The Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA) has urged the Federal Government to mandate architects to supervise the implementation of their designs in a bid to check the menace of building collapse.

The NIA President, Enyi Ben-Eboh, who made the appeal while speaking in Abuja at the institute’s 2022 Strategic Retreat, said findings showed that architects hardly supervised the implementation of their designs in the various cases of building collapse recorded across the country.

He said, “For a lot of these building collapse cases if you check you will find out that our members are really not involved. What happens is that for a lot of clients, once they get an architect to design a building and to get approval, they just go ahead and build according to their own dictates.

“Most times they do not have architects on these jobs. So we want to appeal to the government that it should be mandatory that architects do not just end their jobs with the drawings.

“They should also be able to supervise the implementation of what they designed. Because oftentimes an architect could design a building on two floors and during construction, a client says he wants to add two more floors.”

Ben-Eboh, however, stated that no report had indicted the institute on any case of building collapse, adding that a lot of building owners engaged in direct labour and use people who were not registered.

“That you went to school to study Architecture doesn’t make you a qualified architect. Rather it is until you have fulfilled the conditions for licensing and certified by the Architects Registration Council of Nigeria, then you can be called an architect and can be responsible for whatever you design.”

On the retreat, the NIA president said it would help address the issue of building collapse and ensure adequate synergy with the government to nip the menace in the bud.

Ben-Eboh said, “It is a source of concern to us, and part of what we will be discussing at this retreat will be how best to confront the issues. Because it is not that there are no laws to govern this but the implementation of these laws has been the problem.

“So as an institute we will think how to restrategise in the retreat to find out what we can do to assist the government organs that discharge the responsibility of giving approval for these buildings.