The Nigerian Institution of Safety Engineers says it will join hands with the government to put an end to building collapse in Nigeria.
The newly-inaugurated Chairman of the Institution, Seun Faluyi, stated this while speaking with our correspondent during his investiture in Lagos State on Thursday.
Faluyi said there was a need for more advocacies in ensuring Nigerians adopt the principle of putting safety first in all they do.
The mechanical engineers stated that builders and owners of property should not compromise safety because of the rising cost of cement and other building materials, saying it would result in loss of lives and money.
He said there had been low awareness on the part of people about safety, saying “We all take it for granted thinking it is somebody else’s duty”.
“It is true that it is the government that should put in the structure to ensure there is safety. But we need to take advantage of this structure to be able to do it. We have been speaking of building collapses; those buildings are inhabited by people. Those buildings did not make themselves; they were made by people. For them to collapse it means that the people who made them cut corners, they did not do the right thing. They ignored safety and the people harmed there also ignored all safety protocols, so they were affected.
“Safety is something that we need to build the awareness for; it is about advocacy so that more people know what their responsibilities are,” he averred.
He added that safety awareness would also be created among engineers and architects to consider safety while planning and designing buildings.
Speaking at the investiture, the Honeywell Group Chairman, Oba Otudeko; the Chairman of Petrolog, Dr Vincent Ebuh and the President of the Nigeria Society of Engineers, Margaret Oguntala, harped on the importance of paying attention to safety in all aspects of life.
According to them, individuals and the government must put efforts in top gear to ensure the safety of lives and property.
The guest lecturer at the event, Adeyemi Adetunji, noted that safety is about reducing losses of any kind to the barest minimum, adding that safety engineering encompasses all aspects of life and living.
Adetunji maintained that buildings keep collapsing and killing people because no lesson was learnt from previous incidents, in which people disregarded all government safety protocols while building.
He regretted that the country had set up various committees to look into cases of building collapse, but the recommendations of the committees were shoved aside.
“Building collapse will be a recurring decimal if we keep ignoring already proffered solutions because we know the solution and we keep ignoring them,” he said.
He charged the safety engineers to do more to eliminate or reduce losses.
The new safety engineer’s chairman is currently the Director of Projects for Pivot GIS, a subcontractor on the Port Harcourt Refinery Rehabilitation Project.
He is the founder and Chairman of Offshore Dimensions Limited, an engineering, procurement and construction company that specialises in the design and construction of facilities and pipelines for the oil and gas industry.
He was previously the chief executive officer of Uraga Power Solutions Limited, an off-grid power generation company that is a member of the Honeywell Group.
SOURCE: PUNCHNG
