PROPERTY TRANSACTION GUIDE

Builders seek higher standards for building materials, construction
By Tunde Alao

Guardian, Monday, 16th November 2009

BUILDERS rose up last week after their yearly general meeting (AGM) resolving to ensure total compliance to standards in the delivery of service to their clients.

The event, which had as its theme: 'Keeping Standards in Construction Projects: Inputs and Outputs,' was attended by speakers drawn from the academic community, professional bodies and other stakeholders in the building and environment sectors.

The guest lecturer, Mr. Martin Dada, a lecturer in the Department of Building, University of Lagos, (UNILAG), speaking on the subject, "From Project Commissioning to Decommissioning: A Team Approach To Quality Management," first asked whether it was possible for good materials or inputs to be managed by an untrained and incompetent hand to produce a good building.

According to Dada, quality remains a desire of every participant in the construction project, and as such, good inputs must be managed by or incorporated by competent men to produce good structures.

While condemning the proliferation of substandard building materials and incompetent personnel within the building industry, Dada urged professional builders to get all things right from the input stage and adopt the total quality concept.

According to him, "It is time the stakeholders improved the capacities of all agencies responsible for providing or maintaining standards in inputs, while there should be inter agency collaboration among the agencies and stakeholders". He also suggested the adoption of continuing education among stakeholders to achieve the quality expected from them.

The lecturer noted that professionals in the built environment sector should collaborate and work on initiatives to understand themselves. "We should have a co-ordinated approach to the use of the inputs in construction activities by which the inputs by different professionals would achieve the desired objectives."

Dada said the processes of project development, enumerated by the National Building Code involved pre-construction, design, construction and post-construction. These processes, he explained, "could go through several stages incorporating different stakeholders both within and outside the project."

Such stakeholders, he said, included the client or promoter of the project; the design and the construction team; the construction materials and equipment manufacturers; the regulatory agencies such as the government ministries, Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), material testing laboratories and development control agencies, and the final users.

Chairman of the NIOB, Lagos Chapter, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, emphasised the importance of adherence to standards in the use of building materials during construction.

For too long, the NIOB chief said, building standards had been ignored in major cities, especially Lagos, which necessitated the establishment of the Lagos State Materials Testing Laboratory. But he raised posers as to whether its existence had really been able to ameliorate what he described as "portentous standard crisis."

The standards crisis in Nigeria, he stated, was an evidence of a national dichotomy between policy formulation and implementation. As a result, he pointed out that design standards, standards in building materials and workmanship were readily manipulated.

He noted that professional builders required courage to surmount the challenges. SON, he said, remained the custodian of construction standards and as a result, has to contest with profiteering building materials' manufacturers, while builders were left to bear the brunt of this misdeed.

According to Awobodu, "Cement is a major input in construction. As the binding agent, any deviation from the required standard could create a debilitating crisis in a structure. To ensure its standard compliance, cement must be subjected to tests that will determine its carbon dioxide, alkaline and chloride content."

He wondered whether the various brands of cement in the market, especially the imported brands, regularly undergo standard tests and stressed the need to allow steel and iron bars for reinforcement in construction works to undergo tensile test to ascertain their compliance and set standards to prevent structural failure.