A damp-proof course, or DPC, is a continuous layer of waterproof material built into a wall to stop ground moisture from rising into the building. Get it wrong, or leave a single gap, and the damage shows up within a…
Ask ten people on a building site what the difference is between the tender sum and the contract sum, and you will get ten different answers. Some say they are the same number. Others say one belongs to the client…
Open a set of construction drawings and you are looking at two different languages on one site. One set shows how the building looks, feels and functions. The other shows how it stands up. Confusing the two is one of…
The truth is.. when a building falls, everyone in the construction industry asks the same question: what went wrong? On Friday 23 October 2026, a multi-storey building under construction on 9th Street in Eastleigh, Nairobi, collapsed in the afternoon. Our…
Walk onto any busy site in Nairobi, Kisumu or Mombasa and the first thing you notice is the machinery. An excavator cutting a trench, a roller compacting a road base, a mixer turning concrete. Each machine was chosen for a…
A snag list tells you what is wrong on the day of handover. The defects liability period tells you who pays when something else goes wrong afterwards. Many young site engineers, foremen and subcontractors treat it as a formality, and…
A faulty earth on a site cabin can kill someone before anyone notices the problem. On a busy site with wet ground, steel scaffolding, welding sets and long extension leads, earthing and bonding are not paperwork. They decide whether a…
A client walks onto your site with a plot, a rough brief and one question: “How much will this cost?” There are no drawings yet, no Bill of Quantities, and no contractor. The quantity surveyor still has to give a…
Ask three people on one project what the building’s “floor area” is and you can get three different numbers. The architect quotes one figure for the planning application, the quantity surveyor prices from another, and the client uses a third…
Every professional on a construction project hears both words daily: tender and contract. Quantity surveyors price the tender. Architects and engineers evaluate it. Site supervisors inherit the contract. Yet on many sites, people use the two words as if they…
