HCL gets a new campus

To be set up in Noida, the campus proposes to employ 1,500 people.

HCL's ambitious Rs 1,000 crore project could prove to be a feather in the cap of the industrial city of Noida.

Situated in a special economic zone in Noida, HCL Technology's upcoming campus is spread across 46 acres of land. The half-constructed new HCL tech-hub provides a picture of the grandeur that is to follow as the campus is scheduled to be completed in the next five years.

The company has left no stone unturned to provide the best facilities and amenities on the campus to its soon-to-be-employed workforce of 15,000 people.

Some of the facilities that the campus would house include a gymnasium, separate underground block for vehicle parking, and a multi-cuisine cafeteria.

The technology hub will have 2 million sq ft of space and is poised to generate revenues in excess of Rs 100 crore for the Rs 440 crore enterprise.

The campus infrastructure is being designed according to the green building norms. To ease the problem of water supply, a common problem faced by SEZs, HCL has resorted to provisions like rain water harvesting and water recycling. It has also put in place measures to prevent any wastage of water.

The infrastructure caters to zero discharge of water outside the campus. Moreover, there is a provision to protect water from pollutants carried by building discharge. To conserve energy, high efficiency chillers, operated by a variable frequency drive, have been installed in each building.

The campus would house water bodies and boast of good landscaping, according to company sources. The biggest attraction on the new campus is, however, going to be a huge lake that is under various stages of planning.

Besides putting its best efforts to ensure world-class amenities, HCL has paid as much attention to the external look of the entire unit. For the exterior of the buildings, high efficiency glasses are being used with a combination of ACP, granite and Dholpur stone.

For flooring and cladding, the company plans to source imported marble from Italy and Egypt. False ceilings are also being designed with acoustics having high noise absorption capacity.

All campus buildings will be equipped with a high-end integrated building management system, which will help integrate, monitor and control the CCTV system, the fire alarm system, the PA system, energy consumption, water consumption, the air conditioning system, and the ventilation system among others.

Integration of all systems will be done through autonomous distributed control systems "" fail-safe hardwired sensor-actuator-controller connectivity, bus based communication, central data management system, software programmes, visualisation screens and data gathering, archiving and serving features.

The new campus will set the ball rolling for a series of campuses, which the company is setting up. Its technology hubs in Bangalore and Chennai will be inaugurated by the second half of the next year.

Meanwhile, the company also plans to extend the technology hubs to tier-II cities like Nagpur, Madurai and Lucknow.