Abstract
It was argued that either the construction industry to continue to be conservative and inefficient on the premise that it was distinctive or it should have opened-up to learn lessons from the best practices models in other sectors like manufacturing. This paper is a comparative study of the sustainable end-of-life management practices in the automobile and the Nigerian building sector with the aim of examining the feasibility of construction industry learning lessons from model of the automobile industry. While the practices in the automobile sector were obtained from literature, the practices in the Nigerian construction industry were investigated using in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The participants were construction industry experts with experience in building demolition as directly identified by the researchers or identified using snowball technique. The results of a comparative evaluation of the practices in the two industries shows that the practices in the construction industry can be improved by adopting five sustainable practices from the automobile industry. These are materials sorting techniques, maintaining materials database, reverse logistics and extended manufacturer responsibility, standardisation, and application of advanced material handling technology. Key words: End-of-life, waste management, automobile, construction, Kano Nigeria.  
Highlights
Imagine a situation where to procure a car, you have to order parts in pieces while signing series of contracts, and for most days leaving the unfinished vehicle exposed to the weather while the contractors closed from work; such is the analogy of the automotive to the construction industry (Solís, 2009)
According to research participant 13 (E13), all materials are recovered for reuse in another building or for recycling except in the case of small pieces of glasses that cannot be resized for reuse
It can be argued that in the context of the Nigerian construction industry, there is no possibility of any lesson to be learnt from the automobile industry in terms of materials recovery
Summary
Imagine a situation where to procure a car, you have to order parts in pieces while signing series of contracts, and for most days leaving the unfinished vehicle exposed to the weather while the contractors closed from work; such is the analogy of the automotive to the construction industry (Solís, 2009). The industrial culture inherent in construction industry can be yet another reason for the industry to be more conservative (Brockmann and Birkholz, 2006) These shortcomings of construction industry are often cited as justifications for the need of construction industry to learn lessons from other sectors like manufacturing as demonstrated in a study by Sanvido and Medeiros (1990) and Koskela (1992). It is compelling for the construction industry to tread the path of other industries for increased efficiency, control, quality, productivity, and minimum cost of production (Solís, 2009)
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