KEY PREREQUISITES FOR NIGERIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the nature of the Nigerian construction industry, concerning its impact on the activities contributing to the competitive advantage of the industry and to the development of Nigeria in particular. One of the critical threat to the Nigerian construction industry is the limited skills workforce within the industry. The skills of the current workforce do not lend confidence in their output concerning the major issues of the quality-finished product, time delays and cost. The inadequate skilled workers affect various aspects of construction projects and impact on time, cost, as well as the quality of work within the construction sector. Therefore, this endangers the success of projects execution and the output of the industry, which in turns affect the economy of the country as a whole. This is due to insufficient skills upgrade of workers in the industry performances, which is greatly affected and needed immediate attention. Hence, to improve the performances of the industry, an effective training of the workforce needs rethinking. This study investigates the usefulness of training and skills development as the major growth enhancement in the Nigerian construction industry. The study seeks to assess the current worker's skills acquisition and training needs; the research attempts to identify and categorise the challenges and barriers that negate growth in the workers' skills acquisition of Building Construction in Nigeria. The study is purely qualitative in nature from the reviewed literature using keywords such as ‘training‘ ‘skills’, output, construction, with a traditional method. The researcher has thoroughly searched related literature by searching electronic database. The analysis and the findings of the study is through document analysis from the reviewed literature. Hence, a preliminary model is develop to enhance the current training and skilled development in the Nigerian construction industry, from the findings of the document analysis.