Audit all buildings

By Simon J. Mone

When city law enforcers demolish buildings, it always triggers public sorry feeling for affected owners. People feel unhappy with demolitions that leave occupants stranded.

And with no hope for immediate alternative housing or business place. Alternatives are expensive and not viable for business. But demolitions say a lot about the state of our buildings.

Why? Because often times, it takes just a 50 Newton knock to bring down big portions of walls. It means a lot of structures will give way soon. So not only were some structures built inappropriately, they are well beyond their useful lives.

Thus, it is important that municipal and town authorities continuously explain to building and home owners and seek their cooperation in ensuring safety. A well planned city is good for several reasons. Let me cite two.

One, it is organised. Two, planned buildings are safe from random collapse. Buildings collapse when they cannot hold loads placed on them. I recently met a guy who put this question to me, “why is the quality of construction poorer in the recent past (2000s) than in bygone days (1970s)”? He continued and mentioned the old faculty of technology building at Makerere University. And said it is stronger than any modern day building in Kampala.

I said to him, difficult question requiring multiple answers but let me attempt. A lot has changed. In the 1970s for instance, population pressure on resources and services was less than today.

And scarcity was less. Builders had abundant materials and cheaply. They could afford more materials than was adequate (“conservative buildings”), without feeling the cost pinch. Not anymore. Now-a-days, scarcity will not allow. Unlike the olden days, today, “conservative buildings” are far too expensive.

So builders now want to make-do with what is adequate. In the process, some people unfortunately substitute poor quality (eg. “murram”) for specified quality (eg. concrete on floor).

And building owners are tight with money. They change their minds any moment for less quality. Add the fact that supervision of construction is not proper.

Everybody has taken to bad manners. They are corrupt. Construction workers are exploited, forcing them to steal materials (cement, timber, etc.) from site. Workers do not concentrate on doing a proper job.

The result is seen in inadequate quality of buildings. So when Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta orders for an audit of all buildings in Kenya following a high-rise building that collapsed and killed occupants, he feels that something is wrong with the current building lot in Kenya. Audits are good.

We do not have to wait for His Excellency to speak before we act. We need to inspect all buildings to ascertain their quality and fitness for occupancy.

Ageing buildings show structural and functional failures. A good number of Uganda’s buildings such as “Ayot & Sons family building, 1926” are 50 years old or over. They require redoing.

If you people show maintenance regimes of our buildings, many will begin to cry. They do not have and so buildings are weakening fast.

Properly maintained buildings can serve for longer. That means poorly constructed buildings are many times endangering occupants’ lives. More so, we do keep inventories of poor quality buildings.

Authorities ought to provide guidelines to developers. Inspect all buildings under construction. Even completed ones and aim at ensuring that all buildings are properly engineered.

It is the only way of assuring our confidence of safe occupancy of buildings. Let building owners be convinced that authorities are helping them to maintain safety and not punishing them.

Simon J. Mone is a Civil Engineer, E-mail: smone@mail.com