Gurgaon collapse: What you should know about building safety standards

Every state has building bylaws that have to be followed during the time of construction and it is the role of the authorities to ensure that. These bylaws cover aspects like ground coverage, floor area ratio, material used as per the soil requirement, tensile strength, beam and column strength, height restrictions as per the seismic zone. Thereafter, one can check whether National Building Code of India (NBC), a comprehensive building code for regulating the building construction activities across the country, has been followed or not. It serves as a Model Code for adoption by all agencies involved in building construction works, be they Public Works Departments, other government construction departments, local bodies or private construction agencies.

Does this guarantee that a house is safe or not?

“No,” said a senior official of South Delhi Municipal Corporation and added, “It is possible that a builder has not followed the rules but managed to get completion certificates.” This involves unfair means but is hard to ascertain.

He said that the building generally collapses if it is under or over reinforced. An over reinforced construction is the one in which concrete is used for compressive strength. “In simple words, it has more steel and less concrete. This kind of beam leads to sudden collapse and such construction is not allowed,” he said. An under reinforced beam construction is one in which steel is less than required and will show indications like cracks or a portion of concrete falling.

How to prevent accidents in cases when there are no visible signs?

There can be a structural safety audit and test conducted of a building, that includes design load test, soil settlement test, beam and column strength test, sample collection of portions of a building from different areas to identify whether a building is safe or not. These tests are conducted mainly by National Council for Cement and Building Materials, Rail India Technical and Economic Service, Indian Institute of Technology and other agencies. However, these are very costly tests and one has to end up paying lakhs. “This is done mostly in cases of government buildings, housing societies and not for individual houses due to high prices of the tests,” said a senior East MCD official.

What is the solution for individual houses in cases where there are visible signs?

In cases of individual houses, one can get the house or building checked by the structural engineers. “However, these checks are at a surface level. The expert checks the design, balance of load on pillars and cracks, but would not be able to detect the quality of material used,” said a senior EDMC official. “This is not a fool proof method but an expert can definitely use his experience to warn if there are visible signs of building being unsafe and can give solutions to correct the structure balance,” he said.

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