Comparison of the Performance of Traditional and Direct Labour Methods of Project Procurement: A Case Study of some Selected Projects of the Nigerian Army
| Author | Adenuga, Olumide Afolarin |
The downturn in the economy experienced in Nigeria after the oil boom era, among other compelling reasons like project complexity and magnitude, has led practitioners in the construction industry to embrace some methods of project procurement other than the popular traditional contract system.
The paper aims to compare the performance of direct labour and the traditional method of project procurement in terms of cost, quality and time for some selected projects of the Nigerian Army.
Simply put, a procurement method is that method employed in acquiring a project. Ogunsanmi and Bamisile (1997) described the procurement of a building project as the process of management of the design and construction of the building from inception to the completion stage, Ogunsanmi et al. (1995), however, came to the conclusion that
• Directly employed labour eases the problem of communication and enhances better working relations and the control of quality.
• It is suitable for the execution of emergency repairs, as the in house labour will be familiar with the location of all operational services.
Disadvantages of the direct labour method:
• Since there is usually no contractual obligation, projects are sometimes abandoned due to a lack of funds.
• There is usually no standard labour, as would have been the case with established construction firms.
• There may be inadequate incentives for workers involved in direct labour procurement.
• Fagbenle (1999) noted that there may be a shoddy attitude to work at times on the part of the operatives.
The data used were obtained from structured questionnaires and personal interviews. The group of respondents was mainly officers and contractors who have played key roles in this procurement. The projects selected for comparison were similar in cost and executed within the same period of time. The magnitude of work done was also noted.
For analysis, the descriptive statistical method was used. T4est was used for comparison. Pearson chi-square was used to establish the significance or otherwise of variations in the grouped variables of cost, time and quality which provided the platform for making inferences from the propounded hypotheses.
More often than not, the traditional method of project procurement provides the datum for comparing the other methods.
Ogunsanmi and Bamisile (1997) identified five broad categories of project procurement methods in use in the construction industry in Nigeria: the traditional, direct labour, labour only, design and build, and management procurement.
The traditional method of project procurement is a system whereby the client enters into separate...
To continue reading
Request your trial