Empirical Determination Of Labour Outputs For Block Laying

CHAPTER ONE
1           INTRODUCTION
1.1          Background of the Study
In Nigeria, like most developing countries, the construction industry plays a dominant role in the economic activities of the country.The efficiency of the construction industry has been established to heavily rely on its level of productivity. Construction productivity is constantly declining over a decade due to the lack of standard productivity data base system and ignorance of impact of various factors influencing labour productivity (Muqeemet al., 2011).The accuracy of the project cost estimates depend largely on the degree of accuracy of cost information obtained on the key components of an estimate (i.e. labour, plant, material, and profit and overhead) (Abdullahi, 2009), while the use of Standard Methods of Measurement (SMM) for the preparation of BOQ gives the quality and standard of the extent of work to be done, it also takes precedence of the cost significances of every classes of operations within a trade.
The common method of generating cost estimates for construction projects involves the multiplication of unit rate by the measured quantities in the bill of quantities (Ashworth, 2002).The unit rate is a component of labour rate (obtained from the multiplication of labour constant by all-in rate) plus cost of material and percentage allowance for profit and overhead, while the measured quantities are obtained from drawings and specifications for the works rules specified by Building and Engineering Standard Methods of Measurement (BESMM3).