The Angeles City Council is mulling a third party monitoring of ongoing construction works to help prevent another disastrous building collapse.
Vice Mayor Amos Rivera, also presiding officer of the Sangguniang Panlungsod, said that the council would pass an ordinance for a mandatory inspection of ongoing construction of buildings in the city.
“We have to ensure that incident will not happen anymore,” Rivera said.
The vice mayor was referring to the May 24 collapse of a 9-storey building under construction in Barangay Balibago where more than 30 people were buried. He made the announcement during KapiHann, a regular media forum of the Pampanga Press Club at Swissotel Clark inside Hann Resorts.
He said that while still waiting for the conclusion of the investigation ordered by Mayor Jon Lazatin, the SP is mulling the passage of some legislative measures.
“One of the proposed ‘integration’ of the ordinance is to have a third party evaluator that this firm or individual is qualfied or competent enough to make periodic inspections,” he added.
Rivera disclosed that the planned inspection “must be conducted during building construction”.
Inspectors, he said, must be certified members of a structural engineers association and must not in any way be connected to the owner, construction firm and the city government.
He observed that there are no periodic inspections, with limited manpower of the city government and that they are just made on “as-built basis” when building occupancy permit is already being requested.
“This (inspection on as-built basis) leads to some problems on structural integrity and aesthetics,” the VM said.
He stressed that building construction plans must be complied with and those finished on as-built basis must be thoroughly checked especially for possible deviations.
He also announced that the city would also require seismic or earthquake isolators for high rise buildings that would be erected in Angeles City.
“This will be unprecedented and we have to be pro-active as we anticipate the so-called The Big One,” he furthered.
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