LCC Projects Adds a 10-Year O&M Tail in Gujarat

Twenty-four months to build. One hundred and twenty months to answer for it.

LCC Projects has won a Rs 1.52 bn water transmission order from the Gujarat government, and the operating tail runs five times longer than the construction phase.

Gujarat Water Transmission Award

The award arrived as an Acceptance of Tender from the Office of the Executive Engineer, Sauni Yojana Division, Rajkot — the delivery arm of Gujarat's Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation programme.

The scope covers:

- Water transmission from Machhu-I Dam to Triveni Thanga Reservoir
- Linkages to surrounding villages across Wankaner and Chotila talukas
- A ten-year operations and maintenance run after commissioning

The value excludes GST.

The O&M Margin

The construction fee gets reported. The O&M line decides the margin.

That component has been priced at 2026 costs against a horizon that will absorb pumping energy tariffs and pipeline rehabilitation, with no certainty of indexation.

Civil contractors typically bid this as a percentage of capex and then learn that water transmission O&M is an energy business wearing a pipeline.

Execution and Balance-Sheet Risk

Sauni Yojana's heavy carrier phase is behind it.

What is left is terminal linkage: modest packages on revenue land, village-level offtake, right-of-use dependencies.

Handover discipline decides whether LCC's 24-month clock is real or aspirational.

Unless right-of-use is drafted as a condition precedent, the contractor eats the delay.

LCC Projects is separately L1 on a Rs 6.53 bn Rajasthan package.

Two state water awards inside a month means mobilisation peaks colliding in 2027 and working capital trapped in retention against two irrigation departments that pay at their own pace.

Shares closed at Rs 136.15 on the NSE, up 1.68 per cent. The market read order inflow. It should have read the balance sheet.

The Deciding Clauses

Two clauses will decide this contract: an energy escalation formula indexed to Gujarat's industrial tariff, and a payment security mechanism that survives all ten O&M years.

Without both, Rs 152 crore of construction revenue is underwriting a decade of unpriced operating exposure.