Conference Centre faces imminent collapse - Engineer warns
The lack of maintenance of the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) over the years is threatening the structural integrity of the national edifice that serves as a major hub for national and international events.
Currently, the concrete on the columns at the basement of the building is crumbling rapidly and peeling off, exposing the iron rods in the columns to corrosion.
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Even the thick metal beams or railings that support the columns at the basement to prevent a possible caving in of the building are also corroding due to a mixture of moisture and water at the basement.
A structural engineer at the Ghana Institute of Engineering, Mr Mark Addo, who revealed this in Accra last Wednesday, said the last time maintenance was carried out on the structure was in 2014.
“If you effortlessly touch the steel of the beams at the basement, the concrete and the corroded iron rods peel off, and if there is a compression, there is the tendency for a member of the beams to buckle. When beams start buckling, the building is likely to collapse,” he said.
Inspection
Mr Addo gave the situational assessment of the edifice when members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament visited the centre last Wednesday to assess its status.
Led by its Chairman, Mr Frank Annoh-Dompreh, the committee was taken to the various parts of the centre by a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Mr Mohammad Habibu Tijani.
The committee also went to assess construction work on the Foreign Service Institute and the new passport office projects at Okponglo and Osu, respectively, in Accra.
Structural defect
Mr Addo said due to lack of maintenance of the AICC, the most affected columns at the basement had 30 per cent of the protective concrete gone.
He said while there was not much load exerted on the basement all the time, any occurrence of lateral loading, such as earth tremors, could cause the building to come down.
According to him, since the building was inaugurated in 1991, there had been water on the ground, which had affected the concrete body of the structure.
“What that means is that either there is some passage of water from some external source or there is ground water, but there was no adequate sub-structural drainage.
“When this water seeps into the protection for the iron rods, corrosion starts, and once the water is present, you will always have this buckling of the beams and corrosion of the iron rods,” he explained.
The engineer further said when engineers assessing the facility started to look for sub-structural support for the building, they did not find any, blaming the situation on the non-involvement of local engineers during the construction of the edifice.
“There was no provision for engineers from the Architectural and Engineering Services Limited (AESL), and that, I suspect, must have led to this challenge.
While the building had a basement, there was an elevated embankment in which the structure was sunk to create the scenario of a basement.
“So it is a basement, but in actual, definite term it is not a basement. This water could have been taken care of right from the start,” he said, adding that as of now engineers were not too sure about the extent to which elements underground had been affected.
Shock
Mr Annoh-Dompreh expressed the committee’s shock at the extent of structural defect on the AICC.
He, therefore, appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to initiate immediate action to address the challenge.
“As a committee, we will ensure that something urgent is done to protect this national facility, not just for the sake of rehabilitation but for the fact that it will protect lives and save the economy a lot of money, especially, as we are playing host to the continental free trade agreement,” he said.
