Offsite Manufacturing Construction: A Big Opportunity for Housing Delivery in Nigeria

The problem of housing delivery is of great concern in many countries of the world. This problem is more predominant in developing countries and Nigeria is not an exception. In Nigeria, this challenge has been magnified as a result of myriad of issues, e.g. high population growth rate, shortage of necessary skills, disintegrated supply chain etc. Seminal literature has proven that offsite manufacturing (OSM) can help improve housing delivery efforts both in terms of quantity and quality. The purpose of the research was to investigate the current housing delivery problems in Nigeria and evaluate the feasibility of adopting OSM. To achieve this, the study conducted substantial literature review to explore the benefits of OSM, identify the problems of housing delivery in Nigeria and explore different dimensions and the issues that can be associated with using OSM in Nigeria. The results revealed that there are a good number of benefits promised by OSM; notable among these benefits are: less wastage on site, faster construction time, quality improvement and reduction in wet trades. Moreover, some of the problems of housing delivery in Nigeria identified included: skills shortage, reliance on conventional construction techniques, slow pace of construction, and low quality of housing. The study also showed that adaptation of OSM has been quite useful in other countries facing the similar issues of housing shortage, e.g. Malaysia. As such, it is argued that OSM can improve skills shortages, improve the speed of construction, improve the overall quality of housing and help eliminate wet trades. For the problems of housing delivery to be tackled in Nigeria, it is important to undertake additional research to identify the benefits, barriers and context-specific ways of adopting OSM in Nigeria.

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