Disregarding safety: A reality in Indonesia's building design

Zenin Adrian, The Jakarta Post

The recent shocking accident that involved a falling car from the sixth floor of the parking structure at the Menara Jamsostek building in Central Jakarta, has raised an important question: How safe are our buildings?

Sadly, this was not the first such event. There were at least two other previous similar incidents in 2007, one in January 2007 at the Pangrango Bogor shopping mall in Bogor, West Java, and the other one was in May 2007 at the ITC Permata Hijau building in South Jakarta.

These unfortunate events not only raise questions about building safety in the country, but also about the competency of our architects and engineers in this competitive building construction industry.

The issue has raised concerns among architects for the urgency to strictly enforce the 1999 Construction Service Law, which requires building construction professionals to be certified by their professional association.

Licenses and certification are essential to ensure professional responsibility for building design. Currently, there are still a lot of architects and other building professionals in Indonesia who practice without proper licenses or certification.

According to Ahmad Djuhara, the chair of the Jakarta Chapter of the Indonesian Institute of Architects, this situation is a result of how the architect profession is not legally recognized yet by the government in the law.

In other words, legally architects in Indonesia cannot be held responsible for their designs. Among Asian countries, Indonesia is the only one that does not have an architect's act law.

In practice, a building owner's autonomy to hire different architects in different design stages for the same project diminishes the architect's responsibility for the design.

Nobody would want to claim responsibility because of the separate tasks.

I think this is a terrifying situation in an industry which involves millions of lives and shows how chaotic the country's construction industry is. Safety is sacrificed and replaced by aesthetic and economical interests.

If we look at the parking garage at Menara Jamsostek, in my opinion, the guardrail was only designed for people, not moving cars.

Sadly, our building code does not regulate secondary structures such as parapet walls, guardrails or anything that concerns building safety. Although we adopt international standards for reference, there are no legitimate mechanisms to ensure their implementation.

The government never conducts comprehensive building audits that go beyond fire regulations. The 2002 Building Law also does not discuss who would be responsible for conducting such building audits.

In the United States, the roles of the government and architects in ensuring building safety have been overshadowed by the insurance companies.

These companies play a greater role because of their higher interest and liabilities. Banks require the buildings to be insurable in order to give out construction loans to building owners.

It is a kind of economic pressure that could be adopted and implemented in Indonesia in order to quickly raise safety standards.

With the fast growing construction industry in Indonesia, the government should immediately enforce this safety issue and set tighter mechanisms before it is too late.

Zenin Adrian can be reached at zenin.adrian@zadl.net or www.zadl.net