The National Building Inspectorate was established under the Executive order No. 1 of 2023 to provide the following core services:

Buildings inspection and audit: To profile buildings to ensure they meet safety standards and necessary approvals.

Building Safety and Quality assurance: Carrying out scientific testing of the profiled unsafe/ dangerous buildings across the country.

Capacity Building/ training of county construction industry technical staff.

Legal and Enforcement of the recommended actions after audit and testing of buildings. That is remedial measures including removal of dangerous structures.

Public Education and sensitization on building regulations, standards and promoting all round safety in construction industry especially quality standards.

Causes of Collapse

·     From the audit findings and the tests carried out on several collapsed buildings, the quality of concrete was found to be the major cause of the collapse of buildings. The concrete grade in some buildings was found to be as low as 6.0 N/mm2. It was also noted that there was no proper foundation in some buildings showing that the builders did not follow the specifications during the implementation of the project.

·     The building stones used for the load bearing walls were substandard in most of the buildings. The crushing strength were below the requirement of 7.0 N/mm2 and should not have been used to construct structures of such magnitude.

·     Services of qualified technical personnel in construction industry who could have detected early warning were not sought (in most of the buildings) as per the requirement. Some buildings with consultants failed due to inadequate designs.

·     Concrete mix designs were not done in most of the construction works.

In summary, Buildings collapsed due to 7 major reasons:

• Use of poor concrete mix
• Poor construction materials
• Poor workmanship
•  Inadequate designs
• Change of intended use of structure
•  Lack of supervision by professionals
• Lack of /no adherence to specifications.

 of county construction industry technical staff.

Legal and Enforcement of the recommended actions after audit and testing of buildings. That is remedial measures including removal of dangerous structures.

Public Education and sensitization on building regulations, standards and promoting all round safety in construction industry especially quality standards.