AWKA. – Chief Kene Nzekwe, the President of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors has identified lack of proper due diligence by building professionals on the people they engage in building construction as one major cause of building collapse in the country.
He spoke to Daily Independent in Awka, the Anambra State capital on Thursday.

According to Nzekwe, due diligence will entail that that the professional who engages construction workers should ensure they plan appropriately,have knowledge of the capacity of the people they involve to participate in the project execution, and perhaps do an analysis of the soil on which the building is to be erected.

“A lot of professionals fail to plan and that is the first error”,he said.

Many a time,he said that it is discovered in most cases of collapsed building that while soil analysis was not carried out, the nature of the design is called to question and the right quantity of materials may not have been used along side the right supervision of the construction work itself.

He also pointed out that the use of quacks especially in his native Anambra has become common place where all sorts of people claim to be trained construction engineers,Architects, Quantity Surveyors and all that just because they were engaged in building houses in the past as artisans whereas they lacked the required knowledge and capacity such that when they are given the construction of buildings beyond their capacity they buckle and the building collapses midway or even after construction.

“It is a huge embarrassment”,he said.

He however said the professional may at times be handicapped given that a structural engineer may design a structure the way it ought to be but the owner may say otherwise,stop or alter the process to cut cost and in that case nothing is wrong with the design but the execution.

Speaking specifically on the five story Dennis Memorial Grammar School (DMGS) centenary building that collapsed recently midway into construction in Onitsha, Nzekwe said it is heartwarming that the state governor Prof, Chukwuma Soludo had set up a committee to investigate the remote and immediate causes of the mishap.
He said that by including professionals in the field of building construction in the committee, the Governor has shown that he reposed confidence in professionals, adding that since the committee’s work is already cut out, there is this confidence that they know what to do given their terms of reference.

He expressed the hope that the governor shall exercise the political will to go all out and ensure that the original report of the committee is implemented to the letter.
On project financing in Anambra State, Nzekwe said that there is a World Bank report of infrastructure gap in Nigeria to the tune of $2.3 trillion to $3trillion and to bridge this gap requires the country investing about$150Billion anually for the next 10 years.

The state government he said can tap into this fund to be able to bridge it’s infrastructure gap while also looking elsewhere through private/public partnership for private finance initiative.
He said that the structure of banks in the country is not encouraging developers and government’s to borrow because of their high interest rates which stand at over two digits.
“For this reason, people are simply skeptical to borrow”,he said.