Paniteja Madala And Chandrawal Plant Announce Deal To Supply Millions In Delhi With Clean Water

The newly operational Chandrawal Plant, with engineering contributions from Paniteja Madala, aims to improve clean water access for millions of Delhi residents. This is thanks to the new Chandrawal Plant, which has engineering that enables more than 126 million gallons of water per day to pass through it.

India’s increasing demand for dependable water infrastructure has been a key focus of national development for decades. According to a 2018 NITI Aayog report, 21 major Indian cities, including Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai, risk depleting their groundwater in the near future, potentially impacting over 100 million people. Meanwhile, UNICEF estimates that 163 million individuals across the country lack access to safe drinking water near their homes. Compounding the issue, India’s urban population is projected to reach nearly 600 million by 2030—a significant rise from about 377 million in 2011.

Amid these challenges, the city of Delhi, home to nearly 17 million residents in 2013, embarked on an ambitious plan to rehabilitate one of its oldest and most vital water treatment facilities: the Chandrawal Plant. The plant quickly became the largest such projects in India, eventually garnering international acclaim by winning the AEC Excellence Award in 2020 for Best Infrastructure Project in the World in the small infrastructure category.

Overcoming Challenges

Site constraints emerged from the very start, as it integrates with the existing 48 MGD water treatment plant and 8 MGD recycling plant to achieve a combined capacity of 126 MGD. Beyond its considerable scale, the upgraded plant demonstrates the impact of modern engineering innovations on essential public needs. At the core of this effort was Paniteja Madala, an engineer who was part of the team under one of the major EPC firms during the project.

Chandrawal is designed to supply 126 million gallons of clean water daily to millions in and around Delhi, enhancing public health and the area’s environmental sustainability. The plant utilizes advanced treatment methods, including ozonation, dual-media filtration with activated carbon, and sludge conditioning—essential processes for providing safe, dependable water in a swiftly urbanizing city.

“Delhi has been grappling with water shortages for years,” recalls Paniteja Madala, who served as an Assistant Engineering Manager and as part of the engineering team during the project. “We knew from the outset that this plant had to go beyond conventional frameworks. It needed to be both massive in scale and agile in execution—something that hadn’t really been done before on this level.”

Amid various infrastructure initiatives across India tackling pressing needs, the Chandrawal project stood out due to its technical quality and careful planning. The engineering team opted for digital tools and Building Information Modeling (BIM) instead of conventional paper-based methods, bringing architects, contractors, and project managers together within a collaborative, data-driven framework.

This collaborative approach helped minimize errors, cut down on project delays, and optimize cost allocation—factors that often doom large-scale initiatives to inefficiency or mediocrity.

Providing Clean Water to Millions

For Paniteja, the stakes were clear as a member of the engineering team. “One of the biggest challenges was ensuring that we could manage the project’s scale while maintaining pinpoint accuracy in the design,” he says. “We recognized early on that manual drafting methods wouldn’t just be time-consuming; they would inevitably introduce errors. With such a vital resource on the line—drinking water for millions—we couldn’t afford to compromise.” Over time, those initial insights evolved into a comprehensive team effort to automate some of the most repetitive and error-prone tasks in infrastructure design.

Paniteja had already begun experimenting with streamlined workflows to reduce design complexity at one of the big EPC firms. His responsibilities in Chandrawal covered process selection, hydraulic modeling, equipment sizing, clearing vendor offers, and compiling detailed project reports (DPRs) and Operation and maintenance manuals.

He soon expanded his role to include the design automation initiatives within the value engineering team, which became a key aspect of many projects. “The team leveraged parametric modeling in Revit to improve efficiency,” he explains. “For sludge sumps & cascade aerator models alone, entering a few basic dimensions could produce about 60 percent of the entire process model. That saved us countless hours, and I’m talking entire days over the full course of the various projects.”

Automation became crucial in evaluating vendor choices. Typically, engineers would spend several days examining catalog data for various blowers, pumps, and filtration systems, manually incorporating specifications into each layout. Recognizing the time consumption and risk of errors in this approach, Paniteja created a tailored Excel spreadsheet based on over 75 previous projects.

The system automatically produced initial drafting inputs by selecting key parameters like blower capacity, synthesizing technical specs and relevant vendor data in seconds. “It freed us to focus on engineering judgment rather than data entry,” Paniteja notes. “Decisions that used to require several rounds of back-and-forth now happened almost instantaneously.”

