The use of local building materials in offsite prefabrication for low cost house building in Nigeria
Urbanization and population growth has prompted high demand for housing in Nigeria, with the current housing deficit standing at about 17 million units. There were several housing delivery attempts in the form of mostly mass housing using traditional methods of construction and through the creation of housing policies to tackle the housing problems in the country. Despite the efforts made, the housing situation in Nigeria remains a major problem. Nigeria is endowed with abundant local building materials (such as timber, bamboo, clay, sand and granite stones). Countries such as; Sweden, Finland and Norway use similar local building materials like the ones in Nigeria to provide affordable prefabricated houses. Prefabrication techniques using local building materials offer many benefits such as; speed, time savings and affordability. Therefore, there is a need to develop a better understanding to ascertain why local building materials are not being used to improve prefabricated components for house building to meet affordable (low cost) housing needs in Nigeria. This research aims to develop a framework that facilitates the understanding of the utilization of local building materials in the production of offsite prefabricated components for low-cost house building in Nigeria through the formal building sector. A theoretical framework on innovation diffusion has been developed to underpin this study. Based on a pragmatic ontological perspective both qualitative and quantitative approaches were utilized in order to get a better understanding of the factors that affect the utilization and diffusion of prefabrication construction techniques using local building materials for low cost house building. The research findings reveal factors such as; lack of awareness of prefabrication techniques, lack of policy, corruption, lack of access to prefabricated component, cost of components, standard and quality and lack of training and promotion to be among the reasons for the limited adoption of prefabricated local building materials in Nigeria. These findings will help in the development of a framework that will possibly inform policy and assist in the utilization and diffusion of prefabricated local building materials for low cost house building in Nigeria. This research suggests future investigation on infrastructural impact on prefabricated house building and sustainability comparison between prefabricated and traditional methods of construction of identical house buildings.
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