DRY CONSTRUCTION THE SMART WAY TO SAVE TIME AND MONEY

Adewale Ogungbe

Adewale Ogungbe, is the Managing Director/ CEO of Dry Walls Systems, After his primary education at Tunwase Nursery & Primary School in Ikeja; Lagos; He started his secondary school at Government College Ikorodu and completed it at the great Lagelu Grammar School, in Ibadan, he completed a National Diploma in Building Technology from Yaba College of Technology in 1988; and graduated with the award of the best graduating student in building construction; He was backed a Bachelor of science (B.sc Building) in 1992 from the University of Jos, and a Master of science; (M:Sc in Construction Management) in 1996 from the University of Lagos. He then proceeded to the Ambrose Alli University; Ekpoma where he received a Master in Business Administration (MBA) specializing in Marketing in 2000. He passed and got his professional membership of the Nigerian Institute of Builders (MNIOB) in 1995 and in 1998 he became a member of the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria; (CORBON). 

Peter Adewale Ogungbe after a brief construction practice with Nugacon Ltd & lecturing experience, he became a member of the multinational Etex Group, Nigerite Limited in 1995 as a Project Engineer. While with Nigerite; He rose and held various management positions as Sales Manager; Marketing training manager; Senior Sales Manager and became the pioneer Head of Dry Construction Systems Division; a position he held until 2015 when he voluntarily sought early retirement to pursue his passion and vision. During his service with the Etex Group; Peter had several training in management and leadership at various institutions including the Lagos Business School, he also had technical training in various continents in South Africa; Europe; South America; United Kingdom and the United States of America. 

Between 2014 to 2015 he was featured in the Punch Newspaper among the 40 most Outstanding Alumni of the University of Jos; same year; He was featured among the 3 most outstanding professionals in Nigeria by the Guardian Newspapers special focus; and also awarded the construction manager of the year in 2015. He is an honorary member of the Nigerian institute of Brand Management and a member of the Institute for Operation Research of Nigeria.

On his contributions on national assignments, Wale was appointed the Chairman of the National Boards for Technical Education on the Accreditation of the Building Technology Department of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic in 2017. He was also appointed a member of the Sub-Committee on the Review of the Presidential Executive Order 5 by the Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria in August 2018. He is presently the CEO/MD -DRY WALLS SYSTEMS, with its Nigerian office at Ogba; in Ikeja and an international office at Nottingham; Baltimore in the USA.

In an interview with Buildace Magazine, Peter Adewale Ogungbe said that the essence of dry construction is not to take jobs from the artisans and others in the building sector but to complement the construction methods and create a new skill of knowledge.

Enjoy the excerpt of the interview part 1; 

WHAT MOTIVATED YOU INTO BUILDING AS A CAREER?

My inspiration to study building actually came from a not too pleasant experience, when I was growing up during my secondary school age then, my Dad was a banker, one of the pioneer blacks to be manager in the then Barclays Bank that later became Union Bank. At a point he went into politics and became a member of the state assembly, he was a very prominent politician and after the military coup against Shagari those days in 1980s my Dad was affected and the family fell into a lot of setbacks. I remember my Dad had to sell one of his properties and we had to relocate to a smaller apartment, I remember we had to live in a rented apartment somewhere in the Ikeja area and one day we had our properties thrown out of the house. I was young then and can’t remember the whole story now but the fact is it’s the house we have stayed for 8 years, I grew up to know that place as my family house and when the real owner died the children came up with some behaviors they wanted to sell the house and they made some kangaroo arrangement with some law enforcement agents and before I came back from school our loads have been thrown out of the house.  

I was preparing for my WAEC then when we found ourselves in that condition, you know there weren’t GSM then so until I arrived home from school before I realized what was going on. So that really touched me and I reflected on it and I said to myself, I want to NOT only own a house but to build houses for other people, this type of experience should never happen to me and any one around me again, and that singular experience triggered this thought in my mind. That’s how I fell in love with the idea of being a builder. From the very day I started working, I started saving to build my first house. I remember buying my first land between the second year I started working and paid for the land little by little and I started building the house in the third year, I finished building the property in the fifth year and that building has 8- bedrooms and 3-sitting rooms. I chose to build my house before marriage because of the fear of my past experiences.

WHAT IS DRY CONSTRUCTION?

Dry construction systems, as it implies, is a system of construction that essentially relies on the use of dry elements in the construction process as opposed to the traditional wet concrete and mortar used for construction. The system tends to turn the construction process to a semi-industrial process. Dry construction systems broadly can be classified into framed or panelized systems, while various materials are available for dry construction ranging from timbers, glass, steel, cement boards, plaster boards, and synthetic materials etc. bota framed and panelized systems are also available in any of the materials options.

Dry Walls Systems adopt dry construction technology using varying thicknesses of cement building boards, high quality plaster boards, appropriate gauges and sizes of metal profiles, steel sections, pre-engineered screws and other accessories and components to construct ceilings, partitions, wall cladding, suspended floors and to erect a complete building structures. In recent times, experts in dry construction systems have found that a combination of bota dry construction with the traditional wet construction known as hybrid construction has proved to be a smart solution to deliver projects of unique requirements.

Some of the benefits of dry construction over the traditional wet construction process include the followings;

• Industrialized building process, making mass housing delivery achievable.
• Faster to build (up to 70% time savings)
• Lower financing costs
• Lighter weight (25kg/m2 Vs 250kg/m2 for wet construction process)
• Less foundation costs incurred.
• Less transport cost of materials.
• Greater design flexibility.
• Easier to replace and modify according to owners future needs (change-of-use potential)
• Minimal material wastage.
• Better acoustic and thermal performance.
• Better and cleaner deposition of technical installations.
• Earthquake resistance (does not collapse and kill like the brick or block wall)
• Easy handling and installation.
• Humidity/moisture resistance.
• Easy finishes application.
• High resistance to fire.

Every project presents its own unique challenges; project requirements could be acoustic control, energy efficiency of the building, weight of construction, time, and technical finishes etc. but the dry construction systems option offers various technical solutions to meet project objectives.

Part 2 of this interview to be published with full details of everything you need to know about Dry Construction System soon, stay with us.