Transparent times

Conrad Egbert, Editor.

The building collapse in Sharjah last week wasn’t exactly greeted with gasps of horror in the Construction Week newsroom. With all due respect, it spoke volumes about what people have to expect from construction in the region. And that is what was really horrifying.

This is the third structure in the UAE to have collapsed in three months. In August, a building in Deira collapsed while the roof of a mall that was being built in Ajman came down last month.

And though only decorative parts of a ceiling in Ibn Battuta mall fell down, it adds to the list of construction nightmares in the region.

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For years there’s been talk of the lack of quality on numerous developments, so it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise if a few buildings around us begin to crumble.

Company bosses, project managers, fire-safety professionals and even construction workers have been warning this would happen, but yet the enforcement of building codes still seems to be on the backburner.

Experts in the region have highlighted the dire need to enforce building safety regulations but not much progress seems to have been made. As far as common sense goes, a lack of enforcement of regulations is as good as them never being there in the first place.

Calls for transparency are now at the top of the list, and rightly so. Transparency increases quality and weeds out any illegal practices.

The Deira building collapse is still a mystery despite there being a full-fledged investigation. Half-baked answers have been released and no hard results of the investigation have been made public.

And this makes one wonder – are the results of the investigation so embarrassing that they have to be kept under wraps? Are there practices going on that shouldn’t be? Or are the on-site inspectors not really inspecting?

A tiny window of truth opened up last week. After the Sharjah car park collapse, which saw six workers taken to hospital and could have potentially killed another 100, Sultan Al Mualla, the director general of Sharjah Municipality admitted that building inspectors had visited the under-construction site the previous day and reported it to be in “good condition.”

So what exactly did these inspectors’ check lists include? Are building materials inspected before construction begins or do inspectors only arrive on site mid-construction? And are underperforming inspectors held responsible?

The recent happenings can’t even be passed off as one-offs, because they’re not. Three collapses in two months don’t qualify as one-offs. If operations are made transparent, developers, contractors, workers, inspectors, everyone will miraculously begin to toe the line.

Transparency is as much a market-force as are demand and supply, so why not let it work for the greater good?