These automation approaches significantly improved efficiency and reduced errors in the design process., slashing design time by approximately 80 to 90 percent on specific tasks. Errors also significantly decreased, enhancing the overall dependability of a plant intended to meet essential public demands. These efficiencies cut costs and also expedited every following phase of construction, Introducing a new approach in India for executing large-scale infrastructure projects with reduced delays.

The Benefits of Automation

“In a country this large, infrastructure gaps can’t be solved piecemeal,” Paniteja points out. “By pushing for automation, we were also pushing for a systemic change in how projects of this scale are planned and executed.”

As construction progressed, Chandrawal’s broader impact began to emerge. Reliable access to safe water reduces disease transmission, lowers healthcare costs, and supports industries that depend on water-intensive processes—all crucial benefits for a region as populous as Delhi.

Environmental experts also highlighted secondary benefits, such as reclaiming treated water for industrial use and conserving groundwater reserves through efficient distribution networks. Municipal leaders noted that the outcome in Delhi may inform the development of similar facilities in other densely populated urban areas.

In 2020, the Chandrawal project won the AEC Excellence Award for Best Infrastructure Project in the World within the small infrastructure category. This accolade highlightes its significance or scope, and also the progressive design approaches employed. “That recognition holds great value,” mentions Paniteja, “because it went beyond the plant’s capacity; it encompassed our design process, the integration of automation and BIM, and a leadership model that empowered both junior and senior engineers.”

Paniteja’s Origins

His own trajectory mirrored the plant’s evolution. Starting as a postgraduate Engineer trainee, Paniteja swiftly moved into roles that typically fall under senior management, overseeing vendor management, mentoring junior staff, and ensuring regulatory compliance with agencies. “I never set out to be a ‘disruptor,’” he admits with a modest laugh. “I simply saw areas where we were wasting time or prone to errors and asked, ‘Why not fix this?’ Over the life of a major project, those small fixes add up to a huge shift.”

A Model for Future Infrastructure Projects

Beyond its immediate role of delivering millions of gallons of potable water, Chandrawal has the potential to serve as a case study for how large-scale public works can excel when supported by careful planning and modern technology, once completed. For Paniteja, that story reflects his guiding philosophy: engineering isn’t just about crunching numbers or following rigid templates; it’s about seizing opportunities to innovate, even if that means reshaping entrenched processes.

“This project demonstrated what’s possible when engineering innovation meets careful planning,” he says. “That’s the real win here: giving people a glimpse of an infrastructure future that isn’t stuck in the past.”

The plant remains under construction, with operational robustness being a key focus. It is constantly monitored for efficiency gains, and future enhancements are being considered. Meanwhile, Paniteja’s journey continues, shaped by the lessons learned at Chandrawal. “Every challenge we faced felt monumental at the time,” he reflects. “But it also became a springboard for new solutions. That’s what engineering is about: turning constraints into catalysts for innovation.”

Final Thoughts

The Chandrawal 126 MGD Water Treatment Plant showcased India’s infrastructural capabilities by integrating latest automation into a historically manual sector and elevating a team-driven approach. Ultimately, it represents both a notable engineering achievement and proof of the value of challenging conventions—a project that points the way toward a more resilient future.

About Paniteja Madala

Paniteja Madala is a water infrastructure engineer and sustainability researcher known for introducing original, impactful innovations across water treatment, digital design, and environmental remediation. With a interdisciplinary approach, Paniteja has consistently challenged traditional paradigms by integrating technology, data, and nature-based solutions into infrastructure planning and operations.

One of his contributions is the use of Epipremnum aureum (Golden Pothos) for fluoride removal from water, published in Springer Nature. This was the first study to reveal the plant's potential in phytoremediation, offering a sustainable, low-cost alternative to conventional chemical treatments.

At L&T Construction, Paniteja modernized water infrastructure design by implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) and parametric modeling. His automation tools, including a custom Excel-based design generator and sludge sump modeling systems, significantly reduced design time and errors, becoming standard practice across 20+ projects.

He played a key role in the Chandrawal 105 MGD Water Treatment Plant, one of India's largest, ensuring accuracy through BIM-based clash detection and advanced design integration. The project won the AEC Excellence Award for Best Infrastructure Project globally.

As a voting member of AWWA and ASTM standards committees, Paniteja contributed to revising key water treatment standards by integrating AI, automation, and sustainability, bridging the gap between engineering practice and emerging technologies.

With a rare blend of technical depth and innovative thinking, Paniteja is contributing to the development of the next generation of water infrastructure—resilient, inclusive, and future-ready.