Woodless construction: the training of trainers and builders
Practical Action
At the core of the promotion of Woodless Construction in this arid region bordering the Sahara is the
development of a range of skills amongst the inhabitants of the towns and villages of the region using
a series of training modules that have been developed by Development Workshop over the past 25
years. Today the training provided by DW1 in Burkina Faso builds on years of experience and annual
review to improve the process, and in each case, is supported by detailed training guidelines that are
used by a large team of local trainers trained by DW. Experience has shown that a structured training
approach to developing skills is essential to ensure that each trainee quickly acquires the necessary
comprehensive skills to build safely and well.
The overall package of training modules includes:
starter training for young men to learn the Woodless Construction techniques, this quickly
enables them to build simple, safe structures without external help
training in preparing cost and quantity estimates
training of woodless construction trainers (and site supervisors)
training in drawing (and thus designing) woodless construction buildings
training in building maintenance
training in setting up economic interest groups (which provide groups of builders with a legal
registered base for their work)
training of women potters
All the trainers are local, and they constitute a huge resource base to both train and supervise
Woodless Construction activities. And training is mobile, with each ‘novice mason’ training course
taking place in a different locality, so that local conditions are taken into account and all the
population can see the training take place.
Training for novice builders
Training for novice builders is divided into two stages.
Stage one lasts for three weeks, and involves a programme of work on specially designed training
structures which are built by the trainees and can be demolished and started again if there is a
mistake in the work. This means that there is no pressure on the trainee to try and finish a task
without getting it right, and there is no discredit if the trainers ask a trainee to take work down and
do it again. Trainees work in groups of
four, each group supervised by an
assistant trainer, and the whole course is
supervised by a head trainer. A training
session involves a least 16 trainees
supported by 4 assistant trainers, and
often twice this number (32) for a single
locality.
Figure 3: Every trainee pays for and builds his own
house during the training.
Five different training structures are used
each with a specific purpose. These teach
(i) laying out, (ii) good wall building and
brick bonding, (iii) building different types
of arches, (iv) starting and building vaults
(normal vaults and ‘offset’ vaults which
start higher on one side than the other),
and (v) a structure that teaches each
builder how to start the corner of a dome
based on a rectangular supporting
structure, where one learns the laying out
and positioning of the mobile guide used
in dome building and that locates the
exact angle and position of very brick in a
dome.
Before the end of the three weeks, the
trainees also build two full scale
1 Development Workshop’s programme in Burkina Faso is principally supported by the European Union.
2