A building engineer and Chief Operating Officer, Skyleen Nigeria Limited, a company with expertise in excavation and road construction, Keji Ademnwagun , said at the centre of the problem of building collapse is the issue of poor planning and unethical practices on the part of building professionals.
Specifically, he said, deterioration can result due to different reasons including substandard materials used: As building components fail, they can directly impact on the exterior walls. The collapse of interior floors can push against masonry exterior walls and this eventually paves the way for the collapse of buildings.
Ademuwagun a computer science graduate from the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, has expressed worry the spate of building collapse can be reduced to the barest minimum if prospective builders due the necessary environment impact assessment ahead of carrying out any construction, especially in swampy or low-level land.
Such precautions, he stressed, is necessary to avoid disasters in the future, in terms of cost and humanitarian crises.
Giving an overview of the modus operandi required before turnkey projects like road construction can be done, the Ondo-state born builder said, “There are some cases where before we do it in the ground, there is what we call soil testing. It’s done on swampy area or low land. In Lagos state, we have it at Akoka and so on. In those areas it is better to do styling to prevent building collapsed. Soil test gives us information on how many metre we need to dig, it might be 20 or 30 metres. It might be four points that we have dug and when we combine that together that’s what we called skycap. So on a certain line we have like fifty skycaps so that in future, the building will not be able to sink or collapse. It’s done mostly in Lagos.”
Besides, he said for the most part, filling is also required, especially for multiple storey buildings to avoid environmental degradation including erosion.
“The fact remains that buildings do not just collapse. There are always warning signs. In many cases, the building control agencies of several states in Nigeria carry out a non-destructive integrity test.”
This test according to him is to ascertain the structural stability of the building. This helps the state know if such buildings can be renovated or re-engineered.
In cases where a building is detected to have a defect, building owners are asked to take the test before further actions are taken by the state.
Adenuwagun who is in his mid 30s and who has been involved in this trade in the past eight years cut his teeth with a Nigerian company called Livingspring Construction Company, where he worked before establishing his company which he runs in partnership with his father.
On what determines the cost, he said charges vary according to the depth of the construction. “We charge per metre and that metre is depending on the area. There is no uniform or fix price for the job. So a lot of factors determine the cost.”