‘Karachi’s bridges could come falling down’

KARACHI: Bridges in the city are on shaky foundations, warned a civil engineer and chancellor Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology (SSUET) on Thursday. Poor standards of construction mean that if any extra load is put on the bridges they can collapse, said Z A Nizami at the conference, “Future Challenges in Civil Engineering”, which was organised by the department of civil engineering.

An ever-expanding metropolis, Karachi, is bigger than 82 of the countries registered with the United Nations but its development standards fall far behind most.

“As an engineer you have to check 25 items before deciding on the quality of a road,” he informed the audience. The checklist included some tests, the quality of the material used and the design of the project.

“Just take an overloaded trailer over some of the newly constructed bridges and these might collapse,” he predicted.

Standard procedures of construction are rarely followed in Pakistan, he lamented.

Fridous Shamim Naqvi, an engineer, threw light on different aspects of practical engineering in his presentation. He advised the faculty members of the department to include at least eight credit hours study of finance management.

“The first priority of an engineer should be to know how to manage his time. The second priority should be to know finance and human resource management and then equipment management,” said Naqvi.

He also criticised some modes of construction in which in order to reduce cost of the housing, quality of construction material is compromised. “Only standardisation of housing can reduce its cost,” he said.

Shahid Lutfi of the Waste Management consultancy guided aspirant engineers at the conference on how to make sustainable development possible.

“Sustainable development means development in which you develop without challenging the prospects of the future generation,” said Lufti. He stressed the importance of knowing the environmental impacts of a project for engineers.

Engineer Hasan Mehmood discussed the changes in civil engineering that have taken place during the last nine years.

“Civil engineering has entered a new phase in the 21st century,” he said, explaining how first it was just about construction but now engineers had to think along multiple lines and incorporate other factors, including the environment, into their designs.

Engineer Farhat Adil of the Nespak discussed cost control and quality construction work.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2010.