The Severity of Skill Shortages in the Nigerian Building Construction Artisans (Published)
A number of issues arise from Nigeria’s lack of a regulated and effective system for evaluating the credentials and abilities of artisans in the building sector, including ineffective verification, subjective evaluation, restricted accessibility, a lack of standardisation, and security issues. The study aimed to assess severity of skill shortages in the Nigerian building construction artisans. The study adopts descriptive survey design and quantitative approach was used as study approach, survey strategy was adopted and data were collected through questionnaire survey. The study also adopts simple random sampling technique and SPSS software version 22 was used for data analysis tools. A descriptive analysis type using mean ranking technique and (percentage) were used for the analysis. The study revealed that practicing building construction artisans in Nigeria lack the requisite anger management skills at their workplaces, delay in building projects delivery in Nigeria. Also, practicing building construction artisans in Nigeria lack the requisite health, safety and house-keeping skills at their workplaces and lack of institutionalization of the NSQ leads to skill shortages for the industry were the major points of consideration when looking at the skill shortages for the building construction delivery in Nigeria. Provision of adequate competency-based trainers was rated the most important strategy, suggesting that qualified trainers are essential for effective skill development. Periodic capacity building for practicing artisans, regular training and development programs for existing artisans was considered crucial for maintaining and enhancing their skills. Also, enactment of enabling legislation for the national building code enforcement and a strong regulatory framework is seen as necessary to ensure industry standards and compliance.
Keywords: Artisans, Severity, building construction, effective system, skill shortages
An Analysis of Construction Material Batching Behaviour of Artisans in Ghana’s Informal Construction Sector. (Published)
This study investigated construction materials-batching behaviour of artisans in the Ghana informal construction sector. The research was conducted in three major townships across three districts namely: Mepe/Battor in the Volta Region, Pokuase in the Eastern Region and Nsawam in the Eastern Region of Ghana. To achieve the study objectives, a quantitative data collection approach was adopted as the primary methodology for gathering data from the target population using cluster-sampling technique to select the sample population. The results showed that the Ghana informal construction sector paid scanty attention to the standard practices and procedures for constructing residential buildings. Reasons included inadequate levels of apprenticeship training to grow the skills and competence of artisans. Low-quality training duped apprentices into thinking that they were fully qualified when in reality they were not. Not only that, apprenticeship varied widely across construction trades and master craftsmen. Batching was generally eyeballed instead of being measured scientifically resulting in insufficient cement to aggregate ratio in cement blocks, concrete and mortar works. Also, cement and aggregate mixtures had high percentage of water. Weak cement blocks resulted in poor construction and weak buildings with rising moisture content in walls, leaking roofs, cracks and structural failure.
Keywords: Artisans, Batching, Construction Material, Informal Construction