CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to the Study

A building is one of man’s basic requirements after food and can be used

to determine the development of any nation. Research has shown that the cost of

building a house is high and principally depends on cost of labour and materials

(Maloney, 1983, Omange, 2000).

Mohammed et al (2011) stated that the construction industry lagged due to

insufficient research in the area of productivity. Methods for improving

construction productivity to assist managers in identifying productivity barriers

and offer solutions were limited. In contrast, there are few studies of enhanced

productivity in the construction industry. In reality, increasing productivity

benefits the stakeholders’ in several ways: Projects are completed more quickly;

Project cost is lowered; the contractor can submit more competitive bids; and the

project can be more profitable.

The construction of a house is capital intensive and seems to discourage

some people from building personal houses. Government concerted effort at

housing provision since independence in 1960 through the various national

development plans seems not successful. Labour force in the building

construction industry fall into skilled and unskilled. The financial implication of

using any of the trades contribute to the cost of construction. The utilization of

labour force in the construction industry accounts for a significant proportion of

the cost of buildings (Udegbe, 2007). Productivity improvement in the housing

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construction sector may contribute to the supply of more affordable housing by

Nigeria Construction Industry (NCI). A sustainable improvement in productivity,

when associated with economic growth and development generates non

inflationary increases in wages and salaries. As low productivity causes cost and

time overruns in construction projects. Construction output is important especially

in a developing country like Nigeria where most of the building construction work

is still on manual basis (Faki et al, 2010).

Estimating is one of the key fundamental functions of the Quantity

Surveyor. Estimates are very vital to clients when making decisions and therefore,

client expect from estimator’s useful and objective information from estimator.

The sustainability and success of the construction industry depends greatly

on the level of accuracy in project estimates. The consequences of adopting

inaccurate estimates are quite enormous and overwhelming (Mohammed, 2009).

1.2       Statement of the Research Problem

It is very clear that there is no known standard theoretical yardstick to

determine the financial value of daily output (Udegbe, 2007).The dynamics of the

factors that affect the productivity of construction workers in Nigeria are not well

understood. The previous works on other trades presented reports without taking

cognisance of Building and Engineering Standard Method of Measurement

(BESMM) produced by Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyor as a guide that

provide a uniform basis for measuring construction works and embodies the

essentials of good practice, in order to take care of the peculiarities of the

Nigerian construction industry. This study was set out to empirically determine

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labour outputs for wall tiles as reviewed in BESMM in the Nigerian construction

industry.

1.3       JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

A review of literature revealed that no single and uniform collection of

labour constants is used within the construction industry. It was found that even

though, the Nigerian labour output are published in Nigeria building prices books