Evaluation of Building Material Wastage level in the Nigeria Construction Industry

Abstract

The study focused on evaluation of factors contributing to material wastages, materials prone to excessive wastage, percentage wastage, wastage index & wastage level, ways of minimizing material wastages and evaluation of volume of wastages generated from building projects. Four construction materials were taken into consideration, namely; concrete, block, timber and reinforcement. Structured questionnaire was used in the quantitative data gathering and analysed. Results shows that construction related factors are the most frequently occurring, and the most significant contributors to overall wastage of material on site. Blocks and Timber (formwork) have the highest wastage index signifying the wastage level of these two materials, compare to concrete and reinforcement. Effective material planning and control policy were perceived to be the most significant strategy for minimizing material wastage. The result also shows that as the volume of material-wastes generated from building construction project increases, so the total cost of building increases and variations in the increase of material-waste generated from building projects accounts for 97.3% in the shortage of materials apportioned for each item in the bill of quantities (BOQ).