Ranchi, March 4: Several companies of Calcutta that have signed MoUs with the Jharkhand government are expected to start laying the ground work for their projects within a month or so, mines, geology and IT secretary Sunil Kumar Barnwal has said. Barnwal, who was in Calcutta yesterday, along with chief secretary Rajbala Verma, held a series of meetings with prospective investors as a follow-up to the February 16-17 Global Investors’ Summit in Ranchi where MoUs pledging investments to the tune of Rs 311,000 crore were signed.