Group Partners Developers on Safe Construction Methods

In line with its mission to stamp out structural failures in Lagos State in particular and Nigeria in general, a professional group, the Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG), has jump started a partnership deal with the developers.

The pact, would lead to the groups working together with a view to ensuring that the country’s construction industry was safe.

Cases of collapse buildings have reached a worrisome dimension in Lagos in recent times.

And to contribute its quota BCPG gathered the professionals, government officials and developers at its seminar held at the Centre for Management and Development, CMD Road, Shangisha, Lagos.



The event that had as its title: “The Roles of Developers in the Prevention of Building Collapse”, had as Resource persons, Professor Musbau Salau, of the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Lagos and Vice Chairman, Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria (REDAN), South West, Mr. Taiwo Ogunbodede, a legal practitioner, who spoke extensively on the subject matter.

In his Lecture, Prof Salau, after going through the history of building collapse in Lagos, traced the incident to what he described as “bastardisation of construction industry as all comers affair”.

According to him, traders, lawyers, surveyors, town planners, medical doctors, contractors, businessmen and women and all manner of people have become developers, without adherence to building ethics and codes.

The Professor listed three stages that are of paramount importance to sustainable project delivery, namely: pre-design conceptual stage, analysis and design and construction stage.

He was of the opinion that the design must be able to identify the necessary technical imperatives that would make the building pass the integrity test, especially, the nature of the terrain.

In his lecture, Mr. Taiwo Ogunbodede, while lamenting the rates at which buildings collapsed now, seemed to be less impressed by the number of housing units being developed annually in Nigeria.

According to him, it’s of great paradox that when there is lamentation over housing shortage, “we are still witnessing reduction of the commodity as a result of avoidable collapse”.

He stated that out of the 18 million housing shortage in Nigeria, total number of housing delivery annually by both the private developers and governments at all levels are not more than 300,000 units in the last three and half years.

Earlier in his address, President, BCGP, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, while emphasizing the importance of the activities by the 57 cells of the group, said it’s through the grass root that the campaign against collapse building could be effective.

In his welcome address, the BCPG Coordinator of the cell, Mr. Solomon Ogunseye, an architect, who is a retired Civil Servant, said the frequency at which buildings are collapsing in Nigeria, especially, Lagos State and its attendant loss of lives and properties made it imperative for the professionals to come together and chart a way forward.

Sourced- TheGuardian