Assessing the essentials of the application of constructability during the design process of real estate development

Abstract

Constructability is a technique applied to identify hindrances before a real estate development is actually developed to reduce or prevent errors, delays and cost overruns from start to finish. The study assessed the essentials of the application of constructability during design of real property development process in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design with a total of 60 copies of questionnaire retrieved representing 78.9% response rate. Respondents were purposively selected from 76 Lecturers in Faculty of Environmental Sciences with 6 Departments: Architecture, Estate Management, Surveying and Geometrics, Urban and Regional Planning, Quantity Surveying and Environmental Management of Rivers State University in Port Harcourt. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study has shown that 74% of the respondents have high level of awareness of constructability application among practitioners, which believe that it improves designs and leads to other essentials on property development. And there are many factors hindering widespread use of the constructability, the most significant of which is practitioners’ lack of property development knowledge. The findings also discovered that although most practitioners indicated that they required developers’ experience in their designs, only 74% were often involved with contractors in the design process, which only developers can provide more site feedbacks. The study concluded that there exists a relationship between essentials of applying constructability principles to property development, which is significant at p-value = 82.1%. Thus, the suggested a total disassembling of the traditional compartmentalization of design and development by more widespread use of non-conventional procurement methods which give developers a greater role in design.