Additional housing commissionerand secretary Rudra Pratap Singh on Sunday said the Housing Board was keen to adopt the latest safety norms recommended by the National Building Code 2005 of BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) to protect its buildings from natural calamities like earthquakes, cyclones, landslides etc. The code also makes provision for structural safety against man-made disasters like fire, electricity, etc.
Housing Board is planning to conduct an extensive training programme for its engineers on National Building Code (NBC) soon so that they may use these norms in their building plans. Singh said, “I would ask BIS to properly induct our engineers on at least 5 most important safety norms which they may apply on field.”
BIS, in coordination with the Institution of Engineers (India), UP State centre had organised an all India workshop in Lucknow to apprise local agencies and engineers on latest developments and provisions of NBC.
NBC 2005 takes care of latest data on earthquakes in the country and lessons learnt from them. It provides guidelines on latest construction practices to ensure that the infrastructure and buildings are able to withstand natural calamities. The national code can be voluntarily adopted by various housing and development bodies.
Abhishek Mishra, minister for science and technology, GoUP who was chief guest at the event told BIS representatives that he would ask local regulatory bodies (like LDA) in the state to incorporate the latest NBC of India 2005-BIS in their local building bylaws. “These norms should be adopted to achieve the objectives of safety, sustainability and ensuring health and proper ambience for building’s occupants to improve productivity.”
Sanjay Pant, director (civil engineering), BIS, New Delhi said the problem with Uttar Pradesh is that building bylaws change with every city and different nodal agencies like LDA, KDA, GDA have different codes for it. As a result, there is no uniform code for building safety which can be observed across the state.
“This is the second time we have come to Lucknow to educate agencies and engineers about the need for proper compliance to the NBC 2005 to achieve the objective of orderly, safe and sustainable development,” he added. In NBC 2005, BIS has also included a new chapter on ‘Approach to Sustainability’ which provides guidance on sustainable and green building construction. Pant claimed that most builders and agencies do not understand the essence of green buildings and sustainable concept. “They often erase local natural vegetation, water bodies for construction purpose and instead make a few plantations, create some green spaces and open space in the name of green belt, which affects the local flora and fauna there,” he said.
The code also makes provision for preservation of existing local flora, fauna, water bodies, and while managing this, allows further construction without tampering the natural environment. Normally, housing societies are meant to keep around 20-30% as green belt in the premises.
The sustainability chapter also educates engineers on selection of appropriate building materials and technology such as fly ash (produced from thermal plants) based brick blocks, plantation timbers instead of forest trees and those grown under agro and social forestry. BIS experts recommend that fly ash creates a lot of pollution hazard and hence can be cleverly used in construction material like bricks, blocks etc to improve construction’s durability.
