FACTORS AFFECTING THE COMPETENCIES AND PROJECT DELIVERY OF SMALL SIZE INDEGINOUS CONSTRUCTION FIRMS IN LAGOS STATE
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Building construction is the process of assembling materials to form a building; it is generally performed by labourers and craft people engaged by an individual or organization called a contractor (Chudley and Greeno, 2010). The construction industry is made up of an organised formal sector of foreign companies and unorganised sector which comprises indigenous companies. They are classified into small, medium and large scale according to their levels of capitalization and annual turnover. Indigenous construction firm is one that is established under the Nigerian decree and has no other home base but Nigeria. According to McGarvey, Booker and Stafford (2013), the size of building construction firm is determined by the number of employees. The small building firms have employees less than 10, while medium sized contractors have workers ranging between 10 and 499 while large sized contractors have above 500 workers on their payroll. Foci Report (2012) defined performance as the execution or accomplishment of work, acts or feats. Project performance is a critical issue for the construction industry and success of construction projects depends mainly on success of performance. Performance is related to many topics and factors. It is important to recognize the factors that affect performance in the construction industry particularly small indigenous companies. There are several factors from financial management to material and equipment and so on.. A lot of small indigenous companies have been subject to these factors in terms of cost, inadequate infrastructure, absence of motivation, and so on.
It is shown from previous studies (Karim and Marosszeky, 1999; DETR (Key Performance
Indicators Report),2000; Lehtonen, 2001; Samson and Lema, 2002; Kuprenas, 2003; Cheung etal, 2004; Iyer and Jha, 2005; Navon, 2005;
STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The indigenous contractor is faced with the problems of working capital, poor management and lack of good Organisation.
FINANCE
Finance is very important in the Building and Construction Industry. The contrac¬ tor has to invest on plant which is expensive in the case of civil engineering Jobs, and requires cash for payment of workers salaries, purchase of materials, etc. Inadequate finance can severely limit the scope of activities of a contrac¬ tor. In recent years the problem of finance has become soluble. The commercial banks are under considerable pressure from the Government to assist indigenous companies and any contractor who has demonstrated a good sense of responsibility and shows some creditable construction record should not have much problem in attracting funds from the banks.
PERSONNEL
Nigerian labour is extensively used by both expatriate and indigenous construction companies even though the industry is capital intensive. By European Standards, the Output of labour on building and civil engineering sites is very low. Labour wages are relatively low and for civil engineering projects, the overall labour cost is small in relation to the total Output. One interesting point is that expatriate contractors always get better productivity out of Nigerian work¬ ers, this can only be ascribed to better supervision.
