Assessment of cost control critical issues in the Nigerian construction industry

Abstract

Managing the cost of construction is one of the key determinants of a project's success. Globally, different measures, techniques, and tools have been developed and utilized to ensure that construction cost is kept within budget but despite the various available cost control methods and techniques, cost overrun is still a global recurrent decimal and Nigeria is not an exception. The majority of the construction projects are barely completed within budget and there are critical issues that face construction cost managers that hamper the effectiveness of the tools and techniques used to control cost. This article investigated those critical issues and highlighted the most critical issues that demand the serious attention of construction managers. The research examined the critical issues that hamper effective cost control at the basic stages of the construction process. An online survey was conducted in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria with a sample size of 382 Quantity Surveyors. Statistical tools such as spearman’s correlations, severity indices, Kendall’s coefficient of concordance were employed to analyze and rank the cost control critical issues. The findings indicated that the most critical issue facing cost managers is the challenge of keeping accurate information at the monitoring stage of the construction process with a mean rank of 8.73 and a severity index of 78%.