The one thing you should ensure while building a house or purchasing a property is that the foundation of the building should be strong. The quality of the house will determine your major expenditures in future. Apart from the money, strong infrastructure withstands natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods. The quality of construction is a concern for many consumers who voiced the same on the Real Estate Forum of Magicbricks.

Although new technologies, use of imported raw materials and finer quality products have paved their way into the Indian real estate industry, but complaints regarding the construction quality have not helped much to bring down the volume.

Magicbricks conducted a GuruTalk session on January 7 2016, with Hari Om Gupta, civil structure engineer and director, IAStructE (Indian Association of Structural Engineers) to answer such consumer queries.

The topic of discussion was – ‘Assessing the quality of the house you want to purchase’, and following are Gupta’s top advice points:

1. The quality of construction can only be established by looking at the structural, architectural and services drawings. It can also be vouched by the supervising engineer engaged at the site. It will most certainly not be determined by looking at the available residential inventory. The available housing stock will enable you to measure the comforts of the building but not the quality of construction which is invariably covered by rich finishes on the walls, floors, etc.

2. The structural cost is only 30 per cent of the total cost. The cost of earthquake resistant building materials may increase the structural cost by 5 to 10 per cent, which does not make it expensive. You can compensate this additional cost by compromising on the decorative finishes

3. Before you buy any new or old property you should ask for the architectural, structural and services drawings prepared by professionals engaged on projects. You should also visually inspect for cracks in the walls, beams, slabs, etc. You should also consult engineers to give you some reports on the strength of the building

4. Project quality can only be checked during the construction stage which has to be certified by the site supervising engineer. If you have already bought a property, try locating the columns, beams and slabs which are generally protruding from the walls. The quality of the building depends upon their presence

5. Use strong concrete steel while building a house

6. Sometimes it is more costly to repair a structure than build a new one. Failure of non-load bearing elements are of no significance if structural elements used such as foundation columns, beams or slabs are of good quality

7. Old buildings can be made stronger by retrofitting the structural elements in consultation with a professional structural engineer

8. It is better to wait for a quality project than getting a poor quality one in lesser time

9. Ask the builder to provide you with relevant construction drawings which you can share with structural engineers to assess the quality of the property

Neha Nagpal