Portal helps manage construction waste

Nickson Otieno, Founder of Niko Green [Courtesy]

With the recent boom in the infrastructure and real estate sector, construction waste has become a huge burden.

According to Nickson Otieno (above), founder of Niko Green, a construction site wastes up to an average of 10 per cent of the building materials.

The materials end up in the environment, posing more risks to nature.

This made Otieno develop Endelevu, a web and mobile platform that is a digital calculator for construction material.

The platform is used to compute the amount of construction material you can use on a building project.

Otieno said the development of Endelevu was motivated by the need to transform the current practices in the construction industry to make it responsive to the challenges of environmental degradation, waste proliferation and social inequality.

“In 2020, we consumed about 6.7 million tonnes of cement (in Kenya)...about 10 per cent of this was waste, ending up in our rivers,” Otieno told The Innovator.

“We found out that if we were to repurpose the wasted cement to build fences at Kenyan public schools that do not have them, we would have put the waste to great use.”

Endelevu gives an estimate of the material required for projects, crowdfunding for under-resourced social projects, crowd-sourcing a youth workforce to design and construct the funded community projects, and trading in reclaimed materials and products.

“Project managers are able to manage their construction projects and even sell the excess materials just to manage the waste,” Otieno said.

He is working on getting buy-in from Kenyan project managers, many of whom Otieno said view construction waste as worthless while it is in essence a source of wealth.

Endelevu has received support from the National Construction Authority in form of partnerships.

“We have also partnered with universities and other tertiary institutions to manage their construction projects,” said Otieno.

“The waste generated from construction of classrooms and other projects is used to teach practical lessons for the benefit of the students.”

Endelevu makes money through commissions and system access fee.