By Giwa SHILE
The President, International Code Council-Nigeria National Chapter (ICC-NNC), Dr Maurice Ngwaba, on Wednesday called for efficient building code for Nigeria.
Ngwaba made this call at the ICC-NNC 2nd Educational Seminar in Lagos with the theme: ‘Developing and Implementing Modern Building Codes for Resilience and Sustainability’.
According to him, efficient building code will contribute to raising the quality of lives and safety of the property on built environment.
”Nigeria does not have efficient building code and building code processes.
”And this does not speak well of the country about to celebrate its 58th Independence Day on Oct. 1.
”ICC-NNC is not a statutory body and does not make, adopt or enforce codes.
”All these are functions of governments.
”However, as citizenry organised knowledge organisation, ICC-NNC, will progressively seek ways to support the building industry laws.
”This it will do to help improve the health, life and safety of Nigerians as well as share information that reduce risks of disasters and enhance the ability of communities to be resilience,” he said.
Ngwaba said that as new cities and developments spring up across the country, professionals would be relied on to engage in the planning, designing, and development of standardised property that would stand the test of time.
The Executive Director of Sustainable Programme, ICC, Mr David Walls, said that the International Code served as a model which could be adopted and amended to suit the locality.
He said that this way the code was adopted and modified to suit the local, states or countries’ peculiarities.
Walls said that the ICC had different codes under the building codes in the areas of maintenance, plumbing, electrical energy and green codes.
He said that the codes were reviewed every three years and open for inputs from stakeholders and even individuals.
Walls said that before the code was published, the committee organised elections and depending on the voting pattern, the code could be published or revisited.
He said that ICC was deeply involved in training and helping nations developed code standards.
Ms Suma Mohutsiwa, a representative of Underwriters Laboratories (UL), Johannesburg, said that the UL had been partnering with key organisations to test and ensure that whatever was produced in any part of the world met local standards.
She said that in doing this, UL sets up code committees and stakeholders to make inputs and ensure that due processes were followed to develop standards.
Mohutsiwa said that UL works had helped the insurance companies and to reduce fire disasters in buildings that would otherwise have claimed many lives and property.
The Federal Government on June 12 approved a new national building code that will regulate construction with the aim of improving on measures to safeguard lives and property in the country.
