Former commissioner for works in Ondo state, Engr. Gboye Adegbenro has charged regulatory bodies responsible for monitoring and supervising building constructions in Nigeria to be proactive towards preventing recurrence of building collapse and colossal loss of lives.
Adegbenro(FNSE), a structural engineer, while speaking on the recent collapse of buildings in Jos and Oshogbo on Crest FM, Akure, Ondo State capital.
The CEO of AGE Infrastructures Ltd, during the interview monitored by Roving Reporters in Akure, condemned the lackadaisical attitude of officials from regulatory and professional bodies responsible for monitoring and supervising construction projects in the federation.
He disclosed that most officials of the agencies and professional bodies are mostly after what they could collect as graft from owners and engineers at construction sites, but pay little attention to details of the structural drawings and what is being constructed at the sites.
Adegbenro expressed optimism that the issue of building collapse could be tackled if senior and well experienced officials of regulatory and professional bodies could begin to go to sites with the younger ones for monitoring and supervising of projects.
He suggested that regulatory and professional bodies should insist on quality test of all castings, beams, columns among others irrespective of the earlier tests personally done by the construction companies to authenticate the quality.
The structural engineer, besides quacks, blamed some civil engineers, whose area of specialization is not Structural Engineering, for cutting corners and ignoring original structural drawings for the sake of making money.
Adegbenro, however, charged all professionals involved in construction to be firm while taking contract from their clients.
He declared that engineers should be bold enough to tell their clients, who want alterations in structures that are already under construction, that it’s practically impossible to avoid collapse.
He said: “If 107 piles are going to carry that structure, but in some situations, some professionals would just go into the records and say that with all the conditions, what we can do is just to reduce the beam sizes, column sizes and so on and so forth. This is where those who don’t care, the quacks who just want to make money come in. Some of us who read Civil Engineering but are not specialized in Structural Engineering.
“That’s what led to the collapse of tower in Ikoyi about 2 or 3 years ago in Lagos. They changed it from 17th floor to 25th floor without considering the structural design put in place because the one would not commence the construction. I think from that point in time, they changed everything.
“From the client’s angle, the first is to take the brief from the client, and once it is taken and the design is drawn, they should agree on everything. Once this is done, there should not be any change like let’s change the beams, the columns not anymore.
“In the case of the project I am currently handling, it is easy for me to go back to the drawings because I had not commenced construction. If had commenced construction before the client came to ask for a change in the drawings, I couldn’t have been able to do anything about it. This is because there isn’t anything I could have been able to do structurally.
“Whether it is government or individuals, they should seek the advice of professionals and agree on the structure because this is where the costing will come in. Let him know the amount of money it’s going to cost him from the inception.
“There’s a project in Lekki and the body came to visit and I just sat down and was watching what was going on.
“They walked up to one of my engineers and said your oga(boss) should just give us something. They just looked at the drawings and didn’t check it.
“They didn’t know I was the one in charge of the project. While he was about to leave, I called him and said young man, you are here to check this structure.
“Those who are in charge, all the professional bodies, especially regulatory bodies, they should withdraw them from the circle. Not all of them are bad, but we have bad eggs among them.
“We need to look critically into that. They will just come to your site and all they ask for is money, money, money and nothing more. You give them envelope and they won’t care.
This gives quacks the opportunity to cut corners. They will just design two or three floors and present it to them in the office and they will come to the site and build something else.
“If these government agencies are going out, monitoring and supervising very well by themselves, those who are well experienced, those who have their names at stake are going out to monitor and supervise these structures, we will be able to curtail all these things, but they will be sending their subordinates.
“Like the guy who came to check my site, I asked him his years of experience, he said five years. And had come to check structural analysis, he doesn’t know anything about it.
“So, the issue of corruption is contributing to these problems. You just give money and so you can make adjustments in the structure without any monitoring.
“For example, the Ministry of Works is doing a lot now ordering all checks to be carried out on all concretes.
“The quality of the coach you are casting because that is the law.
We moved to University of Lagos to be checking the qualities of the coaches we are casting because we have to move them to the laboratory to be sure of the qualities because that is the law.
“But the officials don’t check, they are not ready to work. They are in a hurry because they want to go to another site.”
Commenting on the contribution of building materials to building collapse, Adegbenro said: “Most of the materials meant to be used have to go through checks. Take them to the laboratory to check whether they pass or not.
“For instance, I won’t mention names now. Some of the reinforcements being used sometimes last year, when we took them for test now, it failed. We had to tell the client that the 5-storey building can’t continue because we have our name to protect.
“But some developers would have continued because they only care to sell their buildings. That’s the reason the regulatory bodies should not leave all these things to the engineers on the site alone. They should do proper monitoring and supervising.”
