COLLABORATION AMONG INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN NIGERIA

Purpose: Construction project delivery in Nigeria, like many developing countries, remains challenging in terms of collaborative effort. It is still seen to be characterised by adversarial relationships in work places thereby manifesting unsatisfactory work quality, errors and omissions in designs and other contract documents, wastages and attendant high costs, and untimely completion. Efforts have been made in understanding the practices and barriers of collaboration. This research investigated internal stakeholder participation and involvement in decision making, and evaluated the degree of collaboration in terms of prevalent collaborative elements, efforts and strategies in construction industry in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaire Survey was used to collect data for the study from the six cities representing the six geopolitical Zones of Nigeria as cluster sampling drawn from internal stakeholders: Client (or client representative), builders, engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, land surveyors and skilled technicians. Simple percentages and mean were used from the SPSS as tools for analyses. Findings: It was found that collaboration takes place mostly at construction phase instead of all phases; skilled technicians (with Mean Score of 4.30) and client/client representative (with Mean Score of 4.26) are mostly involved in decision making instead of holistic involvement. Originality/value: The understanding of what the issues are with Stakeholder collaboration in Nigeria has been established and adjudged to be generally on the average. It is recommended that level of internal stakeholder involvement should be encouraged by all stakeholders at all phases of construction and the key elements of collaboration should be prioritised alongside collaborative efforts and strategies for less adversarial relationships and improved productivity in construction industry in Nigeria.