Understanding the Collapse of Kampala City Buildings

The explosive population growth in African cities is usually a primary reference point when discussing the problems and challenges that are facing Africa today. Like many other African cities, Kampala’s growth is exponential and outstripping supply and so the city is undergoing a remarkable urban transformation. As African cities also continue to grow economically, the city sky lines are being painted with magnificent buildings soring higher and higher owing to the technological advancement in building techniques and technologies.

Unfortunately, however, such rapid growth has come at a cost and it is one the sector should not be proud of. The same buildings that are uplifting our economies are in many cases tragically taking lives people that are; constructing them, residing in them as well as doing business in them.

Uganda unlike many counties in the western world is not prone to extreme natural disasters such as hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones and high magnitude earthquakes, yet even with the existing technical competence in structural engineering, building collapses are a common tragic occurrence.

Indeed, the collapse of buildings is not a new phenomenon and such events have occurred since the prehistoric times, this however, does not mean we should not be striving for improvement and putting more effort into this under-researched issue.

In order to save our cities from the life-threatening and economic situations of collapsing buildings, there is need for exhaustive analysis beyond the engineering defects and short falls of the situations that indeed lead to the occurrence of the defects within the early stages of projects that the ultimately result into catastrophic building failures even in the absence of extreme natural disasters.

Existing Legislative Framework

The Building Control Act came into force on 2 nd

October 2013 and its purpose was to amend the law relating to erection of buildings as a way to ensure decent, safe and planned building structures. Under the same act, the Building Review Board and Building Committees were instituted to execute functions in-line with the objectives of the act.

The act empowers the Building Review Board and the Building Committees to stop any construction operation that is found not to be in compliance with the regulations. The act also regards any omission, commission and negligence of an individual that leads to a building accident punishable by law. It is

safe to say that that the laws and regulations governing the erection of buildings are present and sufficient, however, we cannot ignore the fact that the non-compliance to these laws and regulations is a root cause to many of the building collapses.

Circumstances leading to unsafe buildings in African cities

Approximately 40% of Africa’s population now lives in the cities, the demand for building space has therefore been significant. This increase in demand has encouraged the erection of buildings with an insufficient focus on safety. The existing high demand has also prompted existing structures to be hastily converted into uses that they were not designed or intended for.

This alongside the high cost of acquisition of urban land has limited the capacity of building developers to invest in quality building materials and technical personnel. As such, at many building sites there is common use of substandard material, cut back on required inputs and widespread involvement of low skilled and unqualified building personnel as well as limited compliance to the building laws and regulations.

Whilst building regulations are present, corruption and unstable political decision making continue to undermine the efforts of building authorities to enforce regulations. Monitoring and compliance is further hampered by the under resourced capacity of the building authorities.

Solutions

The vulnerability of our cities to building collapse can be addressed administratively by putting in place interventions to ensure compliance to the laws and regulations that govern the erection of buildings. The interventions should not only focus on of adherence to technical regulations but should address socio-political and economic conditions and resource distribution challenges.

In the event of a building collapse, during the Investigations, there is need to look beyond the engineering defects and attention should be given to the underlying non-engineering issues that could have led to the engineering defect. Further to this there is need to publish the results of the investigations for the public so that circumstances the led to a particular building are mitigated in future projects.

Building authorities should consider a phased approval of building works as a way to ensure that building developers adhere to the laws and regulations all through the building process. This can, however, only be achieved if the financial and resource capacity of the building authorities is increased.

It is also imperative that meaningful and stable financing schemes are provided to building developers to prevent piecemeal construction of buildings and end practices that lead to the use of sub-standard building materials and incompetent personnel.

Conclusions

Given the above, it is important to reemphasise that unless conscious efforts are made to address the building needs of Africa’s urban population, the creation of unsafe buildings in hazard-prone areas is unlikely to be prevented. At every stage in the building process, economic and safety considerations should be designed for to avoid them competing. A balance is needed, but this balance needs to be achieved so that the building’s structural integrity is not adversely compromised in the name of saving money. The value of human life is incalculable, therefore as built environment practitioners we have a fundamental duty to hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of public against all other considerations.

Kigozi Joseph, Uganda

Mr. Kigozi Joseph is a Project Engineer Working with PROME Consultants Limited and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Makerere University with honours. He sits on the Uganda Association of Consulting Engineers, FIDIC Future Leaders committee and serves as a Capacity Development champion on this committee. Mr. Kigozi Joseph has made significant contributions on various infrastructure projects within Kampala City ranging from transportation, through to drainage and housing.

Some of the most recent projects in which he has been involved include; The design of a pilot city bus service and public transport advisory services as well as the development of the non-motorized transport manual for Uganda.

Mr. Kigozi Joseph has strived to share his technical knowledge and experience at various regional conferences, with the vision to improve the wider infrastructure sector through capacity building. Most recently he has been engaged in the FIDIC- GAMA Conference, held in Kampala and the 1 st Smart transport infrastructure summit held in Dar-es Salaam.