INGENIEUR
INGENIEUR
It was a major decision as six related laws had to be amended simultaneously including the Street , Drainage and Building Act , UBBL , Strata Title Act , the Building and Common Property Act , and the Housing Development Act and Regulation . The Ministry of Housing and Local Government set up a Working Group ( WG ) to amend the UBBL by introducing the CCC . The working group consisted of stakeholders from the industry and three permanent members i . e . Ir . Fong Tian Yong from the Ministry , Ir . Chen Thiam Leong from the Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia ( ACEM ) and Ar . Tan Pei Ing from Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia ( PAM ).
The WG decided to introduce the following provisions in the UBBL among others :
( a ) introduce the concept of the Principal Submitting Person as the lead consultant of the project to issue the CCC .
( b ) assign accountability to various stakeholders involved in the project to make them accountable through the signing of the respective forms G1 to G21 .
The amended UBBL incorporating the CCC came into force on April 12 , 2007 and since then , all buildings with Building Plans approved after April 12 , 2007 will fall under the regime of the CCC which will be issued by the Principal Submitting Person . This also marked the beginning of the era when Professional Engineers are given the power to issue CCCs for buildings under Appendix C , as defined in the Joint Circular on submissions of Building Plans between the Board of Engineers Malaysia and Board of Architects Malaysia .
History of the development of UBBL
UBBL 1984 has been implemented for 30 years now since its effective date of implementation in 1986 but not many know that the action to draft the UBBL started 60 years ago . Dato ’ Kington Loo made the effort to forward a paper to the Local Government Department in 1999 entitled “ The Uniform Building By-Laws 1984 – A Brief history of its Development and Evolution ”. I felt duty bound to reproduce the salient points of that paper as it recounts the history of the tedious process of going through the complex subjects involved by a team of dedicated professionals , which was headed by Dato ’ Kingston Loo himself .
Introduction
The document set out the background to the UBBL , why and how they came about as well as the key people who were instrumental in and contributed to its formation . This is necessary because after nearly half a century , memories may fade and there is a danger that important events may become lost forever . The paper was based on Kington Loo ’ s own direct and personal knowledge based on the records of the many files of draft after draft , minutes of meetings as well as notes he has kept . Some of course , have unavoidably become faded with time or consumed by silverfish or high humidity , but fortunately the bulk of these were retrievable .
In 1974 when the Street , Drainage and Building Act was enacted , among various reasons , it was “ to amend and consolidate the laws relating to street , drainage and building in local authority areas in West Malaysia , and for purposes connected therewith ”.
The key word was to “ consolidate ”. The reason was to improve the situation that had hitherto been hampering the progress of development throughout the country and which was already overdue at that time . Why this was so , will be explained a little later . But first , lest it be forgotten , is some background context .
Although building construction activity was revived after the end of the Japanese Occupation , the adequacy or otherwise of the relevant regulations was not really noticed because building materials were in short supply and works undertaken by architects comprised mainly repairs and renovations or valuations and expert opinions for claims from insurance companies . Besides this , emergency controls were in place and were imposed by Competent Authority under the provisions of Legislation for the control of Building . Later on , the implementation of the “ Briggs Plan ” for the settlement of squatters throughout the country involved the demolition and re-construction of thousands of dwelling units all over the country . The Public Works Department ( PWD ) had then estimated that even with the total available manpower in the building trade ,
52 VOL 69 JANUARY-MARCH 2017