The CODE Construction. Design. Engineering.India's No.1 Construction Podcast

The final part of our listener Q&A series. You sent your questions to my DMs — here are the last 25 answers, with the science, the logic and the IS code behind each one. On this episode of The CODE – India's No.1 Construction Podcast, Rishabh Aggarwal covers steel cover and checks, bricks and blocks, sand and water, mortar and plaster, foundations and site work, and how much material a hou...

Part 2 of our listener Q&A series. You sent your questions to my DMs — here are the answers, with the science, the logic and the IS code behind each one. On this episode of The CODE – India's No.1 Construction Podcast, Rishabh Aggarwal answers the next 12 questions: the rest of your concrete questions, everything on TMT steel, and how to choose bricks or blocks for your home. Questions ans...

You sent your questions to my DMs. In this episode, I answer them — with the science, the logic and the IS code behind every answer. This is Part 1 of our listener Q&A series on The CODE – India's No.1 Construction Podcast. Rishabh Aggarwal takes on the first 12 questions, all about cement, concrete and shuttering: what to do on site, why it works, and which Indian Standard says so. Questi...

Delhi-NCR floods every single monsoon — and every year, it's treated like a surprise. In this episode, we go street by street and drain by drain to find out why: a British-era sewer still running under Minto Bridge, a drainage master plan from 1976 that wasn't replaced until 2025, and a written warning about a collapsed sewer in Noida that went unanswered for four years — until someone die...

A building collapsed in Satya Niketan, South Delhi, on September 6, 2026. At least six people didn't come home — most of them students. The building was around 55 years old, mid-renovation, with water reportedly pooling in its basement during repair work. In this episode, we trace that collapse back through a century of policy that made it possible. We go back to 1908, when a colonial-era red...

A free, no-fluff masterclass on Ultra-High Performance Concrete — the material up to 16x stronger than normal concrete, and the questions the industry doesn't like answering out loud. Dr. Satish Jain, Managing Director of UHPC India Pvt. Ltd. and PhD (Iowa State University), joins us for EP 166. His doctoral research on UHPC in post-tensioned floor systems led to a US patent for a new UHPC anc...

A construction firm in India engineered a supertall commercial tower in AI-optimised steel. 17% less steel than a traditional design. 1,000 tonnes saved. Cost parity with RCC — which flips the assumption every Indian developer starts with. The design was never built. Not because the numbers didn't work. Because in 2026, India's construction ecosystem — codes, approvals, market risk appetit...

There's a concrete dome in Rome that has stood for 1,900 years — unreinforced, open to the rain, still perfect. Meanwhile, the concrete we pour today has an expiration date of 50 years. We had the secret. We threw it away. This is the story of why. In this solo episode, Rishabh Aggarwal unpacks one of the strangest trades humanity ever made: we swapped a material that could outlive empires for...

A ₹5 crore home became a ₹9 crore home — an 80% overrun. Where did the extra ₹4 crore come from? From under the ground. Soil is the one thing nobody checks, nobody tests — and it quietly becomes the most expensive mistake in your entire build. In this solo episode, I break down everything your contractor probably won't tell you about soil and foundation, and why a ₹20,000 test can save you cro...

Ramesh ji spent ₹1.8 crore on a brand-new Bangalore apartment. East-facing. Park view. His dream home. First night in — he couldn't sleep. Neighbour's TV through the wall. Footsteps from upstairs. Water pressure in the pipes. By 3 AM, he was playing sleep meditation on YouTube in his own bedroom. His problem wasn't the mattress. It wasn't the curtains. His home was simply never bui...

A ₹5 crore home that finished at ₹9 crore. A ₹2.5 crore project that ended at ₹5.35 crore. These are real, peer-reviewed cases from Indian residential construction — and they represent a national average most homeowners never see coming. In Episode 161 of The CODE, we break down exactly where your money disappears when you build a home in India, and how to avoid joining the 20-50% cost overrun ave...

Total construction cost ka sirf 2% — phir bhi yeh wahi material hai jo India mein sabse zyada paisa, peace of mind, aur ghar barbad karta hai. Iss episode mein Sharma uncle ki kahani — Delhi mein 4 BHK ka sapna, 5 saal baad ₹14 lakh ka repair bill. Plus Pune ke do shocking case studies jahan concrete strength design ki aadhi nikli. Seekho: 8 systemic mistakes jo har Indian builder karta hai Baseme...

