Interview of Mr Atul Bhobe

May 13, 2026

In this edition, we had the opportunity to speak with Mr Atul Bhobe, Managing Director of TPF Engineering Pvt Ltd, a company known for delivering complex projects across transportation, bridges, and urban infrastructure. Part of the global TPF Group, the organisation has built a strong reputation by combining international best practices with deep local expertise.

Our conversation explored India’s rapidly evolving infrastructure landscape, the importance of material selection at the design stage, and the untapped opportunities shaping the sector’s future. With decades of experience in engineering and infrastructure development, Mr Bhobe shared valuable insights on building resilient, future-ready projects and the role partnerships play in driving progress.

Thoughtful, insightful, and deeply passionate about engineering excellence, Mr Bhobe offers a perspective that is both practical and forward-looking. Read this engaging conversation between Rebecca Sarah Mark from Corporate Communications and Mr Atul Bhobe.

Let’s start with your journey. Where did you grow up? How did you come into this field? And more importantly, for people who are not familiar with TPF Engineering, give us a little bit about your company.

Although my origins of the family, Bhobe, come from Goa, I was born and brought up in Mumbai, by heart I’m a Mumbaikar and my karmabhoomi is Mumbai.

My father was a civil, bridge and structural engineer, so I was sort of born into this profession. So, I did my civil engineering in Mumbai and I went to the United States to do my Masters in structural engineering. I did that, came back and joined my father, which is why I sort of got landed into this profession of both structural engineering and consultancy.

As far as my company goes, TPF Engineering is a new name for this company. This company actually was started by my father and uncle. My uncle is an architect, my father was a civil engineer. They started this in 1962. So this is a company that has a legacy of nearly 64 years now.

TPF Engineering actually bought into the equity of this company in 2006 – 20 years ago. TPF Engineering worldwide is a global consultancy company with revenues of nearly INR 2,500 crores. We have a total personnel strength of about 4,000 people globally. In India, we are about 800 people and the company that I represent, TPF Engineering, has about 500 people on its roll.

In India, we do mostly – the legacy of this company is in structural engineering and bridge engineering – but today we are a multi-disciplinary company. We do highways, railways, bridges, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, almost the entire gamut of infrastructure engineering.

And we do all that end-to-end, which means we start with concept of a project, we do all the detailed project reports, feasibility studies, we do the designs, we do the proof checking, we do quality audit, and project supervision. And then we do asset management at the end of putting the asset to use. So we also are at the forefront of health monitoring systems that are put into most of the structures that we design.

India has seen unprecedented growth over the years, in terms of infrastructure. What do you think is the upcoming India’s infrastructure story? How is it going to unfold?

In the last 10, 11 years, we’ve grown ten-fold in terms of construction speed or construction size, or the mass volume that we produce. The second yardstick, I would say, is the number of railways that we have. The number of railway network has almost doubled. We are now doing high-speed railway track between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, which will be extended to Delhi in the future, and there are six corridors which will be coming up which the government has announced.

So I think going in the future, although we are now ten-fold of what we were doing 10 years back, we are still way behind the super developed nations. You know, compare that to China which was 40 years back a poor nation, today it’s probably 10 times ahead of India.

But if we have to reach that level, we probably are still a ten-fold increase away. We will still have to construct highways maybe at 100 kilometres per day or 120 kilometres per day. I think over the next decade, you will see a complete change from the way that people will travel, that people will live. Our urban renewal missions have taken off so well, you know, today the smart cities or the urban cities have become really smart cities. Over the last 10 years, they’ve completely changed.

I think in the next 10 years, as we move towards the honourable Prime Minister’s vision of a Viksit Bharat (developed nation) by 2047, we will be somewhere in the intermediate of being a completely developed nation to from being what we are today. I think we’ll be about halfway there in the next 10 years. The sky is the limit, we still have a lot of work to do.

You were saying about how we’re trying to reach global standards. But in this rat race, speed is mostly the factor, where quality is often compromised. We unfortunately get to see structural failures as headlines as well. What do you think is the untapped sector where we can solve this issue?

If you look at the number of people or the talent pool that we had 10 years ago, that hasn’t grown ten-fold. We are far, far short of the skills that we need to actually – I just said that we want to build at 100 kilometres per day – so you still have to grow 1.5 times more than what we are doing or say 2 times more than what we are doing today. Which means your talent pool has to grow even – it has to double if you want to take India to that level.

