began on 7 June 2013, with the piling works for the viaducts near Changampuzha Park, after an official launch ceremony held at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at 10:30 am on the same day. At the inauguration ceremony, the State Government announced that the metro would be extended a kilometre-and-a-half from Pettah to Tripunithura, Construction work on Metro' first station, at Kaloor, began at 10:30 am IST on 30 September 2013, when Soma Constructions began piling. The next station where piling work was carried out was Aluva. Several companies (Era Infra Engineering, Larsen & Toubro, Cherian Varkey Construction Company-RDS, SP Singla Constructions and Soma Constructions) were contracted to build viaducts and stations. Larsen and Toubro (L&T) was awarded the contract to construct the viaduct and 6 stations on the Kalamassery-Stadium stretch in April 2013 at an estimated cost of . Cherian Varkey Constructions-RDS(CVCC-RDS JV) were awarded the work for the demolition of the existing ROB and rebuilding of the north over bridge into a 4 lane road with metro viaducts. About 4.5 to 500,000 cubic meters of sand was required for construction of the metro. KMRL has set up a vertical garden on every sixth pillar along the metro rail system. The first 'U' shaped concrete girder of the Kochi Metro Rail was successfully installed on Saturday, 12 July 2014 early morning. The girder was installed at Pulinchode near Aluva. The ‘U- shaped’ girder was cast at the Metro Casting Yard at Kalamassery. It was transported from the yard around 7 pm on Friday with the help of two huge cranes and special trailers brought from Mumbai. The girder reached the site at midnight and was installed with the help of cranes having capacities of 350 tonnes and 400 tonnes. The first trial run was flagged off by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, on 23 January 2016. The three-car train set successfully completed the trial run. The first test run of the Kochi metro was conducted on 27 February 2016 on a section between Muttom Yard depot and Kalamassery at speeds of up to . The Research Designs and Standards Organization (RDSO) cleared the metro to operate at a maximum speed of on 8 December 2016. On 8 May 2017, Kochi Metro was given the final approval to start service. In July 2017, a consortium of Cherian Varkey Construction Company (CVCC) and Vijay Nirman Constructions (VNC) has been awarded the contract to