Structural engineers give recipe to stem collapse of buildings

By Kingsley Adegboye

Deeply worried by incidents of collapse of buildings across the country the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers, a division if the Nigerian Society of Engineers NSE, has called on the three tiers of governments to engage the services of the qualified structural engineers in all their construction projects.

The call is coming against the backdrop of the worsening occurrence of building collapse, the most recent being the six-storey building that caved in and killed over 115 persons at the Synagogue Church of All Nations SCOAN, in Lagos.
President of the Institution, Samuel Ilugbekhai, an engineer, who made the call at a media briefing, sued for more attention to to be paid to concrete structures in our built environment with a view to ensuring safety of lives and property. Ilugbekhai noted that within the low and medium rise zone of the built environment in Nigeria where the incidents of building collapse are most prevalent, concrete structures, by far, outweigh other structural types in numbers, shape, size and application, in terms of use.

According to him, “for structural concrete to deliver effectively on its integrity and efficiency, all its various components must be combined in the right proportion, the right atmosphere, the right circumstances and by the right personnel. And cement being the binding agent in concrete, it is therefore a good starting point in what promises to be a continuous series on the safety of structures in Nigeria in the advocacy agenda of the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers”. To this end, he said, the Institution will hold an awareness workshop that would center on the use of cement between on October 23-24.

“I have no doubt in my mind that the body of experts we shall be having at our Cement Conference will give vital information on cement which will not only be useful for the development of Nigeria but also help to save lives that would have been lost to building collapses due to improper application of cement”, he stated. Akinlusi who called the the Federal government to back the practice of structural engineering in Nigeria by legislation, pointed out that government should appreciate the professional competencies of the Nigerian engineers in general and the structural engineers in particular, and engage them meaningfully for positive growth and development of Nigeria.

According to him, a nation that berates her professionals only bolsters in the euphoria of peripheral development that is not deep rooted and not sustainable on the long run.

He said engineers in general and structural engineers in particular, should request for a revisit of the engineering policy of Nigeria and restructure it for the accelerated development of Nigeria, maintaining that structural engineers should be involved in the formulation of a Structural Engineering Policy for Nigeria.
 

-Culled from://www.vanguardngr.com