Unfortunately, skill development and talent pool enlargement is largely neglected. So an obvious outcome of that is the pyramid is not growing. I mean, the people at the top are in fact shrinking because they are growing older. And the people at the bottom, in 10 years, you can only get 10 years of experience. You can’t get 40 years of experience in 10 years. So the biggest challenge before the industry is how to address this lack of talent pool or lack of skill development that we have.

A lot of agencies, a lot of institutions are doing their own bit, but at the end of the day, number of people who actually want to go on ground and do the hard work that civil engineers have to do is shrinking. Not many people want to do that. Most people want to, or get naturally migrated towards software development. Unfortunately, any amount of software you develop, any amount of artificial intelligence you have, you can’t build a road with that. To build a road, you have to work hard on the ground. So I believe that’s the biggest gap we have. Everybody is trying their best, the government is trying its best to increase the talent pool, but like I said, you can only have 10 years’ experience in 10 years. So you can’t multiply experience.

India’s infrastructure sees a lot of different climates. There’s humidity, salinity, there’s a lot of temperature variations as well. So in this case, how does choosing the material play an important role at a design stage?

So it makes a whole lot of difference. See, the construction silo constructs only what comes from the design office. So it’s left to the key decision-makers in the design office to decide what sustainable infrastructure really means. The policy makers are even smaller, you know, the design office let’s say is the bottom of the pyramid, the top of the pyramid is the policy makers. And that’s a small number of people who actually make the policy. Fortunately, we have good visionary people sitting at the top making those policies and very soon you’ll find that bids will be decided based on sustainability of the solution offered by the bidder.

Today of course, as you know, most of the bids are decided on the L1 basis. But very soon you’ll find they will be decided on sustainability basis. No more the lowest cost, but the highest sustainability will win the bid. Once that happens, people will automatically migrate towards using sustainable solutions.

A whole lot of people are trying their best to bring sustainability at their own levels. For example, we do a lot of work where the old tor steel rebar is being replaced by stainless steel rebar. Now this is a policy initiative of the Government of India. Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has actually issued notifications saying that you must do that, so that bridges become more sustainable. Although it’s costlier as a CAPEX, but once you look at the life-cycle cost, it pays for itself.

The same way normal bridges that are being done in concrete, and if you want them to be done in steel, then you can use stainless steel. Maybe the grades can differ, but you could use stainless steel as an option. Again, life-cycle cost defeats the CAPEX if you look at just a simple CAPEX of concrete solution versus steel solution versus stainless steel solution, obviously the concrete solution will be cheaper.

But if you look at the sustainability levels of these three and the life-cycle cost of these three, probably the steel solution or a maybe even the stainless steel solution, depending on how far away you are from the coast or how far into the corrosion region you are, maybe the stainless steel solution becomes a very good option. Maybe the steel option becomes a very good option, maybe concrete becomes a good option. But unless you do a sustainability exercise, you can’t do that.

To couple with that, the Indian Roads Congress will very soon or has already come out with a sustainability code of practice, which actually defines how you can calculate sustainability of a particular solution. So once that comes into force completely, once people get aware, once people start using that and get familiar with it, I think that the sustainability option will not be just a matter of discussion, it will be actually on ground and you’ll see it getting implemented very, very fast.

The Government of India, I think, is already very into the sustainability exercise. They are coming out with policy circulars, with policy notifications which drive people toward sustainability. The Government of India is party to a zero-carbon, carbon neutrality by 2050. So they obviously have to push everybody into that direction. So I think it’s coming, it’s coming faster than people can think.

Now we’ll move into the collaboration that you’ve had with Jindal Stainless. Tell me about that journey. What was it like?

So with Jindal Stainless, we started out with one project. We did a project of 600 tons of duplex on a small bridge. It’s on a Nala in Mumbai city, Walbhat Nala. I think it’s the only bridge in India which has been done in duplex stainless steel. That was our first exposure to Jindal Stainless.

