Of late, several buildings have collapsed in Kenya.
There are procedures and best practices that should be followed to avoid this.

Step 1.

Have the building designed by registered professionals. Architects in Kenya are registered by the Board of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya. The Board of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya is under the Ministry of Public Works. The registration process is rigorous and is a 2- year examination whereby the Government ensures that the applicant has undergone training under a registered Architect for a certain period after graduating from a recognized Architecture School.
After registration as an Architect, the applicant can then register with the Architectural Association of Kenya as a corporate member.
The Architectural association of Kenya also registers students-student membership, architecture graduates who are not registered-graduate membership, building contractors, developers, draftsmen-virtually everyone with an interest in construction.
This begins the confusion in that a would-be developer will approach a quack who is not registered to give Architectural services in Kenya. The quack will then prove to the innocent developer that he is registered to offer Architectural services by producing a registration certificate from Architectural Association of Kenya as a Licentiate member http://www.aak.or.ke/memb_classes.html. What the developer doesn’t know is that only Corporate and Fellow members have the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors certification as a must have requirement.
I also noticed that even leading Banks and Financial institutions still can not differentiate between the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya certificate and an Architectural Association of Kenya certificate. They insist that for someone to offer Architectural services to their customers, one has to hold the Architectural Association of Kenya certificate. What they don’t know is that the Architectural Association of Kenya Licentiate certificate is open to a wide variety of applicants-except the Corporate Membership certificate. This is the trick that is used by most quacks to confuse innocent developers and Financial institutions that they have certificates to offer architectural services since none of the developers will insist of Corporate Membership certificate because they don’t know about the categories of membership.
If a law is established to create one centre of reference for Architects-such as with the Law society of Kenya, we will be one step ahead in ensuring qualified personnel offer Architectural service to Kenyans.

Step 2.

Once the developer has maneuvered their way into getting a licensed Architect to offer the service, read more on http://www.a4architect.c...uction-failure-in-kenya/

"If the plans are scrutinized and all processes are followed, a fatal omission will be easily noticed and structural drawings from a registered structural engineer are supposed to be produced."

Three very long paragraphs with only one line on the structural engineer.then when the building fails its a structural failure. fully involve all the required professionals then such mishaps will be greatly reduced.

@Gathinga..good point. Lets hope they will merge like accountants or lawyers and stop the confusion

@ Drew.. if the issues are structural, its the structural engineer who comments. In Kenya and the rest of the world, the best practice is to have the architect as the project manager. In situations where the structural engineer is the project manager-which are very few, its the structural engineers who are to give the way forward. In design of dams,jettys or bridges, strucctural engineers are the project mangers. In design of houss, the structural design component is marginal-infact most failures in kenya are as a result of project management failure where there is no strict supervision on the part of the contractor and consultants resulting in rogue contractors and quack consultants giving the service.

@ Bkismat..good point. The main reason why the kiambu structures failed is because of poor overall project management.eg no one checked the curing time, neighouring foundation retaining structure e.t.c.

@ kishindo.how many structural topics are architects taught in college?

This reminds me of the dreaded TOS-Theory Of Structures- back in the days..4 years of TOS for architecture students

@ inteligentsia.. legally, the architect is the one who is held liable for such a building failure. In the kiambu cases, the owners could not prove that they hired architects as per law so thats why they had to be charged with manslaughter.If the owners were able to prove that they actually hired architects and the architects were involved in all stages including constructon supervision,then they will not be held liable. In the recent kiambu cases for example, the owners did not have registered architects in the design and supervision team.