impact scenario’ which included mitigation measures for air quality.

​

Multi-disciplinary ‘city information modelling’ through digital engineering was undertaken to track over 30+ parameters ranging from utility demand vs supply, demography, performance standards and even predictive maintenance during operational phase for 2000+ plots in 9400Ac.

​

Impacts

• HPC will create a sustainable ecosystem where people can live work study and play. This will be an important magnet to attract companies, investors, and talent.

• Predicted to employ over 760,000 people by 2047.

• The development is designed with a ‘Zero Liquid Discharge’ system for water intensive industries in India’s semi-arid heartland. To ensure that the treated wastewater from the centralized effluent treatment plant is fully utilised, it reuses and repurposes water for non-process use, cooling, irrigation, and cogeneration purposes.

• HPC integrates effective afforestation plans aligned with the state’s ‘Haritha-haram’ 30 year program whilst contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goal to improve life on land. The site incorporates 33% green cover. Haritha Haram is a large-scale tree-planting program implemented by the Government of Telangana to increase the amount of tree cover in the state from 24% to 33%. 

• HPC will offset 40% freshwater demand through harvesting and recycling. 

• Efficient urban planning will encourage walkable neighbourhoods reducing reliance on public transport and private car usage. 

• The Hyderabad Metro is proposed to extend to the site providing direct mass public transport access to HPC. This will be a first of a kind linkage from a city centre to the mega industrial estate, thereby acting as a key factor in retaining talent & ease of doing business.

• HPC will incorporate dedicated Research and Development labs, plug-in offices & industrial spaces to offer companies flexibility and scalability in their operations and help drive start up growth.

• HPC is strategically placed to retain and acquire talent of highly skilled and blue-collar worker because it is well connected to the prospering metropolis of Hyderabad which is has a thriving pharma hub of industry and education.

• Common industrial infrastructure and services will homogenise management of chilled water, steam, effluent treatment, and other specialised services.