8 Reasons for High Cost Of Construction In Nigeria

I hope you enjoyed my previous post on the processes involved in getting approval for your building plan? Well, today we will be taking a deep look into the various factors greatly affecting the cost of construction. This is important especially for clients who’d always ask funny questions regarding the price of building materials in the market.

After reading this, I am sure your eyes will be opened to the various reasons why it costs a lot to develop a nice building for yourself and wonderful family. Please stay tuned as I list these below.

8 Reasons for High Cost Of Construction In Nigeria

Highlighted is a list of reasons why the cost of construction is constantly rising in Nigeria! Please understand that there might be higher cost of building your homes in the future and so if you’re thinking on starting your project, this might be the Golden time to do it without wasting so much of your hard earned money!

1. Use Of Foreign Materials In Construction

The first thing I want to mention is our taste for the adoption of foreign materials in the construction process.

By this you’ll understand that imported materials will always have a higher price since our importers would always want to make a lot of profit from their investments. This does not mean you should rely on local building material.

It all depends on your pocket and taste and what you want people to say about your construction.

2. Lack of Adequate Security On Site

Everybody understands the important of building materials and their cost value in the market and for this reason it is very important that agile and sufficient security be provided on-site to put a halt to pilfering and loss of construction materials.

Just imagine a construction site where all Granite needed for concrete works are exposed with no site protection.

This probably means a lot of thieves will cause a shortage to the available material needed for a job by taking away or steal a part of the granite on site.

Apart from granite, cement is another material that needs adequate security. A loss of any of these construction materials will only but result to an extra cost on the part of the client or contractor.

3. Unstable Market Price Of Materials

As at (October 2016)when this article was written, A 50kg bag of OPC (Ordinary Portland Cement) is currently sold at N2200 (Wholesale Price) and N2300 (Retail Price) in warri and its environs.

This is a bag of cement that sold for N1350 around May 2016. This means that a client who may have executed a project around May 2016 when cement was sold at N1350 would be stunned to discover the same bag of Cement He’d Bought for N1350 by May will now be sold for over 2x the former price.

This equally means the price for all concrete works will be doubled.

4. Use of Quacks for An advanced Project

Quacks are very important in the engineering profession. Why do I say so? I said this because over 65 percent of the beautiful homes you’ll see in Nigeria were constructed by either an unregistered Engineer or an experienced Craftsman.

Quacks may have experience in the field of construction but may not be able to provide the actual volume of materials needed for a particular project and this results to wastes. Just imagine loosing over 5 head pan of mixed concrete during the foundation stage of a project.

When this 5 head pan would have been used to blind an extra 2 feet length if it hadn’t been wasted.

5. Climatic Factors

Climate is another determinant of the cost of construction. At favorable weather, construction is usually less expensive since everybody will be willing to work with the weather.

The reverse is the case when the weather is harsh. Workmen will want to charge a little higher than they would during the favorable weather.

For slabs and beams, columns, much water will be needed to attain a proper mix, more water will be needed for curing and other processes that would be necessary in order to reach a quality product.

6. The Use Of Family Members

This is another important aspect of construction. Look! you’re using family labor and thinking it’s the cheapest way to go about your project right?

Well, you may want to have a rethink because if you get to discover what these trusted fellows would do with suppliers of building materials, you’ll never want to see them close to your project.

The truth is that a close relative would always want to cut corners in order to fill his own pocket. This means he might add a little to the actual price of the materials or cut-corners just to have some of these materials for a later sale.

Now with this habit, you’ll discover that where 10 bags of cement is supposed to be used, 8 will be provided with the remaining 2 used for only God Knows what.

7. Buying Your Materials In Small Sizes

For clients on their first building project, they’ll require their cement or Timber or Steel to be supplied by a church member of a nearby sales shop.

But this would only result in paying more for the same quantity and quality of material you’ll buy if you had to buy from the dealer or wholesaler.

If you’re on the construction stage for slabs, you’ll be saving more if you bought your 100 bags of cement from Dangote or any Elephant Cement Sales depot and have these supplied to your site.

8. Varying Rates For Labor.

Another yet important reason why you’ll be spending more than you’re supposed to on a project is the fluctuating cost of labor or changes in cost of labor.

The thing is the cost of mixing a bag of cement may be N1200 in Banana Estate but N1450 in Victoria Island, Lagos state. This means the cost of executing a building project in Banana Estate will always be lower than it would be in Victoria Island.