Stakeholders in the construction industry have identified the poor adoption of modern technologies by professionals as one of the factors contributing to building collapses in the country. According to them, about 75 percent of professionals in the industry are behind in technology adoption.
The stakeholders also highlighted the frequent introduction of new policies by successive governments as a major obstacle to the growth of the construction sector.
Speaking at the 4th edition of Big 5 Construct Nigeria, hosted by DMG in Lagos, Enianu Eniafe, builder and project manager at Encon Sharon Engineering Services, called on professionals to address the existing knowledge gap within the industry.
Eniafe said: “In our adoption of technology, even with the workforce, we are 75 percent below the scale, meaning Nigeria is far behind in adopting recent technologies. Building Information Modeling has been in existence since 2014 or before that, but up until now, we have not yet adopted it in Nigeria.
“And that has caused a lot of clashes during construction. A lot of reworks and more spending. If we can just harness our resources (human and technology), we will be able to scale much higher at a faster rate than other countries can imagine.”
Big 5 Construct Nigeria is one of the leading construction exhibitions in Nigeria where 150 exhibitors from across the world showcased their technologies.
The Nigerian construction industry is currently valued at $128 billion, with a growth rate of 2.4 percent every year.
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“The issue with the implementation is when we have new governments, they set aside the existing policies and come up with theirs. There is no continuity in the implementation of policies,” Toye Eniola, the executive secretary of the Association of Housing Corporation of Nigeria (AHCN), said.
“This has been affecting the housing sector. Even when some of these policies deserve to continue, they come up with a new one. So, once the formal ones are put in, we start all over again. And that is why we are having a snail-like development in the sector.”
Also, Ben Greenish, executive vicepPresident of DMG Events, said because Nigeria’s population was predicted to double in the next 50 years, the opportunity in its construction industry was huge.
Greenish said: “The population is forecast to double in the next 50 years. If you think of urban living and how it is going to be transformed in our lifetime, I think I am right in saying 80 percent of the African population will live in cities by 2080, which is an astonishing figure. The opportunity in the Nigerian market for construction is massive.
“Equally, it’s a really important market for Nigeria because construction brings jobs, it brings education and wealth. So, you have a population of over 200 million, which is an enormous number and that’s a very youthful population.
“So, not only do they need buildings to go to school in, they need an industry that will employ them afterward. I think construction on so many parts, is such an important player for any country as a key driver of jobs and economic growth”, he noted.
