Influential Factors Driving Material Sourcing for Sustainable Construction Practice

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Date
2020-10-08
Authors
DODO, Mansir ABUBAKAR, Muawiya ABUBAKAR, D. AbdulAzeez
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Abstract
The construction industry is characterised to being highly resource dependent. Owning to the spiralling cost of resource processing as well as dwindling resources globally, sustainable construction emerged as a concept to optimise the use of resources in construction. Ever since its emergence, sustainable construction has been researched upon from several approaches such as: space management; energy and water efficiency of buildings; and waste management among other approaches. While these approaches are deemed to be rather specific, a sustainable construction approach deemed to be more generic is the use of alternative sustainable materials because most often than not, implementing the specific approaches relies on the use of construction materials that are sustainable. Although there exist researches on sustainable construction materials in Nigeria, not much exist on the influential factors driving the sourcing of sustainable construction materials which is key to successful construction project delivery. As such, this research investigates the influential factors driving the sourcing of construction materials for sustainable construction practices. Primary data is collected through conducting a survey with the aid of a structured questionnaire using purposive sampling from 61 postgraduate students in the Department of Building Ahamdu Bello Univeristy /aria Nigeria. The procedure for data analysis is both descriptive and inferential using IBM SPSS Statistics 23 as well as MS Excel to compute the Mean Score as well as the Relative Index (RI). Out of the 61 questionnaires distributed, only 48 were used for analysis. Results indicate that all the respondents believe that all influential factors studied drive sustainable construction. This study found that while 'environmental impact' and 'material quality' are the most influential factors always driving material sourcing in sustainable construction, instances prevail whereby compliance to statutory regulations and laws', "available specialist skills to use material for sustainable construction' and also "incentive in the use of sustainable material' never drive material sourcing in sustainable construction. The study concludes by asserting that professionals in the construction industry rely on various influential factors to drive their decision on material sourcing in sustainable construction. There is need to invest more efforts on enforcing material compliance to regulations, developing skills to use material for sustainable construction and provide more incentives in the use of sustainable materials. Future studies can cover influential factors speciafically categorised according to the three dominant pillars of sustainable practice which are social, economic and environmental. Also, more indepth relationships between and among the influential factors may be explored.
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Department of Building, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria Nigeria
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