Table 1. Common Causes of Construction Failures
Partial or full collapse of buildings under construction is a disturbing trend in India. These failures are drawing the attention of professional Civil Engineers and public as they cause loss of life and property. It is alarming to note that majority of such building failures during construction is of private buildings, where it was assumed that quality assurance and control were much superior to public works of similar nature. If the central government's focus on 'Housing for all by 2022' has to succeed, greater confidence in the minds of Indian and foreign investors has to be instilled. Hence sound construction practices like peer/third party review, professional ethics and integrity, strict code enforcement, precisely defined duties and responsibilities for stake holders, institution for failure investigation, better technical education are to be incorporated. In this study, the building failures during construction are analyzed for determining the shortcomings and suggestions for reducing such failures are made.
It is generally accepted that failure is the stepping stone to success and hence experimentation is encouraged. However, in the construction industry failures may lead to calamities, deaths and at times scars on the environment. Construction failures result in litigations, loss of reputation, and at times criminal indictment. Hence, the construction industry is several types of failure and failures are not openly discussed and debated.
Construction failures can result in fatalities, permanent handicap, severe injuries, psychological stress, economic and environmental damages (Janssens, O'Dwyer & Chryssanthopoulos, 2012). A construction failure resulting in loss of life may put an end to career of the builder, designer, and other people assuming responsibility for various stages of the construction besides facing criminal charges at times. The owner of the construction faces legal and economic consequences.
The sixth king of Babylonia, Hammurabi enacted a code for governance and is perhaps the oldest document on matters of contract. This code is very strict on failures particularly if it caused fatalities. The builder would be put to death for the death of the owner and the builder's son would be put to death for the death of the owner's son. While such laws which prohibit innovations have no place in today's world, it is necessary to make case studies of construction failures of the past and learn from them.
The term construction failure could mean a structure in distress requiring immediate attention and it could also mean structures which have partially or fully collapsed. Wardhana and Hadipriono (2003) have found that partial collapse is more frequent (71.88%), followed by total collapse (20.54%), and distress (7.58%). The reasons for construction failures vary from project to project and the failure is usually a result of several interrelated factors compounding with each other. The prominent reasons suggested by reviewers are listed in Table 1. Wardhana and Hadipriono (2003) have determined that failure due to design, detailing and material deficiencies is not prominent (5.80%), when compared to maintenance (10.26%), external factors (27.23%), construction (28.13%), and other unaccountable factors (28.57%).
Table 1. Common Causes of Construction Failures
In the United States of America, there was an attempt to collect details of construction failures and perform a detailed analysis through the Architecture and Engineering Performance Center, but this was closed down in a few years due to budget constraints (Kaminetzky, 1991). However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), US Department of Commerce undertakes disaster and failure studies to suggest improvements to codes, standards and practices to minimize similar risks and increase safety standards. Based on its study of the collapse of the towers of World Trade Center at New York, NIST has recommended changes to 37 specific national standards, codes and regulations (Sunder et al., 2005). Hence, from failure case studies it is possible to learn several things about the reasons for failure and what preventive actions could have saved the structure. It also exposes the deficiency in the design, factor of safety, and other assumptions made in the design.
In India however, there appears to be no such state or central institution empowered to conduct investigations and suggest remedial measures to avoid such disasters in the future. However, whenever major disasters have happened, commissions of enquiry are appointed to assess the reasons for failure. Such fact finding commissions have served the purpose of finding persons responsible for the failure, but not the larger purpose of suggesting measures to avoid such failures in the future. Moreover, the reports of many such commissions are not made public for legal and other reasons. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) keeps a record of deaths due to collapse of structures (includes buildings and other structures) and as per this, the death toll was more than 3000 persons in 2001 and 2011, but in the years 2014 and 2015, the number of deaths were 1821 and 1885, respectively (National Crime Records Bureau [NCRB], 2015).
In India, building failures appear to happen either during construction or after the construction has served its purpose for a considerable period. The reasons for the later can be attributed to poor maintenance, over loading, and unscientific structural changes. In this case, the evidence of likely collapse of the building is visible and hence adequate precautionary measure like isolation of the building and its safe demolition can be undertaken. However, reasons for failures during construction are more difficult to identify and such failures have happened without adequate warning. One pier along with several cantilever segments of the Kota Bridge under construction in Rajasthan collapsed in December 2009, killing 48 construction workers and injuring several others (Kumar, 2016). This bridge under construction collapsed without any warning signals (Kota Chambal Bridge, 2019). Jha (2017) has pointed out that 60% of construction failures are a result of collapse of formwork, inadequate shoring and bracing, 8% of the failures is due to premature removal of shores, and 18% of the failures is due to use of faulty formwork materials.
The essence of professionalism in engineering is integrity, honesty, obligations to the public client, and to the profession itself. In the developed countries, liability laws are very strong and are administered in quick time and if professional approach is determined to be lacking, the professional certification is withdrawn. India does not have such professional certification and in case of collapse, the police investigates the matter as per Indian penal codes, but due to their lack of knowledge in these technical matters, political patronage, long and complicated legal procedures such investigations have mostly remained uneventful.
Failure of buildings under construction at various places in different parts of India are getting reported in the media quite too often in the recent past and many such failures are reported to have resulted in fatalities and serious injuries to construction workers and other people at the construction site during the mishap. The quality of cement and other construction materials produced in India is exported to different countries of the world and there have been no quality concerns. Similarly, Indian construction companies and engineers are executing civil works in several countries in compliance of the construction code requirements and specifications of the respective country and their performance have received appreciation. In view of this, there is a need to review the failure of buildings in India and assess the reasons for the same and also to suggest possible remedial measures. Hence, in this review, construction failures in India which have caused ripples are discussed to know the reasons for the failure and to know if proper evaluation of the reasons for such failures are assessed and corrective steps initiated to prevent such failures in the future.