And at that time when we started working with Jindal, Jindal themselves were new to the idea of duplex being used in infrastructure. So it was a learning process and a learning curve for both, for us as well as for Jindal as well as for the client. Mumbai Municipal Corporation is our client on that work. And I must say that the client was a visionary in the sense that they wanted stainless steel to be used. They agreed to use duplex. We were the consultants on the job so we were privileged to design it.

And thankfully, Jindal came up with the means to actually deliver the product to us. The second interaction was on a bridge that actually that collapsed in Mumbai city, the Himalaya FOB (foot over bridge). Which was just near to the CST station in Mumbai. That fell down due to extreme – extensive corrosion on the bridge. That was a mild steel, carbon steel bridge.

And we were appointed design consultants on that job, so we suggested stainless steel as a replacement for that bridge. It went through the Urban Arts Commission, the Heritage Committee, they approved that proposal. And finally that bridge was constructed in stainless steel. That’s an IRSM grade stainless steel, not duplex. But that was our second interaction.

And from that time on, we’ve now specified stainless on many projects in Mumbai city. The client is now very confident that they can use stainless on a large number of projects. And I think some of the newer projects that we have on the way are actually very long spans. They are cable-stay bridges which will be done in IRSM grade stainless steel.

So we look forward to the future. It’s very exciting to be able to use stainless steel on these long spans.

Stainless steel is increasingly being used in coastal areas. Where do you see its key strengths, and especially in the context of durability, life cycle cost, and sustainability? Where do you see it all fitting in?

So obviously, the highest value for money in terms of stainless steel in life cycle costing is when it is in corrosion-prone areas. For us in Mumbai city, we are in an extremely corrosive atmosphere. We lose steel at an alarming rate to corrosion. And if you look at the corrosion map of India, it normally says that everything within about 10 to 15 kilometres of the coastline is in highly corrosive atmosphere anywhere in India. In Mumbai, it is even worse because of the pollution. So we have a twofold attack on steel; we have the pollution that’s attacking it, at the same time we have the corrosion that’s attacking it. So we have to protect our structures from both of these. And the best solution to our mind, at the time when we studied this, was stainless steel.

Under the Indian Roads Congress, Ministry of Road Transport Highways brings the right codes and specifications. We are writing a code for stainless steel design and usage. So that code will come into practice probably by December of 2026. It will be published by the Indian Roads Congress. So it will be a code of practice for stainless steel, which doesn’t exist at this moment in India. We have the material code, which is the IS code, but we don’t have a code of practice for design and construction, which is what the current committee is writing. Which means that by next year, you’ll find that there will be a lot more awareness among the engineering fraternity, the construction fraternity about usage of stainless steel. That’s when I believe that stainless steel will actually make its mark. So unless we bring that to the people, we bring that to the community, to the fraternity of engineers, to showcase the experience, I think it will go a long way. We are just in the nascent stage right now, we are just at the beginning of the curve for increased usage of stainless steel.

You spoke about skilling, and how the youth is the untapped opportunity for us. For the young engineers and the upcoming builders, in your opinion, what are the three important, critical skills that they should imbibe in themselves that will help them thrive in the next 20 years in India’s infrastructure story?

So I think the first thing is, don’t shirk from hard work; that’s the only way to success. That’s very, very important. Many of the younger generation of engineers are looking to generate quick money rather than experience. There is no beating experience and hard work.

Second thing is that you should not worry about your job being taken away by artificial intelligence. Those people who are talking, saying that artificial intelligence will take your job, are talking rot. There are three things which you should be very careful about when you hear people talk about artificial intelligence. First thing: don’t lose your creativity. Artificial intelligence can only copy something that exists; it cannot create anything. Okay, it can create a drawing made by Picasso or Van Gogh, it can’t create a drawing of that quality by itself.

The second thing is artificial intelligence cannot copy emotions, not yet. So you need to be creative. So don’t lose your creativity, it’s very, very important. And the third thing that artificial intelligence has yet to mimic, or will never be able to mimic, is natural human stupidity. So stay lean, stay mean, stay foolish all the time. You’ll beat artificial intelligence at its own game.

The third very important thing is to be an entrepreneur. Don’t be a job seeker, be a job giver. Create jobs. If you are able to be an entrepreneur, India is, was always the place to be, and will remain the place to be for the next at least 50 years.

Well said, sir. That brings us to the end of the interview. It was a pleasure talking to you.

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