Across Africa, the pace of urbanisation is relentless. Cities are expanding, populations are surging, and new housing, schools, and infrastructure projects are breaking ground daily. Yet alongside this growth lies a sobering reality: building collapses, safety oversights, and substandard compliance remain persistent risks in the construction sector.

In September 2025, a three-storey building under construction collapsed at 333 Borno Street, Alagomeji, Yaba, Lagos State, leaving four people trapped before being pulled out of the rubble. Punch reported that poor supervision, substandard materials, and weak enforcement of regulations were likely contributing factors. Around the same time, another incident was recorded in Onipetesi Estate, Mangoro, where the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service rescued five workers after a structure collapsed while being converted from a bungalow into a two-storey building (Punch).

For Nigerian engineer Nnamdi Innocent Oniya, these tragedies underscore why compliance can no longer be treated as an afterthought. “Every time a building collapses, lives are lost and communities are shaken. Compliance should not be optional — it should be built into the very tools our project teams use,” Oniya says.

His response has been to design affordable, open-source tools that embed compliance and safety into everyday project workflows. The most ambitious of these is the BIM Data Compliance Checker, a lightweight application that extracts information from Building Information Modelling (BIM) files and compares them against safety and regulatory rules.

At its core, the tool performs simple but vital tasks. It checks corridor widths, verifies the placement of exits, measures room dimensions, and ensures that designs meet safety and accessibility standards. Instead of relying on manual checks or expensive proprietary software, SMEs can now run a digital scan and generate a clear pass-or-fail report within minutes.
“If we want safer cities, we need to democratize compliance,” Oniya explains. “Small and medium-sized firms build the majority of structures across Africa. If they cannot afford digital safety checks, then we are building blind.”

Alongside the compliance tool, Oniya has also developed the BIM Automation Toolkit, which reduces human error and inefficiency by automating scheduling, clash detection, and cost estimation. Together, the two projects represent a vision of construction where safety, accountability, and efficiency are no longer expensive luxuries but standard practices available to all.

Industry experts argue that the open-source approach is key. By lowering barriers and inviting collaboration, Oniya is not only creating technology but fostering a community of practitioners committed to raising standards. This resonates with global trends towards open innovation and transparency in the built environment.

In Oniya’s view, the true measure of innovation is not how advanced it looks, but how many people it reaches. “A compliance tool that only a handful of wealthy firms can use does not change the industry. But if SMEs everywhere can run safety checks before they pour a single block, that is real transformation,” he says.

As African cities race towards the future, voices like Oniya’s highlight a crucial lesson: building smarter must also mean building safer. And with tools designed to close the digital divide in compliance, the continent has an opportunity to set new standards for safety and resilience in construction.