18 May 2006 (No. 07 06)

Sector Facts

Meetings

Thursday, May 18th,
at 19.30
Workshop on Seismic-
Safe Building – by Build Change
Design and Construction of Reinforced Concrete Confined Masonry Houses for Aceh
- at UN-Habitat Office.
Jl T.M.Pahlawan No 3A, Banda Aceh. The meeting is fully bilingual

Monday, May 29th,
at 10.00
Shelter Working Group –
Agenda to be reconfirmed
- at Dinas PU.
Jl Pemancar no 5, Banda Aceh. The meeting is fully bilingual

Monday, June 12th,
at 10.00
Shelter Working Group
– Agenda to be reconfirmed - at Dinas PU.
Jl Pemancar no 5, Banda Aceh. The meeting is fully bilingual

For any update, please contact Deepty Tiwari at UN-Habitat.

For Regular schedules, please click.

Last Workgroup Meeting Reports

15-05-06
SWG Meeting Notes

SWG Discussion Items

09-05-2006
Meulaboh Shelter meeting

24-04-06
Shelter and Livelihood meeting Notes

Other Reports

Minutes – BRR Timber Needs Workshop

List Certified companies by FSC

Aceh Habitat Club
Schedule

Thursday, June 1st
Alue Naga case

Thursday, June 15th
Kajhu case

Thursday, June 29th
Kajhu case

Venue : UN-Habitat office
Jl T.M.Pahlawan No 3A, Banda Aceh.

For more information:

Aceh Institute
Contact: Nurul Kamal
Jl Sultan Iskandar Muda N
Punge Blang Cut Banda Aceh 23234
Phone/Fax : +62-651-41682, +62-651-7400185
email: info@acehinstitute.org
Web:www.acehinstitute.org

Monitoring

Milestones

New Houses:

Pledged: 128,000
Under construction: 22,000
Finished April: 24,000
Finished June: 35,000 (predictive)

The full list: ML17May06

Please send your updates to BRR or UN-Habitat
yayan@unhabitat-indonesia.org

Quality Monitoring PU-Unsyiah-UN-Habitat

Brief Summary Early Results

Watsan Monitoring & Evaluation of Post-tsunami Permanent Housing in Aceh & Nias, 2nd Round

Accountability Index

Unsyiah's Report and Data

CD-Rom available at UN-Habitat starting March 1.

Please contact Zulfikar at UN-Habitat to collect the CD-Rom. Download here a form declaring that your organization will keep the identity of respondents confidential.

Document Ticker

UN-Habitat Library in Banda Aceh.

Books : 49

Reports
Soft Copy: 284
Hard Copy: 35

Maps :
Soft Copy: 194
Hard Copy: 12

If you can contribute your documents, please contact Yayan at yayan@unhabitat-indonesia.org

On the Issue of Construction Quality and Satisfaction

Most Houses are broadly adhering to the Building Code

Are the 40,000 houses built or under construction safe and durable ? Syiah Kuala and UN-Habitat are doing continuous monitoring. The finding so far is that the quality is modest : many or most of the requirements of the official Building Code (in relation to structural integrity and seismic safety) are adhered to, but not all. Yet in a nutshell : the first 24,000 houses finished are broadly of a reasonable quality and safety.

They cannot withstand any earthquake of course. Richter 6 to 7 earthquakes require buildings anchored to their foundations. Damage great in poorly built structures, but well-built buildings suffer slight damage. The Building Code simply offers an insurance against many earthquakes which will hit Aceh, but not all earthquakes.

Our scoring is based on field observations made by Unsyiah’s monitors of “as-built” housing of 35 housing organisations. Each observation, out of a long questionnaire, becomes an indicator in one of the following categories : foundations, structure, material choice, anchoring and wind bracing and finishing quality.

The categories then make up an aggregate quality score. A weighting is added in relation to the earthquake zone, as the East Coast requires less sturdy buildings compared to the West Coast. Finally, the Building Code is less stringent on timber quality compared to our index. The reason is that the Building Code focuses on safe building, while we are interested in safe and durable building – as implied by the word “permanent” housing.

Many stakeholders have been involved in the development of the questionnaire and the scoring methodology : Unsyiah civil engineering staff; UN-Habitat and UNDP project management staff; the Public Works Department (Housing) of Aceh Province and the Shelter Work Group.

This methodology is not developed within BRR, simply as a result of the fact the Unsyiah’s monitoring and evaluation engagement is a 3rd party monitoring initiative. Houses built by contractors with BRR funds are equally subjected to field monitoring. The results are all made public and reported to BRR and the Province Administration.

The scoring is benchmarked according to the following thresholds :

In the final classification, a downgrade is applied if one of the composite elements of the score is “red”. For instance, the downgrade applies in case of bad foundations notwithstanding an overall “average” acceptable quality.

What are the results ?

1.	Only 3 organisations (Emergency Architects, Atlas Logistique and Care) and a BRR contractor score above 3. Their projects are given a "blue" label, i.e. “over and above the building code”. Not necessarily all locations where these organisations build score above 3.
2.	26 organisations get a “green” label, i.e. a score of 2.5 or more and no downgrade : their work (in the sample locations) is “mostly acceptable” if benchmarked against the Building Code. Notwithstanding that, an average quality may mean that there are outliers of bad quality.
3.	Housing in 14 locations is given a “yellow” label. Here quality appears to be more questionnable and additional inspection may to be required in order to make a judgment on retrofitting.
4.	One housing realization, financed by a Sulawesi Provincial Government, is poor.

