Race Against the Calendar
18 Days.
Two courts. One L-shaped plot. July reopening. No extensions.
The school calendar was not moving. Everything else had to.
The PE teacher had one requirement, stated clearly at the first meeting: the courts must be ready before the school reopens in July. Not substantially complete. Not "just the markings are left." Fully playable. The PE timetable had to be set before the first class of the new academic year, and the timetable needed a working surface.
The school wanted one volleyball court and one badminton court in the open space at the rear of the campus. The available plot was an L-shape — the result of buildings being added over the years without any master plan. The longer arm ran 68 feet by 55 feet. The shorter arm was 40 feet by 30 feet. Standard court templates do not drop cleanly into an L-shaped space. Every dimension had to be fitted to what was actually there.
Drainage was the second issue. The longer arm of the L sat at a slightly lower elevation than the surrounding courtyard — a 2.8 cm depression across 60 feet. Dharashiv district gets significant pre-monsoon rain in June. A low-lying surface without a proper drainage solution becomes a hazard after even one heavy shower. A court that pools water is not a court — it is a liability.
Material sequencing added a third constraint. Red PP tiles for the volleyball court were in warehouse stock and could ship within 48 hours. Green tiles for the badminton court were also in stock. But the project needed both courts going up simultaneously to meet the 18-day deadline. That meant two installation crews working side by side, both fully supplied, from Day 1. A single-consignment approach would not work. Two trucks, coordinated to arrive within the same 48-hour window, was the only plan that kept the schedule intact.
"I had already promised the students there would be courts when they came back. Going back on that was not an option for me."
Physical Education Teacher, A Senior Secondary School, DharashivPP interlocking tiles were specified for both courts for three reasons that applied specifically to this site. First, different tile colours can be installed in adjacent zones using the same snap-fit system with no special transition hardware — Red for the volleyball court, Green for the badminton court, the boundary between them clearly marked by contrasting perimeter kerbs. Second, the interlocking grid provides natural drainage — water passes through the tile gaps rather than pooling on the surface. For the low-lying arm of the L, this eliminated the drainage problem without any additional civil works. Third, installation can run across two zones simultaneously with two independent crews, each working from their own reference line without getting in each other's way.
The layout placed the volleyball court (FIVB-standard, 3,800 sqft) in the longer arm, using the full 68-foot length. The badminton court (BWF standard, 1,300 sqft) occupied the shorter arm. The transition zone between the two wings was tiled in neutral Grey to serve as a waiting and access area. This zone also absorbed the geometric awkwardness of the L-join without needing any cut tiles or non-standard kerbing.
One perforated PVC drain channel was installed along the lowest edge of the volleyball arm, connected to an existing campus drain — the one drainage infrastructure upgrade the PP tile system could not handle on its own.
Two installation crews arrived on Day 1, each assigned to their own court with separate tools and no shared sequencing. Any dependency between the two teams was a schedule risk — so we eliminated every dependency during planning. They worked like two independent projects that happened to share a site boundary.
All images are illustrative placeholders. Final installation photographs will be updated upon client approval.
The courts were handed over on Day 18. School reopened two days later. The PE timetable had been drafted with both courts already factored in — the PE teacher had started planning sessions before the last kerb piece was even fitted. On the first day of term, both courts were in use by 8:30 AM. The sports bulletin board, which had had nothing worth posting in years, was covered in schedule sheets by the end of week one.
The PE curriculum was restructured around the new courts. Volleyball, which had previously been a theory-only unit taught from diagrams, became a practical subject. Badminton singles and doubles both moved outdoors for the first time. The PE teacher could now run simultaneous classes on both courts — something that had previously required booking external ground time.
By the second month of term, the school had begun planning its first on-campus sports day — an event that had always been held at a rented municipal facility because the campus had no suitable surface. Four neighbouring schools were invited. The courts handled back-to-back competition on both surfaces for a full day without a single tile shifting or a marking fading.
"I had already promised the students. Seeing them play here on the very first day of term — that was what those eighteen days were for."
Physical Education Teacher, A Senior Secondary School, Dharashiv