Assessment of the involvement of quantity surveyors in civil engineering construction project in Kano State, Nigeria

Abstract

Past studies have revealed the lack of involvement of Quantity Surveyors (QS) in Civil Engineering project (CEP) in Nigeria which leads to the false notion of competence of QS in CEP and QS lack of awareness on job opportunity to explore in CEP. In view of this, the study assessed the involvement of QS in Civil Engineering construction project in Kano state with a view of improving the participation of QS in Civil Engineering projects to improve effective cost estimation in the Civil Engineering projects. The use of quantitative research approach was employed through the use of questionnaire survey. For this purpose, 94 copies of questionnaire were administered to registered construction professionals in Kano with a response rate of 77.66%. The use of descriptive and inferential statistical methods was adopted for this research; Mean Item Score (MIS) and Spearman Rank correlation, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Post Hoc test were employed for data analyses with the aid of IBM SPSS 27. Findings from the study revealed that: competence of QS to value element of CE works, the most agreed upon are building material technology (MIS = 4.03) and construction technology (MIS = 3.96); It was concluded that the involvement of QS in CEP in kano is on an average and that QS are competent to value for most element of Civil Engineering. however, some gaps were identified for improvement. gaps identified includes area of transport engineering, geotechnical engineering, water resources & irrigation engineering and hydraulics. It was therefore recommended that QS fill the gap and acquire basic skills for the element as you can’t measure what you don’t know and to fully participate in CEP and for QS to end the conservative era and diversify as their involvement equals effective estimation of CEP.