Repositioning activities of building industry professionals towards cleaner and sustainable housing in Nigeria

Abstract

The main goal of building industry professionals is to provide affordable housing that supports sustainable neighbourhood, and promotes cleaner environment. The professionals apply the philosophy of waste management in the discharge of their responsibilities. However, certain factors like choice of materials, culture, supervision technique, environment, human differences, thinking ability of the professionals in the building industry, teamwork and others influence the aim of housing provision. Therefore, this paper describes ways of restructuring the activities of the building industry professionals for the effective reduction of waste towards cleaner housing that encourages sustainable neighbourhood in Nigeria. Research data are derived from questionnaire survey. The questionnaire seeks opinions of 648 building professionals on their activities that influence waste management, impact of the activities on waste management, and ways of channelling building professional activities for effective waste reduction towards sustainable housing. The data are analysed using the Relative Contribution Index (RCI). The findings indicate that review of building drawings, supervising building project, procuring construction materials and arranging workmen are the construction activities that have the highest influence on waste management with RCI higher than 0.8. Also, intensifying site supervision, proper quantification of materials on site, minimising design changes and revisions, use of trained workmen and the use of value engineering strategy, which have RCI of 0.8 and above are the most significant ways of repositioning building professional activities for effective reduction of waste in the Nigerian building industry.