BANGALORE: The recent announcement of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) and the Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services (KSFES) Department on fire safety certification has raised quite a few eyebrows in the real estate industry.Accordingly, the basic fire certification needs to be provided to builders within 30 days.While it sounds like a positive move for the industry and a relief for all the 180 CREDAI members, the practicality of such a move is being questioned.“It is not possible to speed up the process as the KSFES works manually while issuing such basic certification,” argued a builder, on condition of anonymity.While an industry expert questioned how “credible” would the entire process be, if the issuance of a no-objection certificate (NOC) and a clearance certificate (CC), which earlier took months or even years, would now have to be completed within 30 days.“Currently, the KSFES has been manually going through each drawing and then mulling over all the errors and suggestions. This consumes a lot of time. According to our MoU, we will be providing a software prepared by a company which would identify the errors in the drawing. It would indicate whether a particular project proposal is in acceptance of the norms by highlighting the faults in red colour. Then at the click of a button, the department can either condone or reject the proposal. The company has provided a similar software to civic bodies of other places like Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Nagpur and other places. Hence, their credibility is established,” asserted Sushil Mantri, under whose Presidentship CREDAI signed the MoU.He argued that it is important to make this move as almost 90 percent developers are suffering because a handful of builders did not follow norms. “CREDAI members are responsible for almost 60-70 percent output of the city. Further, to become a member of the confederation, they have to sign a code of conduct which covers all the approvals and rules. By delaying progress of approvals, not only do builders incur losses as production suffers, but also the revenue to the city and BBMP is further delayed,” he said.However, the experts observe there is a need for a body which would govern the legalities of buildings constructed by local builders too, who are not with the CREDAI.“The memorandum of understanding is surely a welcome initiative. It is crucial to raise the bar to National Building Code guidelines on all safety parameters,” said Shrinivas Rao, CEO-Asia Pacific, Vestian Global.A LOOK AT SERVICE DELIVERYThe question is whether the short-staffed Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services Department will be able to deliver.The department has placed a requisition to recruit around 66 more people in their team, last year, after the High Court order asking to streamline and conduct regular fire audits.However, they still have not been able to get these members to conduct the audits swiftly.“It is true that we need around 66 more persons. But these members are going to be part of the special investigation team. The MoU with CREDAI would speed up the process which was done manually. Any new technological and other introduction is welcome,” said B G Changappa, Director, Karnataka State Fire and Emergency Services.According to the MOU, the application and documentation process for NOC and OC will be streamlined through the implementation of a software.This initiative aims at not only reducing the timelines for approvals, but will also bring about transparency and accountability to both builders and Government authorities.A builder needs to obtain an NOC from KSFES before obtaining plan sanction from the BBMP.Further, after construction, the Fire officials will inspect the building and provide issue the clearance certificate, only after which the BBMP will issue occupancy certificate.Thus, obtaining the NOC and CC within 30 days after the submission of documents will shorten the time frame for building approval and building commissioning.
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