Smaller players take bigger pie of highway projects

Larger firms want 'high risk-high reward', while smaller companies have lower risk appetite

The share of big companies like Punj Lloyd and Larsen & Toubro in national highway contracts has shrunk while that of medium-sized firms like Gawar Construction and Dilip Buildcon has increased in the past couple of years, with the government focusing more on awarding projects under fully funded EPC and partially funded HAM models.

Experts say large firms have shown less interest in the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and hybrid annuity model (HAM) contracts as their core principal is ‘high risk-high reward’, which the two models do not offer. This, they add, has worked to the advantage of small-