Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS) has called for periodic monitoring of buildings with over three floors and bridges to curtail incessant structural failures and collapses.

Chairman of Lagos State branch of the institution, Olukolade Kasim, made the call, yesterday, during the 2023 Mandatory Continuing Professional Development (MCPD) workshop in Ikeja, with the theme: “Comparative Analysis of Building Information Model for Structural Health Monitoring.”

According to him, the essence of monitoring is to identify movements in the structure, so as to fix them and prevent collapse.

According to him, the MCPD programme was to update surveyors with new technology and expose them to emerging technology in the field of surveying.

He said: “This year, we are looking at property analysis and structural health monitoring. Basically, what we are saying is that we are all aware that we have collapses and structural incidents, so we have decided to see how the surveying community could help solve this problem. We are recommending that bridges and tall buildings should be monitored periodically for movement. Foundation might be faulty and you will know from there, and the house cannot be stable underneath, we will move from there, this is our own contribution.

“We are saying that government can have an agency, under the building control, or physical planning, even in the office of the Surveyor-General too, where there are mostly surveyors to monitor buildings and avert building failures.”

On buildings built on canals and setbacks, he said it was not late for government to do the right thing, by removing such buildings found to be wrongly built in canals, and on wrong setbacks.

“I think government should prevent even these buildings from going up in the first place. I’m still looking for someone who will take the government to court for demolishing his building, that I have my papers, so most of them don’t even have the papers in the first place.

“ So, I will support removing the building if there is nothing else that can be done but then I think the government should go further and actually stop these buildings from being built in the first place,” he added.

A lecturer in the Department of Surveying and Geo-informatics, Federal University, Oye Ekiti, Dr. Joseph Olayemi Odumosu, stressed the need for measurements and monitoring in construction works.

He called on professionals in the construction industry, to engage surveyors when carrying out structural work, building of large structures and dimension control.

As measurements engineers, he said, surveyors are expected to monitor the integrity of structures and control the dimension.