Contemporary Assessment of Effect of Construction Material Waste Management on Final Costs of Projects in Nigeria: An Empirical Approach

This paper presents an evaluation of the extent to which materials waste management in construction project sites affect final project cost. Nigeria is the largest African country with potentials for construction and building investment; and thus the problem of construction material waste is well known in Nigeria; but it seems not to be given the recognition or the attention it deserves. This paper therefore used descriptive survey research design and thus random sampling technique; hence 161 construction professionals from two notable indigenous firms in Enugu state formed the population of the study, from which a sample size of 115 was arrived at. In the analysis descriptive statistics and multiple regression were employed for descriptive analysis and hypothetical testing respectively; while earned value analysis (EVA) was deployed in the secondary data for the effect of material waste on final project cost. Finally analysed was done using SPSS version 24 for ease of computation. The result of the research shows that that implementation of material recycling on site have a significantly positive impact on final cost of construction projects as it will reduce projects marginal cost. Also the study concludes that the variation between the volume of material used in a project and the volume of material waste in such a project will give similar or more percentage variation between the planned cost of the project and final cost of the project. This means that the effect of the material waste in a project will not reduce the final cost of a project but rather will increase the cost. It recommends that a pragmatic mathematical model for the quantification of onsite-material waste and the mathematical equation for managing material waste and cost overruns be developed by construction firms.