Mistakes site owners make during construction

In early 2002, Chris Muhumuza started constructing his country home in Rukungiri District in western Uganda. One of his rare visits to the site was when the land was being levelled. The land was slanting and the underlying rock needed to be crushed to achieve a levelled ground.

Rushing the project
After levelling the ground, construction commenced in June the same year. Muhumuza wanted the project complete by December 2003 so that he could celebrate his third wedding anniversary during the festive season and with the peace of mind of occupying a newly built house.
“I did not plan on renovating the house less than 20 years since occupying it. By end of 2010, the lower side of the house had started developing small cracks. With time, the cracks kept widening. The garage that was located on the lower side of the house started detaching from the house,” Muhumuza recalls.
Today, as Muhumuza is still saving up money to start on the renovations, he regrets a number of things. Not only did he build the house using sand dug from a section of his land to save costs but he also built it in his absence. The construction started before the levelled ground could harden. Worse still, the paint on the walls in most of the rooms also peeled off.  
“I kept in touch with the engineer for daily updates from the foundation to the roofing stage. I provided all the required materials and trusted that they could do a good job even when I was not around,” Muhumuza says.
During construction, Muhumuza recalls visiting the site approximately five times. His job did not allow him to regularly visit the site because he was always on the move.

Telling engineers what to do
While Muhumuza was often absent from his site, Lydia Nassande was always present at hers in Kiira, a Kampala suburb, while constructing her three storeyed building. Aware that workmen sometimes connive to steal materials, Nassande would be at the site on most days, except when she was at the hardware shop buying materials.
At some point, Nassande stepped in to check the work progress, including the ratio of mixture of sand to cement. When they reached the second floor, a few inches after casting the ring beam, Nassande realised the builders were adding more brick layers before the final stage of roofing.
“I realised the third floor was to be high and I asked the engineer not to add other brick layers,” Nassande recalls.
The first and second floors are now at finishing stages. However, after putting up the ceiling of the second floor, Nassande now realises the height from the floor to the ceiling of the second floor is such that when you jump high, you can easily touch the ceiling. She is left with no option but to rent out the house with its low ceiling because no adjustments can be made at this stage.

What experts say
According to Joseph Oryang, an engineer at Century Investors Limited, very often site owners take it upon themselves to give orders at a site. The technician might try to explain the outcomes of your orders in vain. The technicians go with what you want, knowing very well that you will face other problems much later because they cannot out argue you.
However, this is not to say that technicians or engineers do not make mistakes. You need to crosscheck the advice they give as some will make wrong decisions that require you to use common sense. 

For example, when the house paint peels off, it does not necessarily mean that the builders mixed less cement with more sand. It could be that the owner bought sand that was of poor quality, probably to cut costs. Oryang notes further that even if you use the right cement amount when the sand was poor (the ratio of cement to sand), the plaster will still be poor. It could also point to how the foundation was constructed. For instance, it could have been carelessly built to allow or give room to water to rise up the building through the damp proof course and the paint peels off from the lower part of the house over time. 

“Sometimes the people you refer to as engineers are not qualified. They do not have experience and do not understand how everything is done and you allow them construct your house,” he says. 
However, Oryang says not every kind of building needs an engineer. If it is a bungalow, it may sometimes require a qualified mason who understands what they are doing, but have an engineer look at what the mason is doing. 

For the case of storeyed building like Nassande’s, such structures, Oryang, advises, should be handled by a qualified technician, with an engineer involved, but not someone who learnt on the job. The engineer may not be present fulltime but they should be able to check every stage to make sure it’s well done. Otherwise, you have to make sure that things like the slabs and columns are well built so that they do not collapse. This is because even with the right amount of concrete and cement, if one uses wrong steel bars of if they are not properly joined, the building may collapse.
A lot of thought should go into your building plan. Also, while you might want your technician or engineer to change one small thing, such as when Nassande stopped the engineer from adding more layers of bricks, the change you make may have other consequences like Nassande’s short house ceiling.

 “As a site engineer or technician, sometimes you have to stand your ground against the client’s orders. If the client is not ready to listen to the advice you are giving them, you can step back and desist from proceeding with the project because if anything goes wrong, such as a building collapsing, you will be held responsible. It is better than proceeding with the project and being answerable for any wrongs much later,” Oryang advises. 

ORDERING ENGINEERS
In many cases when the technical personnel know the consequences of your orders because they want to keep the contract or job, at the end of the day when things go bad, you (client/site owner) will turn around or blame the engineer and ask why they did not let you know that there would be a problem with the structure, much later. 
“As a site engineer or technician, sometimes you have to stand your ground against the client’s orders. If they (client) is not ready to listen to the advice you are giving them, you can step back and desist from proceeding with the project because if anything goes wrong, such as a building collapsing, you will be held responsible. It is better than proceeding with the project than being answerable for any wrongs much later,” Oryang advises.
House construction, just like human health, can sometimes be a matter of life and death. If you want a doctor to give you a preferred drug when they know it will cause you harm, say when you die or get serious consequences, they are held responsible because they are responsible for dispensing and they won’t accept. 
Similarly, poor house construction involving deviation from the initial plan can also be a matter of rendering the building unusable. 

Common housing mistakes

Every now and then, we have seen buildings collapsing, injuring and killing people. We had a chat with Denis Juuko, a contractor, on the mistakes done while constructing.  

Boundary opening
Before construction starts, it is advisable to know the dimensions of the land or else someone might construct in it. There are so many court cases over this and according to Juuko, this can be avoided by doing boundary openings.
“People should do a boundary opening to establish where the land passes and where you are not so sure, you can always go back to the person or company that sold it to you for clarity,” he says.

Safety of materials
Construction comes with a lot of costs but people are negligent on the safety of certain costly and important materials on the site. 
“It is so important to buy your things in instalments. Buy them and always start constructing when you have the resources. I say this because if you build halfway the foundation for example and go away, a lot of time you lose things like wheelbarrows, hoes, spades, axes etc which cost a lot of money,” says Juuko.

Cutting costs  
Most of the buildings especially storeyed buildings that collapse are usually due to poor workmanship. Some owners find every possible means to cut costs and thus reduce the materials while putting a lot of pressure on builders.  

Have an architectural plan
Due to cheap labour, people who want to construct buildings also have a tendency of not working with architects. They prefer consulting with friends on how they can go about their buildings and this is too risky. Juuko advises that the best thing to do is have an architectural plan and get it approved.

Quantity surveyors
Builders rarely provide the complete list of needed requirements. This is because many don’t want to lose the job. For a job that can cost Shs500 million, they will give you a bill for the quantity of a house of Shs200 million. So it is always good to have a quantity surveyor to do for you bills of quantity so that you have an idea of the project you are going into.

Constructing in wetlands
Wetlands are so cheap but again, they are too costly to maintain but this is one common mistake Ugandans do when they are constructing. “A lot of people prefer building in wetlands because a piece of land that costs about shs 10 million will cost shs2 million in a wetland. This is a good deal but what people don’t know is that there are extra charges incurred not just on the foundation but during the aftermath. That is why you see flooded houses during the rainy season, there are so many mosquitoes at the premises and so on,” stated Denis Juuko.

Cheap labour
There is a tendency of Ugandans considering the price of labour. Let’s say if somebody says work will cost about Shs1million, the owner of the building will consider one who is charging Shs500,000 yet, the cheapest price is not always the best. This is why there is a lot of unprofessionalism on the site where most of the builders learn on the job.

Additional reporting by Isaac Ssejjombwe