LOW COST HOUSING:

Welcome to Sharp Edge Design Ltd…

Kindly refer to our website (www.sharpedgedesignltd.com) to know what we are about.

In previous posts, we have talked about how POOR DESIGN, POOR SUPERVISION and BAD WORKMANSHIP can negatively affect the cost of a project, today we will be looking at another major bane of low cost housing in Nigeria and that is:

CONTRACTOR’S INTEGRITY:

As different people have different mentalities towards life, in the same way different Contractor’s have different mentalities guiding their practice.

I can say with a high degree of certainty that for most contractor’s, it’s all about the money.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong in making money from projects but where I have an issue is where contractor’s “cut corners” without recourse to the effect their action will have on the project.

One out of the numerous examples I have seen is an incident that happened in 2009 when we were contracted to take over the construction of a block of four flats at Ikota.

The contractor that was handling the project abinitio was seriously “cutting corners” to the detriment of the project.

We later discovered when we moved to site that all of the materials he used were sub-standard hence we had to virtually replace all of the materials more or less: the consequence as you must have guessed – Additional costs.

Thankfully, he had only done the ground beams and was filling at the time we took over.

As a client, it is usually very difficult to know a contractor that is driven by “greed”, so it is advised that he requests for a bill of quantities from the contractor which he should vet and consequently negotiate.

So from the onset, the client has a clear idea of what his financial responsibilities are and the mode of disbursement of funds.

This gives the client the advantage of being able to hold the contractor to his bill at any point in time.

Read more

LOW COST HOUSING:

Welcome to Sharp Edge Design Ltd…

Kindly refer to our website (www.sharpedgedesignltd.com) to know what we are about.

In our last post we talked about how POOR DESIGN can negatively affect the cost of a project, today we will be looking at another major bane of low cost housing in Nigeria and that is:

POOR WORKMANSHIP:

1. In the course of our practice, we have discovered that poor workmanship which is very prevalent in Nigeria is a major factor to consider.

   We have seen situations where the client is forced to double spend because of this.

   When work that has been paid for is terribly executed, the client is (sadly so) forced to do the same work item all over again.

   This is an all too common phenomenon in the Nigerian building industry.

   As pedestrian as brick laying is, you will be amazed at how much extra funds the client will have to spend to cover the flaws if it is not well done the first time.

In some cases you find that the plastering has to be about 2 to 3 inches thick (note that normal plastering thickness should be half an inch) to adequately cover the flaws in block setting.

We are talking tens if not hundreds of bags of cement (depending on the scale of the project) not budgeted for.

And that is not considering the extra unbudgeted trips of sand and of course labours.

When you walk into a space and you are welcomed by haphazard and poorly executed works, every sense of appreciation automatically leaves you

Read more