Regular assessments of building structures will prevent their collapse and other disasters associated with poor construction. This was the kernel of the 68th inaugural lecture of the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUT MINNA) in Niger State. MAHMUD ABDULSALAM reports.
Worried by the spate of building collapse across the country and the attendant loss of lives, a lecturer at the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUT MINNA), Prof Stella Nonyelum Zubairu, has proffered a way to stem the tide.
According to her, carrying out periodic Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) tests on buildings will go a long way in reducing the rate of building collapse.
Zubairu, a professor of Architecture, who delivered the school’s 67th inaugural lecture with the theme: ”Post-Occupancy Evaluation: A necessary tool for architects, facilities managers and other professionals in the building industry”, said: “From an architectural perspective, POE is the systematic study of buildings in use to provide experts with information about the performance of their designs. The test also helps the owners and users with guidelines to achieve the best out of what they already have. The value of POE is being increasingly recognised, and it is becoming mandatory on many public projects.
“POE is valuable in all construction sectors, especially healthcare, education, offices, commercial and housing, where poor building performance will impact on running costs, occupant’s well-being and business efficiency.”
Prof Zubairu disclosed that many buildings in the country don’t function according to their designs, and therefore, offer low comfort and utility. She pointed out that such scenarios usually have great impact on building running costs, client satisfaction, health, safety and comfort.
She added: “Learning from and correcting past mistakes in design and commissioning of buildings through POE can be extremely cost-effective and improve workplace productivity.”
The professor of Architecture noted that POE had its origins in Scotland and the United States (US) in the 1960s, saying: “’While POE evaluations carried out in the 1970s and 1980s were targeted at performance of buildings, more recent developments in POE have been focused on Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) and Universal Design Evaluation (UDE).”
In the midst of other purposes and reasons, she said the principal benefit derived from conducting POE was the provision of valuable information to support the goal of continuous improvement of built environments.
She said: “POE forms a ‘logical final step’ in the cyclical design process. This is because it provides a knowledge-based information from users about completed projects, which could then be utilised to either improve spaces in existing buildings or form a programming platform for future buildings.”
Prof Zubairu, who is the Acting Dean of School of Environmental Technology (SET), explained that performing POE may require two exercises: carrying out a post-project review to evaluate a project’s delivery process, and an assessment of the performance of a building in use.
She said the major assessment done on buildings’ performance is in the form of evaluating their designs, which must take into cognisance the effectiveness of space planning, aesthetic quality, standards of lighting and acoustic environment, ventilation, temperature and relative humidity.
“Other factors to be considered are air pollution and air quality, user comfort, maintenance and occupancy costs, structural defects and an assessment of whether the development is being operated as designed,” she said.
The inaugural lecturer said the assessments on the performance of a building could not start until six to 12 months after it must have been occupied. If not, she said, accurate results may not be determined. “POE is central to improving the performance of low and zero-carbon building designs, and vital for sustainable construction,” she said.
The don, who maintained that if users of buildings were consulted at the initial design stage, better and more user-friendly designs would be produced.
She recommended that POE should be included as stage four of the normal services of architects to enable them improve on future designs after assessing the feedback from POEs.
She said: “Legislations should be enacted to compel architects, facilities managers and engineers to carry out POEs in order to assess the impact and effectiveness of building spaces, structure and services on the users of the building. This will lead to better building performance.”
The duo of the Vice-Chancellor (VC), Prof Abdullahi Bala, and the university’s Seminar and Colloquium Committee chairman, Prof Bisi Ayanwale, hailed the inaugural lecturer for her “tremendous contributions” to the growth of architecture profession, calling on experts in Nigeria’s building industry to adopt the key recommendations made by the lecturer.
