No Room for Substandard Concrete

The Ministry of Environment and Urbanization is preparing to implement an Electronic Concrete Monitoring (e-concrete) system across 81 provinces. Through work conducted by the Ministry, citizens will be able to learn about the structural integrity of homes they plan to purchase or live in by means of chips embedded in concrete used in construction, accessible through 'e-concrete'. The initiative, which enables electronic monitoring of concrete quality used in construction, will eliminate any uncertainty citizens may have regarding the quality of concrete used in buildings. According to the work closely followed by Environment and Urbanization Minister Mehmet Özhaseki, chips will be placed in different sections of poured concrete. By means of the chips, the date concrete was broken, the quality of the pour, which engineer conducted the inspection, and which laboratory performed concrete quality testing will be recorded electronically. With the system's integration into e-government, citizens will be able to access all information regarding concrete quality of properties they live in or plan to purchase using their parcel number. They will also be able to check how many times the property was inspected in the past and access construction-related photographs through e-government. Citizens will have access to this information for all buildings constructed after 2011. They will be able to view photographs of construction stages, inspection data, the contracting firm, which engineers and architects conducted inspections, and data regarding past problems encountered. Within the scope of the Building Inspection System (YDS), work is underway to provide access to all information regarding concrete used in construction as the chip system is introduced. For example, whether the 7-day break for quality control of concrete was properly observed will be visible electronically. If there is a defect in concrete quality, it will be visible in this system. Penalties will be applied to those who violate regulations. The implementation will not impose any additional costs on citizens. Work being conducted by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization's Department of Building Affairs is currently being piloted in the cities of Afyon, Karaman and Düzce.