Bill to regulate construction industry on the way
What you need to know:
- Bill will bring sanity to the industry that is experiencing a surge in the number of unqualified professionals if it becomes law.
Professionals in the construction sector have proposed a move to reduce the numbers of unsafe buildings with a proposed bill.
In a two-day seminar taking place in Nairobi, architects and quantity surveyors said that the bill, which is in its infancy stage, will bring sanity to the industry that is experiencing a surge in the number of unqualified professionals if it becomes law.
“We have situations where unregistered people purporting to be architects are taking on projects which are leading to falling of houses and deaths.
"The only way to rein in this is through coming up with a stronger law,” said Gideon Mulyungi, the chairman, board of registration of architects and quantity surveyors (BORAQS).
The law will give the board a mandate to do the registration of qualified practitioners in the respective fields, identify new professionals that are not recognised presently and introduce a new professional school that every professional will have to go through before admission into membership.
“We will be able to monitor all the constructions in the country and enforce standards by regulating any projects that takes place. Quacks are losing the industry billions of shillings in their un-supervised projects,” added Mr Mulyungi.
The bill proposes to recognise construction project managers, environment designers, landscapers and interior designers as mandatory service providers. The current law only recognizes architects, engineers and quantity surveyors as primary service providers with contractors having a leeway to sub-contract the secondary tier professionals.
“The emergence of the new professionals closely related to the disciplines of the industry and are not regulated are becoming a challenge.
"These challenges require repeal of the existing act to create new separate laws for all different professionals in the building industry,” said Mr Mulyungi.
The Architects and Quantity Surveyors Act Cap 525 was enacted in 1934 and was last revised in 1945.
If adopted by Parliament, there will be different regulations for architects and surveyors, as the two disciplines have widened in their scopes of professions.
