Building Collapse: The Involvement of Building Professionals and Their Culpability

Abstract

The research paper focused on the construction industry professionals who are responsible for the incessant building collapse, with the view to awake the professionals to their responsibilities in the construction industry. Continuous occurrences of building collapse around the world, especially in Nigeria is becoming a great concern to every stakeholders. There is a great concern that if the construction industry professionals are performing their duties effectively, occurrence of building collapse should have been reduced to a low level. It is also the major concern of the larger society that any construction industry professionals who fails to perform his duty should be made to face the full wrath of the law, if found liable. This paper investigated the involvement of construction professionals in the building collapse occurrences and how culpable they are.. Relevant literatures were reviewed and through secondary sources of information, relevant case laws of building collapse cases were analyzed through descriptive analysis. It was discovered that most construction industry professionals were culpable for most building collapse incident in Nigeria and in some other part of the world. Consequently, the paper recommends among other things that laws that will stipulate stiffer penalty for the liable professionals should be enacted, and this will serve as a deterrent to other professionals in the building industry and this will also reduce or bring to an end the negligent altitude at which building construction professionals and contractor are carrying out their duties.

Keywords: Building collapse,   professionals, Liability, Culpability, Case law.