Inventory Management and Construction Project Delivery in Nigeria

Abstract

Effective management of inventories has been widely acclaimed as an important panacea for sustainable construction project delivery. This paper evaluates inventory management practices in the Nigerian construction industry. To achieve this, the specific objectives are to (1) assess inventory management practices in the construction industry and (2) explore the influence of inventory management on project delivery in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was distributed to 110 construction companies in three strategic cities of Lagos,Abuja and Port Harcourt using purposive and stratified sampling techniques. Ninety (90) valid responses were retrieved giving a response rate of 82%. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings reveal that materials requirement planning (MRP) with a mean score of 3.972 was the top ranked technique for construction project management in the Nigeria. This is closely followed by warehousing management (WM) (3.961) at the second, first-in–first-out (FIFO) (3.880) at the third. Findings also reveal that the level of use of all the three inventory management techniques had significant influence on project delivery time and cost but not on quality. The paper recommends that contractors and industry associations should embrace the concept of inventory management to improve efficiency in terms of growth, turnover and sustainability. Besides, stakeholders should carry out advocacy and sensitisation to improve level of awareness while educational construction institutions should update their curriculum to incorporate sustainable and more innovative technologies into inventory management.KeywordsMaterials managementProject performanceConstruction industryNigeria