Rating agency to certify buildings

The Construction Quality Rating Agency (CQRA) on Tuesday announced plans to offer its services nationally in the area of certifying and rating buildings for their quality.

The 'third party certification' service will be a first in India, Ujjwal Kunte, director, CQRA said. "It will be professional recognition of quality standards achieved on-site and will assure the buyers of property, as well as financiers about the reliability of construction," he said.

The rating will be preceeded by an audit of the construction process, Kunte said, adding that the rating of a project will be subject to change each time an audit is conducted.

The certification will be after meticulous checking and verification of audit scores during all stages of the project and will be issued in categories such as overall construction, RCC work, finishing, as well as the mechanical and electrical parts used in constructing a building, he said.

The rating service is an outcome of the extensive research of four years and the company's earlier service of third-party quality audit to builders.

CQRA has developed an objective quality audit system that benchmarks the construction quality in building projects, where data is periodically captured from construction sites to generate stage-wise reports using software developed in-house, he explained.

The firm was into certifying residential buildings till now and is now geared up to rate commercial projects as well, Kunte said, and added that modules for newer categories of constructions such as roads or bridges are also being developed.

Currently, the company has offices in Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad and plans to open offices in Chennai and Bangalore, where the realty business is witnessing major activity, Kunte said.