The Tribune

• Minister Sweeting emphasizes cautious approach to prevent increased costs

• Contractors warn stringent changes may raise construction expenses for consumers

• Amid climate challenges, balancing cost and safety in building codes

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Contractors Association president Leonard Sands said yesterday that the entire building code does not need to be revised - just the code for certain islands.

Mr Sands spoke to Tribune Business about the length of time it is taking to revise Bahamas building codes and said more stringent measures will end up increasing the cost to build.

He said: “The more requirements you put in there for the contractor, it gets passed on to consumers. If you’re asking for increase in the shear load on a wall, because you can do a block wall without having any vertical and horizontal reinforcement and if the code changes and now you have to include vertical and horizontal reinforcement of the perimeter, then you’re talking about the perimeter of your home going up by a certain percentage because of the new requirement of steel in the perimeter walls all the way up.

“Right now only an engineer would recommend that kind of change to your perimeter wall. But if the ministry of works were to make a sweeping change to the building code, making that mandatory, then the cost of construction will go up. It really depends on what the changes in the building codes are going to be and which areas of the code they are talking about changing.”

Clay Sweeting, Minister of Works and Local Government, said at the last Office of the Prime Minister press briefing that the reason why the revision for the code is taking so long is because the ministry does not want to make the codes too stringent to make home construction more costly for consumer.

This is a delicate balancing act with the country dealing with the effects of climate change, such as more and stronger hurricanes. Many buildings destroyed during Hurricane Dorian in September 2019 had not been built to current building codes - but even if they were, would likely have still been destroyed by Dorian.

Mr Sands said: “The building code on certain islands need to be revisited, but the entire building code does not need to be touched and they should address it that way.

He said there should be just a “caveat” that when building on the shoreline, just make minor improvements but not the entire thing needs to be revised, but Mr Sands is not sure if this is the approach that the government is taking despite being on the committee that is overseeing this attempt at revising the building code.

Calls to Mr Sweeting and Craig Delancey, deputy director at the Ministry of Works responsible for overseeing this effort, were not returned up to press time.