A Comparative Analysis of Traditional and Design & Build Methods of Procurement in the Nigerian Construction Industry.

Abstract

Research has revealed that projects surveyed in Nigeria suffered delays in project performance as a result of defects in the contract documents. The emphasis on procurement methods is on optimizing all parameters involved in project delivery namely, time, cost and quality but sadly in Nigeria, procurement of projects within these constraints has continued to be a challenge to the design team, the contractors, and managers of investments. Data were collected from selected building contractors in Abuja on 50 public building projects with the use of questionnaires and secondary/archival data were collected and tabulated for easy analysis. The factors affecting the performance of procurement methods were also assessed under which the complexity of design, capital cost of project and adequacy of contractor resources were identified as the most important factors affecting the performance of traditional procurement method. For the design & build procurement method the most important factors identified were financial risk, alterations to design and involvement of non contractual parties. It was also discovered that project completion at estimated cost, project completion at estimated time are the most important criteria for selection of traditional procurement method while in the design & build method, project completion at estimated time, project completion at estimated cost, nature of project and quality assurance were the major selection criteria. In terms of project performance, design & build procurement method was discovered to perform better in terms of cost and time than the traditional method implying that projects under the design & build procurement method are usually completed within the estimated contract sum and duration and lower level of cost and time overruns are conceded. In view of these findings, major recommendations of the study are that qualified professionals should be employed in the various construction processes to reduce the risk of time and cost overruns in the execution of projects and that clients adopting Design & Build procurement method should ensure that a well detailed and exhaustive brief is given to the contractor before the commencement of the project.