ASSESSMENT OF CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL WASTE IN ADDIS ABABA: THE CASE OF SELECTED BUILDING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

Abstract

Construction industry is an industry, which is involved in the planning execution and evaluation (monitoring) of all types of civil works. Physical infrastructures such as buildings, communication & energy related construction works, water supply & sewerage civil works etc. are some of the major projects (program) in the construction industry. Construction industry plays an important role in social, economic & political development of a country. Construction is the largest and accounts from 12% to 25% of the GNP of both developed & developing countries. It consumes the higher percentage of the annual budget of a country; specifically, Ethiopia, it covers 58% of the annual budget. However, the industry has been experiencing such problems on identifying contributing factors of waste in the construction materials in the industry. In many regions of the world, rapid increase in building activities because of rising population and urbanization generates a large amount of construction waste. The objective of this study is to assess the major contributing factors of construction material waste in Addis Ababa building construction projects. From the number of building constructions found in Addis Ababa, building contractors one, two and three were selected as the target population. To meet the objective of the study, a questionnaire and key informant interview were used as data collection tools. Among the distributed 118 questionnaires for the construction companies, 90 were collected. Simple statistical analysis involving tables and percentages were used in analyze the results from the questionnaire. Secondary sources of data were obtained from relevant literature that covered research, publication on the subject matter. The finding of this research indicates that “Frequent design changes at construction stage”, “Rework due to workers mistakes” and “Poor quality of materials” were the three major factors of construction material waste among the 44 identified factors. In addition, high amount of concrete wastage was identified as the top major contributing factors in the performance of building construction projects since concrete uses in larger quantity in construction sites. Beside this, the results obtained indicate, the construction material waste minimizing measures are not practiced yet in construction sites. The results of this study recommended that there is a need to establish strong communication towards the scope of work in the design phase of the project based on the client interest. And adoption different technologies like prefabrication and precast units, proper detailing during designing, coordinating dimensions between materials and the design, and planning ahead to minimize design changes are sensible mechanisms.