The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Construction industry professionals yesterday backed the Government’s plan to upgrade a Bahamas Building Code that is “way behind the curve”.

Quentin Knowles, the Bahamas Society of Engineers (BSE) president, speaking after the Government promised during Wednesday’s re-opening of Parliament to “introduce a new and progressive Building Code to increase resilience in the face of climate change, said this has been promised - but never delivered - by multiple administrations.

He added: “Numerous administrations had been talking about updating the building codes. The Bahamas Building Code, in particular, was published in 2003, and those building codes and related codes are typically updated every four years maximum for obvious reasons. They quickly become out-of-date, and irrelevant and not applicable.”

Mr Knowles said it was troubling that The Bahamas’ building codes have not been revised in almost 20 years.

“Considering all of the new energy efficient requirements and sustainability requirements, and all of the fancy buzzwords you hear, The Bahamas Building Codes are, quite frankly, way behind the curve,” he added.

“Therefore it is very encouraging to see that the new administration has committed to updating it and building in the sustainability requirements that everybody is talking about nowadays.”

Michael Pratt, the Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president, said of the promised Building Code upgrade: “I think the process for revising the Building Code has already been put in place, and they just have to continue the process.”

Craig Delancey, deputy director at the Ministry of Works, was tasked in 2020 with leading efforts to revamp the Bahamas Building Code in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. It was felt that part of Dorian’s devastating impact on housing in Abaco and Grand Bahama was due to weak building codes and a lack of enforcement of their provisions.

Mr Delancey was supposed to report on the progress he had made by the end of 2020, but nothing was ever brought forward.

Mr Pratt, when asked about what the possible new codes would look like, said: “I haven’t seen the enhancement. I’m sure that whatever Mr Delancey is doing will accommodate hurricanes of a higher category. To me that would be the common sense approach to it, but to what level he is going to I don’t know.”