VILLARAJ
A PRIVATE NEOCLASSICAL RESIDENCE · AHMEDABAD
POSITION: RESIDENT SITE ENGINEER
The Project
Most buildings are built for a generation. A few are built to outlast the people who made them. VillaRaj belongs to the second kind.
VillaRaj is a private family residence conceived in the classical tradition — a tradition of proportion, order, and permanence that runs from the Greeks through Palladio to the great country houses of England and the finest civic architecture of India. It is being designed not as a house of fashion but as a monument: a building whose columns, cornices, and mouldings are drawn with the same discipline practised for two and a half thousand years, and executed in materials chosen to age rather than to date.
Neoclassicism is not decoration. It is a philosophy of building — that beauty arises from proportion rather than ornament, that every moulding has a grammatical role, and that craftsmanship is the difference between a drawing and a legacy. Very few buildings of this ambition are attempted in India in any decade. This is one of them.
The Design Team
The consultant team assembled for VillaRaj is, without exaggeration, of a calibre rarely brought together for a single private residence in this country:
- Principal Architect — Professor Robert Adam (United Kingdom). One of the world’s foremost living classical architects, whose practice has shaped the contemporary revival of traditional architecture in Britain and internationally.
- Executive Architect — KGA. Responsible for translating the classical design intent into Indian execution — working drawings, coordination, and statutory delivery.
- Lighting Designer — Richard Aldridge (United Kingdom). An internationally practised lighting designer, crafting the schemes that will reveal the architecture by night as the sun does by day.
Alongside them: structural, MEP, landscape, and interior consultants of matching standard, Indian and international, coordinated under the owner’s direct stewardship.
Why This Role Is Different
Let us be candid. Most site engineering work in this city is repetition — the same slab, the same plaster, the same RCC frame, project after project. Competent work, but interchangeable. Cut, copy, paste.
VillaRaj is the opposite. Here the drawings arrive from one of the finest classical practices in the world, and the question every single day is whether the work on the ground can rise to meet them. Entasis on a column. The shadow line of a cornice. The junction of stone and render at a pediment. These details cannot be supervised from memory or habit — they demand an engineer who reads drawings closely, asks questions early, and takes personal pride in millimetres.
For the right person this is a once-in-a-career apprenticeship in how buildings of permanence are made — working from the documents of a world-class design team, on a project that will stand and be photographed and studied long after every ordinary building of its year is forgotten. The engineer who delivers VillaRaj will carry that name on their record for the rest of their professional life.
The Role
The Resident Site Engineer is the owner’s eyes on site, full-time, reporting directly to the owner. Responsibilities include:
- Daily supervision of all civil and finishing works against the architects’ drawings and specifications, with zero tolerance for deviation in classical detail.
- Study and mastery of the working drawings — raising queries with the executive architect before work proceeds, never after.
- Quality control of materials at the gate: stone, lime, render, joinery, hardware — verification against approved samples.
- Coordination of contractors and specialist craftsmen on site; sequencing of trades; maintenance of the site programme.
- Daily site records, photographic documentation, measurement verification, and checking of contractor bills.
- Hosting and preparing for consultant visits, including those of the international design team.
The Person We Seek
- Civil engineering qualification (Degree or Diploma) with 5–12 years on site, of which meaningful time on premium residential, heritage, restoration, or institutional work of high finish.
- Genuine drawing literacy — candidates will be asked to read and discuss a classical detail drawing at interview.
- Exposure to stonework, lime renders, fine joinery, or conservation practice is a strong advantage; so is plain evidence of work you are proud of.
- Temperament: patient, exacting, honest in reporting, and steady — this is a 36-month commitment, and the role rewards the marathon runner, not the sprinter.
- Gujarati and Hindi fluency for site coordination; working English for consultant correspondence.
Terms
- Location: Ahmedabad, full-time at site.
- Duration: approximately 36 months, through to completion and handover.
- Reporting: directly to the owner — no intermediate management layer.
- Remuneration: competitive with the best in the city, commensurate with ability; reviewed annually. The right candidate will not be lost over salary.
If you have spent your career wishing the drawings were worth your best work — they have arrived. Apply with your CV and, in place of a cover letter, a short note on the single piece of built work you are proudest of and why.
VILLARAJ · AHMEDABAD · MMXXVI
Pay: Up to ₹100,000.00 per month
Work Location: In person
