Framework for Evaluating Quality Performance of Contractors in Nigeria

The Nigerian construction industry produces nearly 70% of the nation’s fixed capital formation yet its performance within the economy has been, and continues to be, very poor. For example, the Nigerian construction industry’s
contribution to employment has remained consistently at 1.0%
over the last decade against the World Bank’s average
observation of about 3.2% in developing countries. The last
decade however exposed the declining level of clients’ satisfaction from the built facilities as a result of poor quality performance in addition to the perennial problems of time and cost overruns in the Nigerian construction industry. This has necessitated a radical change in industry practice in order to improve the quality of construction processes and the level of clients’
satisfaction arising there from by devising methodology for
evaluating the quality performance of the contractors in order to assist construction clients in selecting quality-oriented organizations that will provide higher quality services and products within budget and on schedule. Therefore, the principal aim of this paper is to provide a methodology that will improve the quality of the design and construction processes and the level of customer satisfaction derived there from. This paper identified
quality attributes relevant to the construction process and
proposed a quality performance evaluation model that covers
both the corporate and operational levels of a construction
project. The paper also implemented the framework in the form of an investigative survey into the quality performance of building contractors in Nigeria as perceived by client organizations. The assessment was based on clients’ perception of the contractor quality practices based on the identified quality attributes.