Why does some space feel sacred — and why doesn't every temple? Most people say "good vibes." The science says something else entirely. Every time I have walked into a place that feels deeply peaceful — a temple, an old library, someone's quiet study — I have caught myself thinking the same thing. Why is this so peaceful? Most people I know answer that with vocabulary I have neve...

Vatican se zyada visited. Eiffel Tower se zyada. Taj Mahal se bhi zyada. — Aur banaya kisne? Ek 28 saal ke Iranian architect ne design kiya, British engineers ne maths solve kiya, aur L&T ke Indian workers ne 6 saal mein impossible ko reality bana diya.1976 mein Fariborz Sahba ne ek lotus-shaped building ka design banaya — 27 petals, 9 sides, 9 reflection pools. Engineers ne dekha aur ek line...

Aapka ghar 10 saal mein kyun leak karta hai? Aur kya isse roka ja sakta hai? In this episode of The CODE, we sit down with Sunny Surlaker — Director at Assess Build Chem and one of India's leading concrete, admixtures & materials technologists (VJTI Mumbai + University of Michigan), with 13+ years of experience across India, Europe, the Middle East & Brazil. This isn't just a techn...

In 1936, when work on Howrah Bridge began, the plan was simple — all the steel would come from England. Then World War 2 happened. Britain's steel went into battleships and tanks. The bridge was left standing half-finished. That's when an Indian company did something that should have been written into history — but wasn't. Tata Steel developed a brand-new high-tensile alloy — TISCROM....

Delhi Metro carries 6 million people every day. It was built on time, on budget, and finished 3 years ahead of schedule — in India. Most people don't know the name of the man who made that happen. This is Story 01 of The CODE, and it's about E. Sreedharan. The story doesn't start with the Metro. It starts in 1964, when a cyclone destroys the Pamban Bridge and Indian Railways estimates...

Most Indian architects earn more from vendor kickbacks than design fees. Arch. Tejbeer Singh refused that model for 30 years. We asked him the uncomfortable questions about money, ethics, and survival in Indian architecture — the ones the industry doesn't want answered.

India's seismic code — IS 1893 — has one job. Make sure buildings don't kill people in earthquakes.59% of India sits in moderate-to-severe seismic zones. Over a billion people live in areas designed against this one document. In December 2025, BIS published IS 1893:2025 — the biggest revision in 23 years. New zone map. PSHA-based science. Vs30 soil classification. A chapter for non-structu...

Q1 2026. 98,761 homes sold. First time below 1 lakh in 18 quarters. And in that same quarter — homes above ₹1 crore hit 53% of all sales. Historic high. Sub-₹50 lakh segment? Down 23% year-on-year. This is not a slowdown. This is a structural shift. And it's been happening quietly, by design. In EP 152, I break down the full math: → Mumbai's price-to-income ratio: 14.3x — worse than London...

2021. Mumbai. 11 dead. 2022. Greater Noida. 2 dead. 2023. Lucknow. 5 dead. These were not natural disasters. These were engineered structures — designed, approved, and built by someone. In Germany, if a building fails, the structural engineer who signed off on it faces criminal charges, personal civil liability, and potential jail time. In Japan, buildings almost never collapse — because every sta...

Everyone building a home in India defaults to one answer: RCC frame. No engineer consulted. No alternatives considered. Contractor said so — and that was enough. In this episode, Rishabh breaks down why that single assumption has cost Indian middle-class families thousands of crores — unnecessarily. You'll learn: → The real cost difference between RCC and load-bearing construction → Why a 1,50...

IS 456:2000. Every Indian civil engineer knows it by memory. But here's the question nobody asks out loud — the code that governs every RCC structure in India hasn't been revised in 25 years. M-Sand now dominates construction across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Telangana. IS 456's mix design framework was calibrated for river sand. Self-compacting concrete, UHPC, and fiber-r...

RERA launched in 2016 with three big promises to every homebuyer in India — transparency, accountability, and speed. 10 years later, 25,000+ complaints are still pending. 40% of registered projects are missing mandatory documents. And if you bought a builder floor in Delhi or a flat in a Tier-3 city — RERA never even reached you. In this episode, Rishabh gives his unfiltered 3-part verdict: — Why...

On February 28, 2026, America and Israel struck Iran. India fired no missiles. But every construction site in India started paying the bill. The Strait of Hormuz closed. And a chain reaction travelled 3,000 kilometres — from a war zone to your construction budget. Steel up 20%. Bitumen up 62%. Morbi tiles effectively shutdown. LPG crisis pushing workers out of every major city. Cement bags doubled...