As a first collaborative response to the recent spate of collapsing buildings in Freetown, the council of the Sierra Leone Institute of Architects (SLIA) and the Sierra Leone Institution of Engineers (SLIE) met over a business lunch on Tuesday, September 24, 2024, at the New Brookfields Hotel in Brookfields.
The meeting, led by Ing. Oba Agwu Jones, President of the SLIE, and Arc Manilius Garber, President of the SLIA, and other executives of both bodies, discussed a number of issues related to the primary causes of the recent collapse of buildings in the Western Area. They lamented the attendant loss of lives and also warned that more buildings are still likely to fail due to the greed and incompetence of unqualified and unregistered builders who keep masquerading as architects and engineers in Sierra Leone.
The brainstorming centered on ways and means of preventing future building failures and urged members of the public and developers not to undertake the construction of buildings without the engagement of registered architects and engineers. They also discussed the building permit issuance mechanism at the Ministry of Lands and warned that going forward, it should cease to be business as usual. They called on those responsible for the issuance of permits to be more circumspect and more thorough by insisting that only buildings and developments designed by registered professionals are processed for permits.
Concluding, they urged the government to expeditiously set in motion the process of passing into law the current Draft National Building Code, which was articulated by the SLIA in 2021. The meeting ended by urging members and the council of both institutions to be more proactive and make themselves more visible in the community so that their expertise and roles can be better felt by society. Both professional institutions jointly raised a working committee to conduct an appraisal of the UNIMTECH University building in Kissy that is already manifesting symptoms of structural failure and generating a lot of public interest as to its likelihood of collapsing at some point.
Also present at the lunch were Arc Mohammed Coomber, Arc Abel Onomake, Arc Joseph Conteh, Arc Ivan Labija, Ing Jacob L. Tarlowoh, Ing Simeon Kanbay, and Ing. Christopher Thomas.