It was initially planned to collect data of all building failures from 2000 for this study. However due to the absence of central or state institute having such data and the large and unwieldy number of building failures, the data for the current year of 2019 is collected and detailed in Table 2. This data is collected from newspaper reports and Google search in the absence of any other statistical alternative. It is evident that the actual number of building failures would be much bigger as many such failures which do not involve human causalities and are in gated communities and interior locations go unreported.
Table 2. Building Failure Statistics (India) of 2019, till July 31, 2019
A seven floor hotel and shopping complex in downtown Majestic area of Bangalore collapsed on 12-09-1983 killing 123 people and injuring 120 people. No reports of any cracks or other warning signs of the impending disaster were reported. Post this collapse, a commission of enquiry (Sethi, 1998), which examined the reasons for the collapse has listed the lapses during the construction.
Two, eleven floor residential twin towers named Faith and Belief were under construction in Moulivakkam, Chennai. One of these towers Faith collapsed during construction killing 61 persons, when the city was under a spell of heavy rains. The reasons for the collapse of the building appear to be the following (Radhakrishnan, Selvan, & Kumar, 2017):
The investigation of the other building which was subsequently demolished has revealed that the buildings were underdesigned and would not resist any lateral loads caused by earthquake and strong winds.
In a plot of land measuring about 3 acres, said to be procured illegally, a gated community paradoxically named Lucky Compound, two multistory apartments named Adarsh A and Adarsh B were under construction. No approval from the local municipality was obtained for these constructions and as a result, the number of floors planned for each building is unclear. The building Adarsh A of 7 floors was constructed in haste in a span of 4-5 months. 8th floor for the building Adarsh B was under construction in a similar manner, when it collapsed on April 4, 2013. 136 people were trapped under the debris, of whom 62 could be rescued while the balance 74 consisting of 33 men, 23 women and 18 children lost their lives. It comes as a surprise that such large number of children were present in a building under construction, but the fact is that fearing demolition of the unauthorized building, the developers gave the apartments for occupation to people below the poverty line treating them as temporary tenants. The causes of failure as per Satendra, and Naik (2014) and newspaper reports (Press Trust of India, 2013; Mengle, 2013) are as under.
The failure of the buildings detailed above and the list of building failures in Table 2, indicate that the failures are manmade and are a result of neglect of quality control, use of inferior quality materials, inadequate structural design, human greed to make profits without any care for human life and environment, lack of professional integrity and commitment, no proper system to identify and penalize/punish the guilty and finally a well-oiled system of illegal gratification, which has let such incidents recur with total disdain. There is a general opinion in the public mind that poor quality of construction, unfair construction practices and syndicating between the builder, department engineers and politicians is mainly in the public works of which the government is the owner. However, these cases and the list of failures in Table 2 indicate that this disease is fast spreading to private constructions and if left unchecked could end in catastrophic consequences.
The building failures also indicate that investigations in these cases are limited to identifying negligence on the part of different individuals and agencies involved for legal requirements and not for analyzing and strengthening the codes and other specifications to avoid future failures.
From these cases it can also be noted that instead of reducing time and cost of works through better construction management practices, compromises are made by making designs using software tools by people who are ignorant of structural aspects of the design and concrete behavior and may not be able to identify basic conceptual errors.
The frequency of construction failures indicate the need for setting up a nodal agency at State/Central level to which details of construction failures are to be mandatorily reported, which can then be investigated by a team of experts. This would enable bringing changes to the codes of practice and bringing in laws which will make it difficult for people to continue to practice their work once professional negligence is detected. Such an investigation report will also help in pinning the guilty for criminal negligence.
Due to increased construction activities and a dynamic system of contractor, sub-contractor coming into force, construction failures were reported in large numbers in USA from 1970 to 1980 (Feld & Carper, 1997). Scattered testing and inspection, need for expeditious construction and maximization of profits, adoption of new techniques of planning and scheduling and several other reasons were assessed to have been the reasons for these failures. Several conferences, studies of failures and interaction with construction experts were made to identify the ways by which such failures could be avoided. Based on four interdisciplinary conferences (Gross, 1986; Bell, Kan & Wright, 1989; Feld & Carper, 1997) held in USA between 1983 and 1987, Feld and Carper (1997) have made several recommendations on the aspects to be considered for avoiding/reducing construction failures. The adoption of these measures resulted in better safety, quality, and overall improvement in the construction standards. These recommendations if adopted in Indian worksites will reduce the frequency of construction failures. These recommendations along with other possible measures suitable for Indian construction sites and methodology of adoption are discussed in Table 3.
Table 3. Expert Recommendations for Reducing Construction Failures (Feld & Carper, 1997)
The review of building failures in India in the recent past suggests that failures are happening in large numbers. The study indicates that there is no centralized system to gather statistical information about such failures and a study of the reasons for such failures. Since such failures end in court cases, individual researchers cannot access the construction sites for analysis and review. However, it is evident that most building failures in India are due to lack of professional integrity, use of poor quality materials and procedures, lack of inspection by municipal authorities and poor investigation and punishment for professional misconduct. These failures are mostly in case of construction by individual contractors and companies without established names and reputation. Need for technical assessment of reasons for such collapses and course correction is urgently required. Institutions at the State/Central level should be established for gathering statistical information of all building failures and conducting detailed technical investigation to find the reasons for such failures. There is also an urgent need to enforce strict guidelines for quality assurance and control in the construction of buildings in the private sector and also bring into practice high safety standards for such construction works.