Bangladesh engineers have acquired the technical knowledge from Japan to make a vulnerable building earthquake resistance for the first time in the country.
“Now, we can claim that we know how to make a vulnerable existing building stronger against earthquake,” Public Works Department (PWD) Additional Chief Engineer Ainul Farhad told BSS in an interview recently.
A group of Japanese expert under a JICA’s four year project, ended last month, titled “Capacity Development on Natural Disaster Resistant Techniques of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings (CNCRP)” imparted training to engineers of PWD and other organizations on retrofitting technology in last four years (from 2011 to 2015).
Retrofitting is a technology that could be used to make a vulnerable building earthquake resistant without demolishing it and usually it costs 30 to 40 percent of the new construction cost of the targeted building.
The Japanese experts and PWD engineers have already retrofitted the Tejgaon fire station and presently working at a garments factory in Ashulia to make examples.
“Japan, as most tremor prone country, is a master of retrofitting technology and keeping vulnerability of Bangladesh towards earthquake, we are transferring the technology,” he said.
“We had to spend 30 percent of the new construction cost of the fire station to retrofit it. If we didn’t transfer the technology from Japan then we have to demolish the whole building as well as build a new one,” he said.
He said the retrofitting technology has two benefits – one you don’t need to demolish the building and it can be carried out keeping the operational activities of the building.
Ainul said throughout the project in last four years the PWD engineers studied seismic evaluation and retrofit design of RC buildings by Japanese method and prepared six different manuals that will help in constructing earthquake resistant new buildings as well as strengthening vulnerable old buildings.
Noting that the current Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) has no provision of seismic evaluation and retrofit design, he hoped that the retrofit design will be added in the upcoming revised BNBC.
“Under the project, 25 of our engineers received extensive training in Dhaka and Japan on retrofitting technology,” he said adding “Apart from these 25 local engineers more 252 engineers from PWD and other organization have also been received training in Dhaka,” he said.
After observing success of CNCRP, the Bangladesh government has taken another capacity building project titled Building Safety Promotion Project (BSPP) with the technical support of JICA.
“Under the new project the Japan experts will also imparted training to the local engineer how to build landslide, flood, surge and climate change resistant buildings,” Ainul said.
Besides, he said the government has also planned to take a mega project titled “Urban building Safety”.
Under this planned project, nine fire stations will be retrofitted and a modern building will be built for Fire Service and Civil Defence headquarters. A fund will also be created to provide soft loan to the RMG owners for making their factory unit jolt resistance to avoid any such tragic incident like Rana Plaza, he said.
