• Friday, April 19, 2024
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BusinessDay

Construction Kaiser, PERI partnership seeks end to fatalities at construction sites

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Construction Kaiser Limited (CKL), one of Nigeria’s leading indigenous construction firms, and PERI, a long standing foreign firm specialized in the production of construction equipment, have sealed pact to ensure that accidents or fatalities and cases of building collapse are reduced drastically.

In Nigeria, fatalities or accidents at construction sites, building collapse incidents and construction failures generally have always been attributed to human error and the consequences are monumental. Weak scaffolding, wrong formwork placement and poor training in the use of formwork are some of the cases in point and these alone account for over 50 percent of fatalities at construction sites.

PERI, founded in 1969, is the world’s largest manufacturer of formwork and scaffolding with over 70 subsidiaries and 120 logistics centers worldwide. The company has over 8,000 employees worldwide and has blazed the trail in formwork and scaffolding innovation in Nigeria in the last four years it opened for business in the country.

“We are pleased to align our operations with PERI through this technical partnership agreement. This affiliation is indeed of great importance to us because of PERI’s technical innovations that we will be leveraging on in our operations”, said Igbuan Okaisabor, CKL’s  executive vice chairman/CEO at the agreement signing event in Lagos recently.

He explained that the partnership would also entail PERI providing free training for artisans, disclosing that Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) collaborated  with CKL to train over 500 artisans in the use of formwork at the Lagos State Employability Support Project.

Stefan Euchenhofer, PERI’s managing director, assured that the training they were to give would further empower Lagosians by creating employment for their youth and ultimately reduce crime and poverty. “The public is hereby rest-assured that work is to be executed in a safe and smart manner, thereby eliminating incidents attributed to formwork and scaffolding failures”, he assured further.

In the last decade, CKL has progressed steadily to become a major player in the challenging Nigerian construction industry. From a modest five-man organization carrying out minor renovation works, the company has grown to become a national force with offices in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt where it has successfully executed major projects.

With over 200 staff, half of which are direct industry professionals, CKL undertakes residential, commercial, and industrial engineering construction projects in different parts of the country. Its countrywide operations are supported by a strong construction equipment base.

The company is managed by a team of seasoned professionals in each of the three regional locations  headed by regional directors. It has quality delivery and clients’ satisfaction as its core values and these have remained its key success factors over the years.

In response to the peculiarities of the typical emerging market in which it operates, CKL has positioned itself as a one-stop construction shop through vertical integration that birthed her sister companies which include M&E Kaiser Limited (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing Services Installation Works), Kaiser Fabrication Limited (Steel Fabrication & Erection), and Noah Michael LLC (Construction & Project Advisory Services).

CHUKA UROKO