Many who invest their precious money in a dream home are unaware of the procedures they should follow or the guidance, advice and services they should seek from professionals before embarking on a domestic construction. their ignorance or reluctance to employ qualified persons compel them to depend on traditional knowledge or guidance opined by building traders, masons, carpenters or even astrologers and often fall a victim particularly under complex situations where constraints in land extent, terrain, subsoil or the environment etc. prevail.

Homelessness and inadequacy of good quality houses remain a national problem. Every stakeholder in the domestic construction industry, may it be the policy maker, planner, architect, engineer, material supplier, developer, investor or the contractor, has a huge responsibility and an important role to play in finding suitable solutions.

To raise the quality and standard of domestic construction it is also important to empower the home builders by availing personalized building advice, dissemination of good construction practices and a free flow of knowledge. This helps avoid common construction pitfalls and wastage while ensuring cost and safety-conscious, strategic home building free of defects.

“Building Clinic” is a concept initiated and developed by the Civil Engineering Sectional Committee of IESL to offer professional advice free of charge to the needy people having no access to proper technical advice, information or knowledge for building their homes. Building Clinic is given that name for its unique nature of functioning similarly to that of a medical clinic. Individual home builders, home owners, contractors, masons or any other interested persons attending the clinic are received by facilitating engineers and directed to the relevant expert based on the nature of their query or the advice, information or clarification required. They get one-on-one interaction opportunity with an industry professional to present any construction problems directly and obtain personalized expert advice and solutions, information about best construction practices and clarifications to dispel any building myths.

Building Clinic was first conducted as a Help Desk at the Techno 2011 Exhibition by IESL engineers volunteered as experts offering advice on a variety of domestic construction related areas such as; land selection, geo-technical and environmental features, selection and proper use of building materials, low cost methods, disaster resilience, planning and structural design, quantity surveying, estimation, building services including electrical, plumbing and sewage, rainwater harvesting, land drainage, optimizing natural light and ventilation, besides giving solutions to problems such as leakages, building cracks, malfunctioning of septic tank and soakage pits. Extending beyond the annual Techno, Building Clinics were held in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Army at Homagama Camp and with the National Housing Development Authority at Nugasevana Housing Project in Dehiowita, Kegalla.

Recognizing the desperate need to bridge the vast information gap existing between the construction industry and individual home builders, the Building Clinic is now taken directly to the doorstep of people building houses across the island. IESL has embarked on a program in collaboration with UltraTech Cement Lanka (Pvt) Limited as its “exclusive partner” for the Building Clinic based on a memorandum of understanding with no commercial binding between the two parties. IESL provides the panel of professionals and technical information whereas UltraTech provides logistic support including the venue and ensures media campaign to generate awareness on this program. Three such clinics were held so far this year in Maharagama, Galle and Gampaha with the IESL’s experts responding to queries from over 300 home builders. The forthcoming events will be in Kurunegala and Anuradhapura.

Civil Engineering Sectional Committee extends its gratitude to all who contributed to make this programme successful and invite the Members to serve as Experts in the forthcoming events.