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The Nigeria Building and Roads Research Institute (NBRRI), is to establish a construction laboratory in Plateau, to ease the conduct of laboratory tests on soil and other building materials.
The project, according to Terver Tyosar, NBRRI’s North Central Zonal Coordinator, will address the challenges researchers face in their search for avenues to test soil and other items, before embarking on projects.
He said that a library was also being established to help researchers with information on construction materials.
“The situation has been particularly bad in the north central where researchers have to travel to far distances to test specimen,” Tyosar told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Sunday in Jos.
He said that students would be allowed to access the facilities at the laboratory and library, to shore up the fortunes of the development and construction sector.
Tyosar said that both projects would be executed with NBRRI’s interlocking bricks technology, which utilizes 95 per cent of laterite, an indigenous material found in Plateau, so as to reduce the cost by 30 per cent.
He said that the institute was using the same technology to construct a skills acquisition centre, a block of classrooms, a modern housing layout and a hostel in Plateau.
The official noted that the institute had similar challenges of dwindling resources like every organisation, but was working in synergy with key stakeholders like the Nigerian Association of Engineering Craftsmen (NAEC), toward affordable houses for the poor.
He further said that the institute was working with stakeholders toward instilling standards that would avert disasters like building collapses that had become common.
“ The interlocking brick technology is cheaper than the conventional building technology; it is fire resistant, has thermal control and its bricks are easily removed and transferred to desirable modifications or renovations,” he said.
NAN reports that the institute recently held a three-day capacity building seminar for contractors on the interlocking brick technology.
