How to forestall recurrent building Collapse -Surveyors

Deformation monitoring is the only way to protect superstructures publicly or privately owned, to forestall recurrent collapse and mitigate the attendant loss of lives and properties associated with such,says Nigerian Institution Surveyors

further harped on the need to put in place laws to enforce monitoring of structures like monuments,bridges,government secretariats,dams, oil tank farms, stadia and food storage silos for deformation to protect them from collapse.

Speaking at a press briefing in Abuja,the President, NIS, Kayide Oluwamotemi, said surveyors were the professionals with requisite skills and certification to monitor structures for deformation and subsidence and should be supported by the federal and state governments to carry out this task.

He said, “It is no longer news that the country has witnessed building collapse in the past months; freshest in our memory is that of the 21-storey building on Gerrard Road Ikoyi, Lagos on November 1, 2021.

“The Nigerian Institution of Surveyors share the grief of the families involved in that and many other avoidable incidents of building collapse. This leaves us wondering and asking rhetorically, how many of such Ikoyi buildings do we have all over the country?

“While we pray that God helps us avert such occurrence, we at the NIS want to categorically state that beyond prayers, the government and well-meaning Nigerians need to take necessary actions to avoid recurrence of this ugly incident.”