Tall & Urban News

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has commissioned the Uganda Revenue Authority’s (URA) Tower.

Speaking during the commissioning ceremony, Ian Rumanyika, the manager for Public and Corporate affairs in the Commissioner General’s office, said that the tower was designed as a one-stop center to process tax collection.

“It is expected that URA will offer faster and better services to clients resulting from process integration, while reducing administrative costs to the taxpayer and URA,” said Ian Rumanyika.

Contractor Seyani Brothers & Co. (U) Ltd began construction of the URA tower began four years ago, at a cost of USh140 billion ($38.1 million) which was fully funded by the government. The URA Tower has 23 floors. The building is comprised of four podiums, in addition to 18 floors totaling up to 26,021 square meters (280,088 square feet) of office space. Maximum occupancy is  to be approximately 1,700 people.

The tower has a 12,923 square-meter parking structure that can accommodate 1,070 vehicles. The building also has an auditorium and multipurpose high-end conference hall that can host 300 people, and mini-meeting rooms on every floor.

The building is designed to be environmentally friendly with an Intelligent Building Management System (BMS). The URA Tower is equipped with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), which is aimed at managing different services such as access control, lighting, water, security, firefighting, network infrastructure and air conditioning.

The complex also features a central atrium to enhance natural ventilation and minimize mechanical cooling of the building, as well as house modern forensic and science laboratories that support tax investigations, customs and domestic tax operations.

“The tower will provide modern office facilities that support URA’s current and future work methods of different departments. It will also improve security of vital URA computer and other records through provision of state-of-the-art and round-the-clock security,” said Rumanyika.

For more on this story go to Construction Review Online.