Optimising the Awareness of Benefits of Sustainable Construction Practices in Nigeria

Abstract

Awareness of the benefits of sustainable construction practices has been acknowledged as the fundamental principle that underlies its implementation. This survey study examined the level of awareness of the benefits of sustainable construction practices among building construction stakeholders and the strategies for optimising the awareness level through the use of questionnaire. The Mann–Whitney U Test result revealed that there was significant difference in the awareness level of benefits of sustainable construction practices between building professionals and non-professionals, in spite of a general moderate high level of awareness; due to difference in the training background and experience of the professionals and non-professionals. The Relative Importance Index (RII) result further showed that these differences could be narrowed through the adoption of 12 strategies for promotion of awareness. For maximum optimisation, the study suggested that six high level importance strategies had to be operationalised. However, when these are not readily available or very difficult to apply, alternative medium-high level importance strategy could be adopted. Thus, since non-professional stakeholders such as clients and non-professional contractors do not have opportunity of learning as professionals, the study suggested that the professionals should engage in such strategies as community or professional group engagement and local partnership with the non-professional stakeholders so as to create an interface that would promote awareness of benefits of sustainable construction practices among the stakeholders. Similarly, relevant authorities, such as government agencies and regulatory bodies need to embark on other alternative strategies such as advertisement promotion, etc.

Keywords

• awareness
• benefits
• construction practices
• optimisation strategy
• sustainable construction