Restructuring NDDC: Pathway to Development in the Niger Delta Region

Niger Delta comprises of the South-South states, Ondo state from the South west, Imo and Abia States from the South East region of Nigeria. Despite the huge mineral resources that the region generates and the driving force to the national economy, the region remains in abject poverty, youth unemployment, poor infrastructure and high level insecurity. This paper investigates the role of NDDC, successes and challenges in the development of Niger Delta region. The Marxist instrumentalist theory was adopted as the theoretical framework of analysis. Documentary method was adopted as the method of data collection and content analysis was employed as the method of analysis. The paper found out that the federal government has created several interventionist bodies which include the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) (1958), the Oil Minerals Producing and Development Commission (OMPADEC) (1992), the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) (2000) and the most recent, Ministry of Niger Delta (2008). In spite of this various interventionist bodies, the region is still far underdeveloped with little or nothing on ground compared to what is being exploited from the region. As an oil producing region, it ought to enjoy massive infrastructural development, job creation, empowerment programs and peaceful society, among others. However, this paper is of the view that a lot still needs to be done, as the region is retrogressing speedily instead of progressing in regards to the core indices of development. This paper also found out that corruption has eaten deep into the affair of NDDC. There is also a report of a cabal who hijacks contracts and sells it to contractors that end up doing low standard jobs not in line with the bill of quantities or not doing at all. The paper recommends total restructuring of Ministry of Niger Delta and NDDC in area of staff posting and review of organogram of the board. There should be a think-tank team of individuals with reputable character both from government and representatives of the people, towards listing out the needs of the people according to preference. A review of projects done and the ones ongoing across the Niger Delta oil producing states with the contractors involved to see if it is in line with the bill of quantities, any contractor found wanting should face the full wrath of the law. Keywords: Restructuring, Development, Niger Delta, Corruption, Oil Politics

Bill of quantities and quantity survey of construction works of renovated buildings - case study

The article presents detailed analysis of the case of the renovation of one of historic tenement houses in Warsaw. Other, similar cases analyzed in less detail- were called verification cases. The aim of the article was, first of all, to present the scale of discrepancies between planned and performed amount of works and possibly precise indication of the reasons for these underestimations. The scope of the research included the inventory of the technical condition of selected building elements, the execution of bill of quantities, quantity survey and cost estimates of selected works. The conducted research shows that quantity survey of works subjected to analysis such as: repair of walls, chimneys and brick walls reached the value at least twice as large. The planned cost of works calculated on the basis of the event was exceeded approximately twice. This was mainly due to the fact that the impact of repair works on deterioration of the technical condition of existing building elements was not foreseen. The poor technical condition of elements that were covered was not foreseen either. On the basis of the case studied, universal observations about renovated facilities can be provided. First of all, it should be stated that a person who makes bill of quantities on such facilities should have executive experience on similar projects. Thus, a good practice would be a cooperation with a person experienced in the implementation of similar investments.

Perceived Effects of Prevalent Errors in Contract Documents on Construction Projects

One of the highly rated causes of poor performance is errors in contract documents. The objectives of this study are to investigate the prevalent errors in contract documents and their effects on construction projects. Questionnaire survey and 51 case study projects (mixed method) were adopted for the study. The study also involved the use of Delphi technique to extract the possible errors that may be contained in contract documents; it did not however constitute the empirical data for the study. The sample of the study consists of 985 consulting and 275 contracting firms that engaged in the construction of building projects that were completed between 2013 and 2016 and were above the ground floor. The two-stage stratified random sampling technique was adopted for the study. The data for the study were analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics (based on Shapiro-Wilk’s test). The results of the study indicate that errors in contract documents were moderately prevalent. However, overmeasurement in bill of quantities was prevalent in private, institutional and management procured projects. Traditionally procured projects contain 68% of the errors in contract documents among the procurement methods. Drawings contain the highest number of errors, followed by bill of quantities and specifications. The severe effects of errors in contract documents were structural collapse, deterioration of buildings and contractors’ claims among others. The result of the study implies that, management procurement method is the route to error minimization in developing countries, but it may need to be backed by law and guarded against overmeasurement.

Early Bill-of-Quantities Estimation of Concrete Road Bridges: An Artificial Intelligence-Based Application

Accurate cost estimation in the preliminary stages of project development is critical for making informed planning decisions. However, such early estimates are typically restricted by limited information. In this article, the widely recognized intelligence of feed-forward artificial neural networks (FFANNs) is used to process actual data from 68 concrete road bridges and provide a surrogate model for the accurate estimation of the bill-of-quantities (BoQ). Specifically, two FFANNs are trained to estimate the superstructure and piers concrete and steel-based on the construction method and the bridge dimensions. As the relevant metrics demonstrate, the FFANNs capture very well the complex interrelations in the data set and produce highly accurate estimates. Furthermore, their generalization capability is superior to the capability of respective linear regression models. As the data used to train the FFANNs are normally available early in the project lifecycle, the proposed model enables early, yet accurate cost estimates to be obtained.