By Yinka Kolawole

Professional bodies in the built environment comprising of surveyors, town planners, estate surveyors and valuers, architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and builders have agreed to come together under the auspices of Building Collapse Prevention Guild (BCPG) to tackle the recurring incidence of building collapse across the country.

Chairman of the Guild, Mr. Kunle Awobodu, said the group has concluded arrangements to set up monitoring teams in Lagos to ensure that minimum prescribed standards in constructions are met to test-run the scheme.

“Built environment professionals chose to embark on a voluntary, humanitarian and free service under the umbrella of Building Collapse Prevention Guild to lay emphasis on mitigation of losses, and promotion of preemptive measures that will avert collapse of buildings,” he said.

According to him, Lagos was selected as the commencement point for the initiative because it has been identified as the bastion of construction activities in the country as well as the state with highest incidents of building collapse in Nigeria.

Awobodu stated: “Over 90 per cent of buildings constructed in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State were products of these concrete casting gangs. Names and addresses of interested professionals from all the seven professional bodies have been collated.

“To discourage professional segregation and promote unison for better results, the various professionals from the built environment professional bodies must constitute a cell team. In this structure, we have zonal coordinators and team leaders. A member’s residence or place of work determines the cell or locality he or she belongs.

“Our monitoring activities would adopt persuasive and non-confrontational approach. We are more or less observers that should show interest in the construction activities in our localities. We shall endeavour to know the construction professionals handling sites in our localities. Number of sites in each cell, type of building foundation related to soil test report and other factors would be determined and reported.”