As said, the scoring is based on “as-built” field observations. Good intentions are not taken into account, as safety depends on what has been executed. However, field observations are sometimes subjective. For instance, is a poorly executed column still structural or not ? They are also time-sensitive : when the teams visited BRR houses in Gampong Jawa, Banda Aceh, the construction was fairly good (2.81), but three months later, the same contractor was using timber of worse quality. This would result in a score of about 2.50.

The teams also typically visit locations where houses of a programme are being finished or are already completed. It may happen that the foundations or the structure cannot be fully examined. The survey therefore measures the “probability-of-safety” : based on the large range of indicators, the likelihood of overall good performance is estimated and, if necessary, the data gaps are filled in conservatively.

As a next step, the NAD Public Works Department (Housing), the Unsyiah team and UN-Habitat will visit 20 organizations and talk through the results before making recommendations.

There is no clear relationship between Construction Quality and Satisfaction.

In the above table, satisfaction is measured as the sum of 9 separate questions in relation to satisfaction or issues driving satisfaction. These are questions like “did the organisation good work” or “did the organisation keeps its promises”. The key concern is here whether beneficiaries are satisfied with the performance (or process) and the outcome of the housing provider.

The monitoring does not support that people do not occupy houses because of bad quality, or that people are generally unhappy with new houses. We only find a weak positive correlation between satisfaction and construction quality. We also find only a weak positive correlation between the perception of the degree of safety of the new housing and construction quality. That means : if NGO X produces high-quality housing, then satisfaction is by no means guaranteed. Even stronger, people may not feel themselves more safe. The result is a “provisional” taxonomy of what organisations are achieving in specific locations, in terms of construction quality and of satisfaction.

So, what is driving quality, satisfaction and occupancy? We don’t think that people are uninformed or have insufficient “gratitude”. We simply think that 18 months after the tsunami, people have not yet made up their mind. Too many decisions have to be made in a condition of uncertainty : moving kids in-between schools, finding livelihoods, making up one’s mind whether a bad road is a high or acceptable daily cost for getting to the market, deciding whether to rent in Banda Aceh or to restart planting in a conflic-free Bireun. Furthermore : will the dykes be rebuilt as per plan, when will the harbour create new jobs, is there still work after reconstruction jobs dry up ?

People are not dissatisfied. The average satisfaction level, on a score from 0 to 10, is 6. But the standard deviation is 2. In plain language, and in the wording of the questionnaire, many people tend to be satisfied, but many also doubt. Therefore, UN-Habitat and Syiah Kuala University continues the monitoring of construction quality and satisfaction within a broad and comprehensive framework capturing the many issues related to housing and settlement reconstruction.

Download : Construction Quality - Satisfaction Base Data (PDF, 135 KB)

Organizations

Government

BRR Guideline

We hope to publish the new BRR Guidelines in the next newsletter. Meanwhile, several contractors having been "signing up" non-beneficiaries for a new house with BRR funds, yet without BRR approval. BRR will take the "double claimers" to the court.

Download Serambi Article
BRR Pidanakan 'Pemilik Rumah Ganda' (Bahasa, PDF 31 KB)

Partners

Spotlight: Uplink

Housing construction in 24 villages in Peukan Bada Meuraxa and Jaya Baru is conducted with participation of the owners. The beneficiary receives assistance in form of building materials and worker wages. Quality and quantity materials for each house unit is explained through material cards whereas worker wages are paid by Uplink in four stages based on progress. The owner directly supervises the material quality / quantity construction process. Uplink mobilizes supervisors to provide technical assistance.

Fresh graduate volunteers are providing most of the technical supervision. 13 fresh graduates of civil engineering of Andalas Padang University (Unand) were put in JUB villages to guide the house owners and supervise the construction process. 4 senior supervisor support and guide the juniors . All workers involved in housing construction must attend skill improvement training, which have been conducted in JUB villages with ILO assistance. Stabilized soil cement blocks (soil blocks) are produced in 4 JUB villages (Lam Jamee, Lam Teh, Lam Isek, Lam Keumok) and in Ajun. Soil blocks are friendly toward the environment as they contains little cement, are not burnt. Their strength is obtained through manually pressing. The five soil block facilities are managed at village level. Steel workshop in Lam Manyang supplies the steel need for 3000 houses and assembles the reinforcing components. The wood workshop in Lam Isek supplies timber.

The Uplink house price is under 42 million. A Stilted cost 52 million. As of 28 April 2006, almost 2751 units are in process. 978 must have been completed and 462 are nearing completion.

UN-Habitat and UNDP

Land Relocation and Consolidation through
Community Based Approach (Simeulu ANSSP Project)

To solve the problem of land availability for reconstruction, a community based approach is possible. It incorporates the issues of land and tenure into Village Action Planning (CAP) when preparing for settlement and house rebuilding. Unfortunately, the approach is likely to be marginalized if the government is simply providing relocation land for those who lost their land in the tsunami or for those who had no land.
This article of Fakri Karim (UNDP) explains that community-based land and tenure agreement are possible in Aceh and should be encouraged

Download Report :

Resettlement trought CAP ANSSP Project (PDF, 336 KB)

UN-Habitat Project Office
Jl. T.M Pahlawan No. 3A Banda Aceh NAD, Indonesia
Telp: +62 651 741 2525 / Fax: +62 651 25258
http://unhabitat-indonesia.org

UN-Habitat - Fukuoka, Japan
http://www.fukuoka.unhabitat.org

UN-Habitat
http://www.unhabitat.org