A collapsed building in Busabala.
By Apollo Buregyeya
A 5 level building in Busabala, Kampala City, collapsed on Friday, December 6 2024. By the time of this post, many were still trapped in the rubble and some dead. While it’s still too early to establish the cause of the collapse, I can still offer my predictions. I teach Construction Technology at Makerere University. I also have a portfolio of 18 storied buildings in Kampala constructed in the last 7 years. So, you can trust my predictions. No building collapse happens because of a single reason. It is normally a set of reasons that occur at the same time. It is certainly the case with this Busabala building in Kampala.
1. Developer character. A developer that discounts the value of professionals and abuses professional guidance. True, even birds build their own nests. But you’re not birds.
2. A blind trust in readymix concrete.
Ready mix concrete is made for the European market where labour cost is expensive and material cost is cheap. As a consequence, the Europeans, Japanese and Americans don’t mind adding chemicals into their concrete to make it pumpable, self-compacting, set retarding, viscous stable, immune to bleeding and ultra-high performance. These chemicals cost money and demand a certain professional character that our hardware businessmen don’t have. The pressure to return on the high technology investment push suppliers to adulterate concrete and supply a poor grade. Ignorantly, many Ugandans think a smooth finish means good quality. Strong concrete is a matter of knowledge.
3. Poor synchronization of construction processes and poor understanding of material behaviour. When structural engineers design structures, they focus on how the structure will perform in its environment when it’s in use. They trust that the developer will hire a competent team to manage the complex processes of construction. The construction process involves loads that a contractor must plan for. A building under construction carries materials, equipment and human beings. These are loads on an unfinished building that need to be supported by false works, form work and shoring until the building elements have matured to support themselves and the imposed loads. This calls for a deeper understanding of material behavior and construction technology.
4. Lastly, functional illegitimacies of government institutions. When all the requirements of the regulator can be answered with money, buildings will continue to collapse. It’s surprising that the tools of the industry 4.0 and AI are resisted in regulating our construction industry because an inefficient system provides opportunities for corruption. Especially that, the rate at which we are putting up buildings is much higher than the capacity of the regular to supervise them. So, weak government institutions can be blamed.
Like I always say, in Africa, if it doesn’t collapse at the construction stage, it probably wont collapse in its first 30 years.
The writer teaches Construction Technology at Makerere University.
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