The much awaited revised Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) with suggestion of forming an independent regulatory authority to monitor building quality standard as well as guideline for making earthquake resilience building according to the latest 2014 ACI code is on the cards, reports BSS.

“We have finalised it six months before and now it is at the housing and public works ministry waiting to publish in gazette,” Director of Building and Housing Research Institute Mohammad Abu Sadeque told the news agency yesterday.

He said the revised BNBC has already vetted by the law ministry and Housing and Public Works Ministry is going to publish it in gazette form soon.

Sadeque said a new BNBC became a must needed document for the engineers right now as the existing BNBC was made long back in 1993 following the 89 ACI (American Concrete Institute) code.

He said the most significant component of the revised BNBC is giving the suggestion of forming an independent apex regulatory body comprising with five dignitaries having related work experience of at least 30 years.

The objective of the regulatory body will be to monitor whether the new building are being constructed following the revised BNBC, he said.

“Presently, the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) plays the both role as a permission giving authority and also as a monitoring authority of building construction and maintenance. A same body cannot hold the both authority - approving and monitoring,” he said, adding that without forming an independent regulatory body, the BNBC monitoring can’t be ensured properly.

He said presently 5,000 building are being constructed within the Rajuk area and of them 4,000 are not built following the even existing building code and it poses Dhaka into a great threat of urban disaster.