Professor Samson Duna, Acting Director General of Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute (NBRRI) is of the opinion that collapsed buildings are products of a bad job. He spoke with Viewpoint Housing News on the numerous building collapse incidents in the country saying some emergency actions need to be taken in order to arrest this ugly situation. He suggested that Integrity Test be conducted on buildings every five years to ascertain their safety. He said apportioning blames should not be the focus when it happens but proper designs, supervision and legislation should be used to tackle building collapse.
By Oby Echeburu & Mimidoo Patrick
Viewpoint: There have been cases of building collapse across Nigeria. In the recent past, a three-storey building went down in Jabi – Abuja; a seven-storey building in Port Harcourt and now the Lagos three-storey building that killed more than 10. How would you react to all this ugly?
Duna: It is very sympathetic. I will start by consoling the families that lost their loved ones. It is an unfortunate thing. Imagine, sending your kids to school just to hear that the dead body of your child is by the corner waiting for you. It is so painful and the most important thing is that this ugly situation is avoidable and can be eradicated completely.
Building collapse has become an issue. Authorities only come in to depict what we can call medicine after death. When something happens like this, you see people running up and down — but it is doing the right thing at the wrong time. What we should be concerned about is putting the right people to do the right job.
Building collapse is as a result of someone not doing his job correctly. Construction is a procedure and this process is manned by human beings and they are professionals. Construction has different stages. The first stage is the design. One needs to design a structure to know that it is safe enough to carry the load. The load can be a day load, a permanent load, human load, furniture load and all these imposed loads…before we can say the structure is safe to take them.
And when you design this structure, it shows if the structure is having a problem on the paper design. But if the design is okay, the next stage is to construct it. In the process of construction, you need to bring up quality materials that are up to standard, materials that can meet up the standard specifications, bring professionals that will go about doing the construction itself. If a professional is not technically sound in terms of the technical knowledge, obviously expect that all cannot be well with that construction.
You will also need a supervisory team that will always supervise the project. But before all this, you should know the condition of the soil, if it’s capable to withstand such heavy load or not.
So from my narration, you will know that it’s a process and each stage is under taken by professionals. Now let’s take an instance of the building that failed in Lagos. I have not been privileged to be there but our team of professionals are there to get samples to carry out a total investigation and at the end we are expecting them to come out with what caused the structure to fail and so on.
But basically, what we are made to understand is that the building had been there for over 40 years. That the structure was situated in a reclaimed swampy environment which was filled up with sand. Normally, it is expected that the load would be sinking in gradually depending on the stress on the building.
Unreliable source says that the structure was a three-storey building before a pent house was constructed on top adding more load to the building. Some structures collapse at the point of construction while some take longer time before they finally collapse.
Viewpoint: What would you say are responsible for such incidents in quick succession?
Duna: Every catastrophe has its own peculiar situation. Most times, a contract is owned by a client. If a client wants something cheaper, he tries to cut corners and goes for unprofessional and patronizes quacks. And when the quacks can’t deliver, who do you then blame? So failure in construction is not an issue of blame giving, it’s usually a team work but the idea is that if someone within the chain of construction fails to do his job well, it means that a problem will come up. Pointing fingers at who is at fault can only be done after carrying out a comprehensive investigations. Each failure has its own peculiarity. Causes of failure differ.
For instance, we are meant to understand that the Lagos building was marked for demolition and somehow the building wasn’t demolished. In this situation, who do we blame? Is it the government that had failed to demolish it or the person that constructed the building? So you can see, blame giving is not healthy in the construction industry. Rather, we emphasis that everybody should do the right thing at the right time, so blame given is based on the problem identified.
Viewpoint: What emergency action do you think should be taken to arrest this ugly situation?
Duna: As I said, it goes back to the approving body. When you are to design a building, there is a government approval body in control or a board where if you have an approved design you take it to. They look at it and if everything is okay they will give you approval.
So the approval gives you the go ahead to start the construction process. Along the line, an approval body will come to the site to be sure that you are doing what your design carries. If these checks are put in place, most building collapse wouldn’t happen.
The aspect I want to encourage is what we call Integrity Test of a structure. Construction is a process that does not erupt in a day. If we can look at the chain in construction of buildings…The first is to design a structure that is safe. When you have a structure that has been in existence for more than 10 years without maintenance, there is bound to be issues. Also, when a structure has been abandoned for a long time, for you to continue with the construction, you need to conduct an Integrity Test. Therefore, I will recommend that there should be a periodic integrity test conducted on buildings every five years to ascertain the safety of the buildings.
Viewpoint: Does the integrity test have to do with the plan by the government to subject all public buildings to five-year mandatory renovation?
Duna: Yes. I learnt that government is trying to come up with a five-year mandatory renovation plan but there is no law backing it so implementation will be difficult. Although it takes time to have a law in place and that is why whenever a building collapses, there are a lot of concerns from every quarters but when there are appropriate laws, the challenges would be reduced to the barest minimum. Therefore, I would suggest that there should be a law that would enforce the policy.
Viewpoint: What is your advice to the 9th Assembly in promulgating laws that would address the menace of buildings collapse in Nigeria?
Duna: I will encourage the National Assembly to come up with a law that will cover the use of materials and personnel in construction The law should also cover a periodic assessment of structures whether the building is standing or still under construction to avoid the increasing cases of building collapse in the country. That is to say, the law must ensure that only standard materials are used for buildings in Nigeria, and for one to be involved in construction, he or she must have obtained a prescribed certificate and also attended a training in a construction institution to gain both the theoretical and practical knowledge required before he or she can be considered a qualified builder.
So materials to be used for constructions must be subjected to lab tests to know the level of the steel depending on the diameters. So what we have observed is that Nigerians produce steel that is not up to the required diameters. For instance, the foreign steel might be written on paper as 350 and when you measure, it would be up to 340 while that of Nigeria would be quoted on paper as 350 but when you measure it, it would be about 250 or so. That is why people are more comfortable using the foreign steel.
Viewpoint: What is your advice to the government on the implementation of local content?
Duna: I think the government is already working on implementing the Presidential Order 5 on local content which is a welcome development. All we need to do is to put in measures that will ensure its enforcement by ensuring the 9th Assembly comes up with laws that will ensure that a contract of a certain amount of money is handled by Nigerian engineers. It will go a long way in improving skills and building confidence among Nigerians to patronize local engineers. The law must encourage the use of local content and engineers because…
Viewpoint: What is your take on insurance cover for buildings?
Duna: My advice is that insurance companies need to do more in terms of creating awareness on the importance of insuring properties because at present not much has been done.
