Engineers Seek Law For Building Contracts Regulation

The Nigerian Institution of Civil Engineers (NICE), has said that no meaningful control will be achieved in the Nigerian building sector without an enabling law that  will regulate activities of operators.

To that effect, the group has urged the Federal Government to take the bull by the horn by creating an enabling law that will regulate building contracts in the country.

Speaking to Journalists in Port Harcourt on the state of affairs in the building industry in Nigeria, the chairman , NICE, Port Harcourt chapter, Engineer Solomon Orumo said that absence of an enabling law has made it really difficult for the institution to deal with irregularities in the building industry.

He said that engineers in the sector do not have control over engineering contracts and, as such, can not totally supervise the processes in contract execution and hence cannot be in control of the situation in the event of any abnormality.

Orumo said “when there is a failure or building collapse, that is when they will call on engineers, but they have failed to let civil engineering professionals direct the processes of contract execution from the beginning”.

The NICE chapter chairman blamed engineers in government service, especially in the Ministry for signing papers and certificates for contracts executed on road that are not of  standard, stressing that there is an acceptable standard that road contracts and other structures must attain.

Corlins Walter