Building Bye-Laws: Why are they Important in Construction?
Preet Chovatiya
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What are Building Bye-Laws?
Building bye-laws are legal tools used to regulate building coverage, height, area of construction, and architectural designs to maintain the growth or orderly development of a place.
Why are Building Bye-Laws Necessary?
Building bye-laws are necessary to protect any building against noise, fire, earthquakes, structural failures, and any hazardous activity. Many small and medium-sized structures in India don’t have building bye-laws and are constructed in the absence of any regulatory mechanism with excessive coverage and dangerous development causing a chaotic situation.
General Information on Model Building Bye-Laws
TCPO prepares the Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 for Urban local bodies, state government, and urban local authorities for regulating illegal activity. This is the improved version of Model Building Bye-Laws 2004.The Ministry of Urban Development decided to prepare the model building bye-laws in 2003 as a result of the 2001 Bhuj earthquake. It was drafted with consideration of points like structural system, rainwater harvesting, wastewater management, and solar heating, fire-resistant structure, etc.These bye-laws were provided to all the states, of which 22 states have taken a comprehensive revision of Model Building Bye-Laws 2004. The reasons for the revision are mentioned below:
Swatch Bharat Mission
Ease of doing business
New trending technological developments
Environmental factors
Safety and security
In 2015, the Ministry of Urban Development desired some additions to the Model Building Bye-Laws 2004. The ministry wished to add norms of solar roof installation, additional building provisions for construction in a hazard-prone area, barrier-free environment for the old, children, and disabled persons, and the effect of electromagnetic radiation in places.After the preparation of the draft of the Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 was circulated to Central Government agencies, Urban Development Corporation, and certain government local bodies and authorities. A national workshop based on the draft of Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 was organized in 2015 with the objective of suggestions for the Model Building Bye-Laws 2016. A total of 110 participants provided their suggestions and comments, some of the important comments are mentioned below:
Low-income housing norms
Update required for the IS code by BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards)
Parking spaces for vehicles (parking norms)
High-rise building standards
Green building standards
Building plan approval for ease of doing business
Update the fire norms by considering the stairs and exit ways
After that review, a meeting was held by the chairman of the secretary (UD) in July 2015, wherein the joint secretary (UD) made a presentation on Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 by considering all the comments and suggestions from the workshop.
The Salient Features of Model Building Bye-Laws 2016
