An Assessment of Sustainability Performance of Industrial Buildings in Nigeria.

Department of Quantity Surveying

Faculty of Environmental Design
Ahmadu Bello University Zaria

By

Mustapha Ahmad
U13QS1021

Course: QTYS 417 Research Method ii

February, 2017.
Background to the Study

The world is experiencing rapid increase in population and the use of natural resources continue

to be stretched beyond the boundaries (United Nations, 2015).

The construct industry contributes immensely to the overall socio-economic development of a

country, however, the industry is a major consumer of natural non renewable resources (SDGs,

2016). The activities of the construction industry contributes to environmental degradation

through resource depletion, energy consumption, air pollution and generation of waste in

acquisition of raw materials.

The Brutland report (1987), captures the overall goal of sustainable development as an enabler of

humanity all over the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life without

compromising the qukatiy of life of future generations.

The wider role of the quantity surveyor is concerned with best use of scarce and available

resources (Ashworth and Hogg, 2007). This succinctly captures the need for the quantity

surveyor to be involved in promoting and delivering sustainable construction projects.

Sustainable construction is the creation and responsible management of a healthy built

environment based on resource efficient and ecological principles (Kibert, 1994).

Nigeria like many other developing nations is faced with the challenge of approaching

construction in a more sustainable manner, this has been underscored in several researches

(Ogunde, Olaole, & Afolabi, 2017; Ibem & Azoh, 2011).

If sustainable construction is successfully accepted and absorbed in developing construction

project, the participants will gain its benefits in terms of cost saving, project schedule

compliance, reducing environmental risk and uncertainty, ensuring legislative compliance,

improving relations with regulators, improving public image, enhancing employee productivity
and improving market opportunity. Good construction practice offers both environmental and

economic benefits: reduce health and safety impacts on staff and local community, reduced

liability costs in connection with disposal, less remedial work and reduced construction delays.

There are also many potential benefits for contractors for demonstrating environmental

responsibility: improved opportunity to tender, less money wasted on fines, less money spent on

environmental damage, less money lost through wasted resources and improved environmental

profile (Bohari, Skitmore & Xia, 2016).

It is critical for the construction industry to provide high quality environment for users and to

ensure development, maintenance, and operation of such structures remains economically

feasible, socially acceptable and environmentally friendly.

Statement of research problem

According to Hamani and Al Hajj (2015), various evaluation systems have been developed to

guide construction stakeholders in achieving sustainable projects. However, as outlined by

(Emmanuel, 2014), limited research exist on methods for assessing the sustainability

performance of infrastructure projects and there exist a gap in key assessment indicators for

sustainablitiy evaluation and a failure to integrate the three main sustainability themes;

environment, economic and social sustainability. The available Key assessment indicators are

limited in their approach as they either focus on environment or economic assessment, therefore

there is the need to assess sustainability in a holistic context (Reddy, 2016)

Emmanuel (2014), also noted the need for further studies in assessing the sustainability

performance of infrastructure projects to determine their true state of performance.

Aim

The aim of this research is to assess the sustainability performance of infrastructure projects in

Nigeria

Objectives

The objective of this research is;

To investigate the sustainability performance of infrastructure projects within the three

major theme of environment, economic and social sustainability

To determine the key assessment indicators for assessing sustainability performance of

industrial buildings.

To evaluate the current level of sustainability practice by construction industry

stakeholders with a view to recommend strategies for improvement.

Research method

The research will be quantitative in its approach due to its focus. A literature review of journal

articles and past researches will be conducted to gain proper insight of sustainability assessment

models. Descriptive research method will be adopted and data will be obtained through
questionnaire administration. The questionnaires will be issued to construction industry

stakeholders and data gathered will be analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social

Sciences (SPSS). The analysis will consist of descriptive and inferntial statistics to get better

understanding of relationship between data obtained.

Need for the research

The construction industry has a major role to play within the concept of sustainability

(Atkinson, 2017). The construction industry must identity ways in achieving sustainable

development due to its size, waste generation and resource depletion (United Nations, 2016).

According to Ibem and Azuh (2011), there exist a gap in theory and application of the concept of

sustainability to solve practical problems in the construction industry. A research by Emmanuel

(2014), underscores the existence of literature gap on methods to assess the sustainability

performance of infrastructure projects across economic, environmental and social aspect. This

research aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge by assessing the sustainability

performance of industrial buildings and evaluating their true state of performance.

Scope

This research will focus in assessing the sustainability performance of industrial buildings in

Nigeria and the locations of focus will be the cities of Kaduna and Kano, this is as a result of

high concentration of construction industrial buildings within these two cities.

Delimitation

The focus of this research will be limited to the cities of Kano and Kaduna.

Limitation to the study

The study will adopt a questionnaire method of data collection, therefore information gathered

May be subject to bias by respondents.

Anticipated findings

This research aims to assess the sustainability performance of industrial buildings in Nigeria and

also to determine the key assessment indicators for assessing sustainability performance of

construction projects, this will revel thir true state of performance. The research will also

investigate the level of sustainability practice in Nigeria to determine whether the industry is

sustainability compliant. The major barriers to sustainability in the Nigerian construction

industry will be investigated to determine their real effect in full implementation of sustainable

practices.

References

United Nations. (2015). A report by the United Nations on Sustainable Development

Goals. Retrieved January 20, 2017, from hhtp://www.un.org/sd/sdg

 SDG. (2016). United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. Retrieved

January 20, 2017, from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org

World Commission on Environment and Development - WCED (1987). The Brutland

report. Retrieved January 17, 2017, from

http://web.env.auckland.a.c.nz/courses/resources.off

Ashworth, A. & Hogg, K. (2005). Williss Practice and Procedure for the Quantity

Surveyor. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

Ogunde, A. O., Olaole, O., & Afolabi, A. (2017). Challenges confronting project

management system for sustainable construction in developing countries: A case study of

Nigeria. Journal of Building performance. Volume 8 issue 1.

Ibem, E. O. & Azoh, D. E. (2011). Framework for evaluating the sustainability of public

housing programs in Developing countries. Journal of Sustainable Development and

Environmental Protection. Volume 1 issue 3.

Kibert, C. (1994).Sustainable Construction. Proceedings of the first international

conference on Sustainable construction, University of Florida, Tampa.

Hamani, K. & Al Hajj, A. (2015). A conceptual framework towards evaluating

construction contractors for sustainability. Proceedings of the Construction building and

real estate conference. Sydney, Australia.

Emmanuel, J. A. (2014). Assessment of professionals perception to sustainability

performance of infrastructure projects in Nigeria. An unpublished M.Sc. thesis submitted

to the Department of Quantity Surveying, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.

Atkinson, G. (2008). Sustainability: the capital approach and the built environment.

Journal of Building Research and Information. Volume 3 issue 4.

 United Nations. (2016). The Paris Agreement. Retrieved February 3, 2017. From

http://unfcc.int/Paris.agreement/items/9455.php

Bohari, A. M., Skitmore, M. & Xia, B. (2016). Insights into the adoption of green

construction in Malaysia: The drivers and challenges. 7th Asia-Pacific international

conference on Environment behaviour studies. United Kingdom.

Reddy, M. (2016). Evaluation of sustainability assessment indicators for an infrastructure

project. International Journal of Engineering Science and computing. Volume 6 issue 5.