What is an NCA Site Compliance Certificate?

An NCA site compliance certificate is a legal document that is issued to a construction site that was inspected and found to be compliant with the National Construction Authority (NCA) regulations.

The National Construction Authority is a state organisation that was established by an act of parliament, No. 41 of 2011. Among other roles, the organisation’s main mandate is to regulate, streamline and build capacity in the construction industry for sustainable socio-economic development.

Further in performing its duties, the authority keeps a register of all skilled construction workers, construction site supervisors, contractors and project sites all over the country. They do this in line with their role of regulating the construction industry and its players.

NCA Inspects all Construction Sites to enforce Compliance

The NCA has established a presence in almost every county in the country. It has regional and liaison offices spread across the country to help bring its services closer to the citizens.

Consequently, the authority can reach even the remote areas to inspect every construction site and enforce compliance with the NCA regulations. This is done to protect the interest of the public, ensure quality work is done and the building sites and the completed projects themselves are safe to occupy.

The surest proof that your project site as a developer is compliant with these regulations is to have a valid certificate of compliance.

What are the Considerations for my Site to be Issued with a Compliance Certificate?

The National Construction Authority has employed investigation officers, commonly referred to as compliance officers to inspect all construction sites and ascertain their compliance status.

The law gives them the authority to access any construction site and perform their inspections.

When they visit a construction site, they have a checklist that they tick against based on their observations on site. If your project ticks all the items on the checklist, you are eligible to get a site compliance certificate. However, you first have to make an application and submit the necessary project documentation for this to happen.

Therefore, the following are the items checked to determine whether or not your project site is compliant:

• The safety measures that you have put on site: this encompasses things like proper site hoarding, issuance of personal protective clothing and equipment to everyone on the construction site and presence of warning signs to alter people of the danger of the construction activities going on there.
• The project must have properly approved project drawings (including architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing drawings) and other important project documentation on site such as a copy of the bills of quantities.
• The project should be properly supervised and regularly inspected by the consultants.
• All skilled construction workers and site supervisors should be accredited by the National Construction Authority. (We’ll talk about NCA accreditation in another article).
• A project site board, with details of the client, construction and design team, and statutory approvals granted to the project.
• The project should also be existing in the registers of the NCA. If that is not so, the developer should initiate the project registration process online on the authority’s official website.

Requirements and Procedure for Obtaining a Site Compliance Certificate

The following are the requirements for a project to be registered by the National Construction Authority and issued with a site compliance certificate:

1. Approved drawings – architectural, structural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing drawings, based on the nature of the project
2. Registered contractor with a current practising license
3. Registered consultants (architects, engineers, quantity surveyors) with current practising licenses from their respective registration and licensing bodies.
4. These consultants should also issue the project developer with letters committing that they will be available to supervise the project throughout the construction period
5. A summary page of the bills of quantities, signed and stamped by a registered quantity surveyor
6. Physical planning forms (PPA2 forms) – to confirm approval by the county’s Physical Planning department
7. Approval from the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), in the form of a project license or project summary depending on the scale of the project.
8. A signed contract document between the contractor and the project developer or a signed tender form.

The procedure for obtaining a site compliance certificate (project registration process) is as follows:

1. The owner of the project (also called the developer) creates an account in the NCA project registration portal and begins a new application,
2. All the requirements listed above are keyed in and soft copy project documentation is uploaded on the portal,
3. Upon submission, an email notification is sent to the contractor and the listed consultant to officially confirm their engagement in the project through the portal. When they accept, it goes to the next stage of verification by compliance officers from the organisation.
4. Officials from the authority visit the site with their checklist to verify actual compliance. We discussed the checklist items in the section that talked about considerations for the issuance of a site compliance certificate.
5. When approved, a certificate of compliance is then issued to the developer, together with a project registration number that should be displayed on the project board.

Compliance is a continuous thing for the project site. Therefore, after getting the site compliance certificate, the site is continually monitored throughout the construction period to establish the compliance status.

If an earlier compliant project stop being compliant, it can be marked with a cross (X) sign and a site suspension notice issued until the site complies.

If the project owner defies any of these orders, the site compliance certificate can be withdrawn, the project suspended or a legal charge placed against the developer.

In Conclusion

We have seen that a certificate of compliance is an important project document. It shows that your construction site has been inspected and is continually monitored by officials from the National Construction Authority to ensure compliance with the NCA regulations.

Also, the duty of obtaining this certificate of compliance is upon the project owner. They are required to initiate the process by submitting a project registration application on the NCA project registration portal. That said, I hope your questions about the site compliance certificate are well answered. Let me know in the comment section below.