For decades, the Kenyan construction industry has played a deadly game of Russian roulette. A developer cuts a corner here, a 'fundi' ignores a beam there, and months later, a family in Kiambu or Pipeline pays the ultimate price beneath the rubble. But as of this week, the Engineers Board of Kenya (EBK) has drawn a digital line in the sand.

In a decisive move to sanitize the sector, the regulator has launched the Engineers Projects Registration Portal, a digital checkpoint that promises to choke off the oxygen for rogue developers and unqualified practitioners. The message from Upper Hill is clear: if your project isn’t in the system, it doesn’t exist.

The 'Unique ID' Checkpoint

The new directive is simple but seismic. Before a single blueprint lands on a county planner's desk, it must first pass through the EBK’s digital corridor. Engineers are now required to register their specific projects on the portal to generate a unique identification number.

Without this digital fingerprint, county governments will not accept drawings for approval. It is a bureaucratic masterstroke designed to force compliance at the very start of the pipeline.

“We are stopping the shortcuts where they start,” noted EBK Chief Executive Officer Eng. Margaret Ogai during the launch in Nairobi. “As a private developer, everyone wants to put up a flat. That is where the issues arise. They might not employ a registered engineer, or they use one set of drawings for approval and another for construction. This portal ends that visibility gap.”

Triangulating the Truth

The portal is not operating in a vacuum. In a move that signals a new era of inter-agency intelligence sharing, the EBK has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with two other critical watchdogs:

• The National Construction Authority (NCA): To ensure that the engineer on paper is the engineer on site.
• The Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors (BORAQS): To verify that the entire professional team is legitimate.

This "triangulation" means that data entered into the EBK portal can be cross-referenced against NCA and BORAQS databases. If a developer claims to have a top-tier structural engineer but the NCA records show a different story, the red flags go up immediately.

The Cost of 'Cheap'

For the average Kenyan renter or aspiring homeowner, this bureaucratic shift is a matter of life and death. The construction sector has been plagued by a culture of impunity where private developers often bypass registered professionals to save costs—a saving that often evaporates when a building develops cracks or collapses entirely.

Recent tragedies in Mombasa and Kiambu have highlighted the devastating cost of negligence. In many of these cases, investigations revealed that the individuals supervising the sites were either completely unqualified or were "ghost engineers" whose licenses were rented out without their knowledge.

“We are trying to exchange information so that we can know: Is this building properly designed? Is it properly supervised?” Eng. Ogai emphasized. By linking the unique project ID to a specific, live-practicing engineer, the Board ensures that a licensed professional is personally on the hook for the structural integrity of the building.

A New Standard for Safety

The initiative also places a heavy responsibility on the engineers themselves. The portal will track their active projects, preventing the common malpractice where one engineer "supervises" 50 sites simultaneously—a physical impossibility that has allowed substandard workmanship to flourish.

While details on potential penalties for non-compliance remain to be fully gazetted, the implication is severe: no ID, no construction. For a sector contributing billions to the economy, this friction is the price of safety.

“We design for safety, resilience, and longevity,” Eng. Ogai concluded. “At the end of the day, the infrastructure we give Kenyans must last. There is no room for guesswork when human lives are involved.”