Promoting Eco-Construction
through
Capacity Building of Masons in Asia
A
sia’s construction market is set to be the busiest on this planet. Around 40% of the world’s investment in construction in 2012 was made in Asia. India and China followed closely by Bangladesh and Vietnam have contributed to making Asia the construction hub of the world1. With higher demand from the domestic market, the growth rate is expected to rise.Turning to the other side of the leaf, more than 90% of Asia’s population lives in non-engineered houses
2. The figure shows the contrast in distribution of engineered and non-engineered buildings in Nepal. Such houses are constructed in rural and peri-urban areas following t
he advice of local craftsmen and masons without
supervision of an engineer or an architect. Most masons do not have formal
training and have learnt building skills through observation and practice.
Lack of formal training has resulted in a blanket cover of resource
intensive construction practices across regions. Migration of masons fuels
this problem.
In countries such as India, China and Bangladesh, abundant unskilled labour is available. However, there is a lack of formally trained skilled workers. In 2011, the construction sector employed 41 million people. Only 6% of employees in the sector had proper training, and ‘the shortage of skilled workers is exacerbated by a lack of capacity in public and private training institutions’
3. Region specific training and capacity building of masons can vastly improve the quality and resource efficiency in the construction sector. Easy to learn and implement eco-construction techniques such as rat trap bond (for better thermal insulation in walls), micro-concrete roofs (low resource, durable roofs) and use of locally available mud, amongst others are a few solutions. Such construction techniques put less stress on the environment, reduce construction and demolition waste, reduce input materials and costs and improve aesthetics. These mason trainings can be highly decentralised, customised and easily disseminated throughout various regions. Masons and artisans being highly adaptive in nature, have steeper learning curves in relatively short intervals of time.Training and Capacity Building of Masons in Bundelkhand, Central India
Development Alternatives is working towards creating a pilot task force of masons trained and certified in eco-construction technologies, which will cater to the rising demand of housing in rural and peri-urban areas in India. The model can be easily adapted and customised according to the region and the construction demand.
One of the approaches to successful dissemination is the Horizontal Learning Approach in which the masons learn from each other, guided by a few trainers and local expert masons. While trainers bring along formal training methods and maintain quality of training, local expert masons carry rich knowledge of local materials as well as traditional techniques that can be blended into modern construction methods. The learning flows from one region to another, gathering local and traditional knowledge along the way which masons can use and adapt to their benefit. Additionally, home owners get the end benefits by saving on input material costs and labour costs due to lesser time taken in construction, more structurally sound homes designed according to the specific region and better thermal insulation along with pleasing aesthetics.
Imminent climate change and rise in occurrence and unpredictability of natural and man made disasters has put more emphasis on practicing engineered construction than ever. There is an immense demand for construction of residential buildings from the rural and peri-urban population of Asia. An equally large workforce of trained masons will be required to cater to the demand via sustainable construction. Localised capacity building of masons is a step Asia should collectively take towards that direction. q
Saksham Nijhawan
snijhawan@devalt.org
Endnotes
2 Dixit, Amod M. "Promoting Safer Building Construction in Nepal." Thirteen World Conference on Earthquake Engineering. 2004.
3 Planning Commission (2013) ‘Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) Economic Sectors’, Volume II. New Delhi: Government of India.