The Gurugram district administration in Haryana will start a structural safety audit of 23 high-rise housing societies to ascertain the quality of the buildings. The structural audit is likely to start from Monday, officials aware of the matter said.
They said that visual inspection of 55 housing societies has been completed on the directions of the district administration out of which 23 societies were shortlisted for the structural safety audit.
The decision was taken at a meeting headed by Gurugram deputy commissioner Nishant Kumar Yadav. The meeting was attended by additional deputy commissioner (ADC) Hitesh Kumar Meena, officials of the Public Works Department and Department of Town and Country Planning, among others.
Yadav said that the district administration has been trying to identify unsafe buildings following the tower collapse incident in Chintels Paradiso housing complex in February 2022. A higher floor of a tower in the Chintels Paradiso complex had collapsed onto lower floors, killing two. Later, adjoining towers were declared unsafe for habitation and residents ordered to evacuate.
“After the audit, a report will be presented before the administration. Based on the report, if needed, buildings will be repaired (retrofitted) and if those are not repairable then those will be vacated,” Yadav said.
Giving more details, ADC Meena said that visual inspection of 55 societies had been completed in the district. During a visual inspection, buildings are checked for signs of damage in columns, walls and slabs, and for any signs of deterioration and other visible defects.
“Out of 55 high-rises where visual inspections were carried out, as many as 23 housing societies reported discrepancies such as cracks in plaster, plaster falling off the walls, seepage problems, among others. We have identified these 23 societies and a detailed structural safety audit will be conducted at these condominiums from Monday (July 10),” Meena told Moneycontrol.
He said that the expenses of the audit will be borne jointly by the respective residents’ welfare association (RWA) and the builder concerned.
He added that the safety audits will be conducted by the four agencies that were empanelled by the administration for the first phase audit last year. These include Bureau Veritas, TPC Technical Projects Consultants, Vintech Consultants and NNC Design International.
Officials said that during the safety audit, various checks like overall condition of the building, plastering, leakage, seepage, dampness condition of water tanks, and cracks in the beams, basement, and slabs, among others, will be minutely analysed.
Apart from this, a second audit of those condominiums where discrepancies were found in the first audit last year will also start from July 10. The first phase of the structural safety audit of 15 condominiums was conducted in October and November last year and a report was submitted to the district administration in December 2022. Issues such as seepage in basements and plasters peeling off the walls in balconies had surfaced in most of the societies during the first phase of the structural audit.
Tulip Ivory, Peaceful Homes, Godrej Summit, Mapsko Royal, Mapsko Casabella, Vedanta, Global Solera, DLF Phase-5, DLF Park Place and Paras Irene are some of the societies that have been chosen for the structural safety audit, officials said.
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