The following are the major causes of building collapse: The structure is not strong enough to support the load and hence it fails when it reaches a critical stress level. ... Vandalism, sabotage, and natural disasters can overstress a structure to the point of failure.
Construction of a building is a human endeavor and thus it is subject to error. Due to this, some buildings are destined to fail.
The most common causes of structural failures are in a buildings are
1. Poor communication between the various design professionals involved, e.g. engineers involved in conceptual design and those involved in the supervision of execution of works.
2. Poor communication between the fabricators and erectors.
3. Bad workmanship, which is often the result of failure to communicate the design decisions to the persons, involved in executing them.
4. Compromises in professional ethics and failure to appreciate the responsibility of the profession to the community at large could also result in catastrophic failures.
5. lack of appropriate professional design and construction experience, especially when novel structures are needed.
6. Complexity of codes and specifications leading to misinterpretation and misapplication.
7. Unwarranted belief in calculations and in specified extreme loads and properties.
8. Poor training of field inspectors
BY CHARTERED INSTITUTE OF BUILDING (CIOB)
PHILIP SELASI ABAVOR
MEMBER No: 2004094
