Seismic standards: Are our buildings secure?
Do our buildings comply with seismic construction standards? The question is legitimate in view of the tragedy that has occurred in Turkey, where architects, developers, and contractors in the real estate sector are singled out. A hundred of these Turkish operators have even been imprisoned pending the results of the ongoing judicial inquiry.
The scale of the disaster is such that the National Board of the Association of Architects in Morocco has sent a letter to the profession in which it asks for “compliance with earthquake-resistant construction requirements for buildings and civil engineering works”. ‘‘Architects must ensure that the structure plans, technical details, and written documents relating to any construction project are drawn up by a specialized engineer authorized to practice and approved by an inspection entity’’, insists the president of this national association, Chakib Benabdellah.
These documents, he insists, must comply with the requirements of the earthquake regulations RPS 2011. In his letter, the President of the Association recalls that ‘‘architects must ensure that specialized engineers do mention this regulation on the various plans, details, and documents required for any construction request”. A question is essential. Are these standards taken into consideration in the field?
“One must first distinguish between the formal and informal sectors. In the first sector, rules are more or less respected. In the second sector, the situation is very grave. Not only is this regulation not taken into account, but in addition, this sector is eaten away by the signatory architects’’, replies Chakib Benabdellah .
The president of the National Board of the Association of Architects points the finger at the practice of signatures of convenience, which is spreading more and more in the construction sector, and is sounding the alarm about its consequences. “These signatories are a real blight, which harms the quality of construction as well as the landscape of our cities and especially our outskirts. And it is these architects, pushed by unscrupulous developers, who are the real danger today, more than ever”, adds Benabdellah.
Some architects put their signature on a plan of which they are not the authors. Worse still, they do not carry out any follow-up mission on the construction site, while the law is clear. Architects must ensure follow-up on the construction works, and check the compliance with the architectural plans and the indications of the building permits.
Chakib Benabdellah deplores the legal vacuum that makes it difficult to put an end to this issue. “We are trying to combat these practices, but the legal means that are available remain very weak”, he says.o
Khadija SKALLI
