The news that yet another building had collapsed in the country
last week sounded like a sequel to a never-ending Hollywood movie.
Everything, apart from the number of casualties, time and place, could
have been predicted by anyone who has keenly studied Kenya’s badly
policed construction industry.
Soon
after news trickled in that four people had died and several others
injured after a five-storey building still under construction collapsed
at around 3am last Wednesday near Makongeni Police Station in Nairobi,
the government, as it always does, mobilised a team to the scene and
started talking tough.
Lands and
Housing Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu said her officers would launch a
crackdown on developers violating regulations and building codes. “The
government will not relent in its fight against malpractices in the
construction sector because clearly a violation of the standard
guidelines of construction is to blame for the frequent collapse of
buildings in Nairobi and other urban centres,” she told reporters.
CRIMINALLY RESPONSIBLE
“Kenya
has developed a robust policy and legal framework to govern the
construction sector and any investor who violates the law to develop
poorly designed structures will be prosecuted.”
Ngilu
also warned that any official who approves such buildings would be
fired and held criminally responsible, and that “architects and planners
who fail in their oversight duty will face the law, and risk having
their licences revoked”.
Nairobi
Governor Evans Kidero, responding to claims that the building was being
constructed on a wetland, on Monday said he had constituted a team to
probe the matter. The team is expected to, among others, “establish the
approval processes of the structure”, said Kidero.
“The
probe report will also make appropriate recommendations on the measures
to be taken, including criminal proceedings, on past and present
officers responsible for the collapsed structure.”
That,
however, is no consolation to the four families who, as the rest of the
country celebrates Christmas today, are preparing to bury their loved
ones.
And, even so, around the city,
and indeed other parts of the country, construction of evidently badly
designed buildings continues unabated, sometimes right under the nose of
authorities and other people mandated with the responsibility of
ensuring standards.
The consequences,
often, are quite fatal. The Makongeni tragedy was just one of several
other calamities that point to everything that is wrong with the
industry. Often, such pointers are in the form of buildings caving in
while under construction.
In February
2012, a two-storey building that was under construction collapsed in
the Mwiki area of Kasarani, Nairobi, injuring three people — including
its owner — as workers were laying the second floor slab. Eyewitnesses
told the Daily Nation at the time that the contractor seemed to be in a
hurry as it had taken less than three months to build two floors.
Four
months later, six people died and 10 escaped with injuries after a
partly occupied building that was still under construction collapsed in
Mlolongo. In June 2011, six workers lived to tell the tale after a
five-storey building collapsed in Nairobi’s Lang’ata estate. The
incident came barely a week after another building collapsed in
Embakasi, killing four people and injuring 14.
A
year before, on October 2010, 16 people who were working on a building
whose owner had been ordered to demolish it by a Kiambu court died after
the structure collapsed, entombing them.
FLOUTING RULES
The
tragedy occurred about 100 metres away from where another building,
also under construction, had collapsed, killing 17 people and injuring
several others at about a similar time the previous year.
And
in November 2006, another building under construction collapsed at
Nyamakima area in downtown Nairobi, killing 10 and injuring 70 people.
As
the government blames developers for flouting rules with promises to
carry crackdowns every time a building collapses, experts are now
accusing the state of failure to enforce existing regulations. That
failure, the critics say, is made worse by corruption and sheer laxity
in the corridors of power.
Francis
Gichuhi of A4 Architects has been documenting collapsed buildings in
Nairobi since 2011, and says the reasons have largely remained the same.
“The
problem lies with government enforcement at both national and local
levels of governance,” says the architect. “Developers are not forced to
use registered consultants, architects, engineers and contractors, so
anyone with a little knowledge in the industry can seek a contract and
get it.”
For the Makongeni tragedy,
Gichuhi says the most likely cause of the collapse was poor design. The
building stood on a strip-type foundation instead of a raft-type,
despite it being located in an area that was visibly soggy, he explains.
Gichuhi
also reckons that most investors, in an effort to cut down costs and
the time used in construction, use shortcuts that eventually turn their
developments into death traps.
“County
construction by-laws, for instance, require a developer to publicly
display the name of the architect, engineer, contractor and owner at the
site, but in almost all upcoming buildings this is not being done,” he
says.
“When this does not happen,
then most likely the developer did not use approved consultants at any
time for the project, or omitted some of them, because if anything
happens these are the people who should be held responsible.”
A
recent report on the safety of structures in Nairobi found that three
out of four buildings in the capital would be extensively damaged in the
event of an earthquake.
The report
by Questworks, a design and engineering firm that studied Nairobi
buildings for three years, faulted contractors for using
less-than-required cement and steel. Architects and engineers too were
faulted for failing to supervise and verify the quality of works.
“The
non-destructive test (NDT) results suggest that most concrete used in
Nairobi lacks required compressive strength,” says the study, which
tested 254 samples from 24 construction sites for office buildings,
churches and universities.
By cutting
down on steel, the study found that contractors were pocketing up to
Sh29,800 per 100 square metres of construction and Sh27,100 for cement
on a similar measure. Overall, this accounted for up to six per cent of
the overall project budget.
They seem
to have been vindicated by the Makongeni tragedy, where rescue and
recovery efforts were painfully slow as rescuers were forced to use hand
tools because heavy parts of the building disintegrated whenever
earthmovers attempted to lift them, exposing those trapped under the
rubble to the risk of more harm.
Construction experts at the scene said that was because of very poor cement-to-sand ratio.
ENSUING DESTRUCTION
The
study by Questworks also found that the construction industry in Kenya
lacks incentives for engineers and architects to make them properly
supervise construction, thus creating an environment that allows
contractors to use shortcuts.
“Design
work on average takes six months and accounts for 75 per cent of the
professional fees while supervision takes two years yet accounts for 25
per cent of the fee,” the researchers wrote.
“This
payment plan results in architects and engineers spending more time
looking for design work as opposed to supervising ongoing projects since
it pays more and takes less time.”
If
an earthquake struck Nairobi today, the economic cost of the ensuing
destruction is estimated at Sh316 billion. That would cause a 15-year
development setback, according to the study, which also found that close
to 100 per cent of buildings in low-income neighbourhoods of Nairobi
were put up using sub-standard materials.
The
findings go contrary to official reports from the Nairobi County
government that indicate that above 80 per cent of the buildings in the
capital have been constructed using concrete that exceeds the required
design strength.
As expected, county
officials were not happy with the study, with Governor Evans Kidero
claiming it was not based on correct information and the data presented
was “at best alarming”.
To solve this
standards problem, John Maritim, a construction consultant, says,
requires a joint effort between property developers and the government
agencies.
“It is common knowledge
that developers most of the time face frustration when seeking necessary
approvals from county governments, resulting in shortcuts,” he says.
“Developers
also get into a project with a fixed mind, especially on the amount of
money they want to spend on a project, causing them to totally disregard
the advice given to them by professionals.”
The
estimates of a construction project, he says, should be done by a
quantity surveyor after the building plans prepared by a licensed
architect and registered structural engineer have been approved by the
municipal council.
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