By Okey Maduforo Awka
The Nigerian Institute of Building NIOB and the Council Of Registered Buildings Of Nigeria CORBON have called for the strict compliance to the National Building Code that was enacted by the Federal government.
Similarly the two bodies have insisted in the domestication of the Code adding that a contractor or developer should sign an undertaking to have a Resident Builder at the site in order to ensure that the essential perspectives of the building ~project~ production technology and management processes are rightly upheld and applied for properly *professional executed.~ *execution and successful delivery*
This is following the incident of building collapse at Umuenem village in Otolo Nnewi where the contractor and his two sons died inside the building under construction.
According to the immediate past National President of the Nigerian Institute of Builders NIOB Bldr Kenneth Nnabuife Nduka who was at the site of the collapsed building with his members ;
“It is sad that lives were lost and it is also sad that the owner of the building has lost a lot of money going by what we are seeing here ”
“The problem is that we have the National Building Code which needs to be complied with and it is not being obeyed or followed to the letter.”
He emphasized that all building designs or drawings remain pieces of papers until they physically translated on site into three dimensional realities through the professional application of adequate and project specific building production technology management processes and procedures.
He further cautioned against the wrong assumption and misleading assertion that all contractors are builders, stating that any entrepreneur could choose to be a contractor, but that builders are specifically trained in all ramifications to professionally manage all the site management and implementation processes for the safe and successful delivery of good quality buildings for the occupational use of the environment,
Citing the provisions of the National building Code, in Section 13 Sub section 12 : 4 of the Code, he advised that that team work and mutual respect amongst all the project stake holders are all that is required to meet the demands for good quality and collapse-free building project deliveries is for professionals any building construction to combine due synergy, in accordance with their inputs to meet with the demands for the delivery of good quality and collapse-free building projects” he said.
Also speaking the Chairman Builders in Private sector Bldr. Chijioke Okeke highlighted that
“There is urgent need for the Code to be domesticated in all the states of the federation and that contractor or developer handling building projects must commit to all project stakeholders for delivering good quality product, and and undertake to indemnify all the project stakeholders including the project host environment of all health and safety challenges that would how so ever associated with the execution of the project.”he said.
The Chairman, Anambra State Chapter of the Institute, Bldr Kingsley Nweke lamented that most Professionals delve into the roles of other Professionals hence compromising the standard and quality of the job .
“People assume the roles of other Professionals and that is very unfortunate and highly unprofessional because at the end the standard would have been compromised”
“We urge the Anambra state government should put in place stringent measures to enforce strict adherence to professional best practices at all times so that building industry professionals should be relevantly given elbow spaces to perform according to the specific roles assigned them by the National Building Code so that typical calamities caused by the activities of quacks could be avoided moving forward.”
Secretary of Nnewi North local government area Mr Emeka Okafor expressed happiness with the prompt response of the professional body(NIOB) to the collapse manifestation promising that the Local Government Council would create a synergy with the NIOB in order to work out due ideals and strategies for averting future sad occurrences.
