Investigation Of Defects In New Buildings In Nigeria

CHAPTER ONE
 
INTRODUCTION
 
1.1          General Introduction
 
In this modern era, there are more and more-high rise buildings being developed by the clients or the contractors due to the reason of insufficient land use and high population of people. New buildings mean different thing to different people. In fact, there is not exact definition for what is meant by new building. However, the definition is centre around the age of the buildings. While some might considered building less than five years old as new building some might considered building less than ten years old as new. In this research project, new building is defined as building within the defects liability period. In Nigeria , the defects liability period is from 12 months to 24 months which is 1 to 2 years (Minter, 2016). After that, the buildings will be defined as new which is free from DLP.
 
A building is a place where people accommodate and work together or for an organisation to conduct its work (Seeley, 1987 in Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz, 2015). Moreover, the purpose of a building is to give a comfortable and healthy surrounding for people to conduct activities, to provide security, sustain load and environmental shelter or control (Olli, 2004). Besides that, buildings can be differentiated by its function, number of stories, purposes and there are various types of buildings. For example, residential building, commercial building, educational building, industrial building, government building and etc. (De-Chiara and Chrosibie (2001) in Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz, 2015).
 
However, there is occurrence of cracks and failures in school buildings due to various causes and building defects are still one of the major issue which construction industry need to deal with (Ahmad, 2004). For instance, honeycombs, hairline cracks at beams, faulty design, construction materials, structural cracks in walls, reinforcement bars of columns became rusty due to expose to sunlight and rainwater and etc. Apart from that, unnecessary effort was needed in order to correct the construction error which is rework (Josephson et. al., 2002). Rework will affect the performance and also the cost for construction industry. According to research from the Construction Industry Institute (CII), it shows that the direct costs cause by the rework is amount to 5% of total construction costs (CII, 2005).
 
Therefore, this research’s aim is to evaluate the causes and prevention of cracks on school building  in Nigeria  and this chapter contain the objectives which are to identify the causes, types and solutions for cracks in school buildings.
 
 
1.2          Background of Study
 
The construction industry is getting more modern, technologies advance and growing day by day around the global including Nigeria. Construction Industry has a great impact on the economy of all countries (Leibing, 2001). According to Sun and Olawale (2010), the construction industry is contributed towards to the GDP due to continuous development.
 
New buildings mean different thing to different people. In fact, there is not exact definition for what is meant by new building. However, the definition is centre around the age of the buildings. While some might considered building less than five years old as new building some might considered building less than ten years old as new. In this research project, new building is defined as building within the defects liability period. In Malaysia, the defects liability period is from 12 months to 24 months which is 1 to 2 years (Minter, 2016). After that, the buildings will be defined as new which is free from DLP.
 
Other than that, new buildings can be classifies into residential building, commercial building, educational building, industrial building and etc. (Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz 2015). In addition, construction of high-rise building is on-going in Malaysia and buildings can be classify into purposes, function, and types. The purpose of a building is to provide a comfortable working and living environment for people. In addition, the function of a building is depends on the design of a building, to conduct activities, to provide security and environmental shelter. There are many types of buildings but in terms of height, it consists of high-rise building, low-rise building, and mix-development building. High-rise building is defined as a building which it is more than 20 stories. However, various types of defects can be found inside the buildings.
 
A crack is generally described as deterioration, damages, default or deficiency (Olanrewaju & Abdul Aziz, 2015). According to Ahmad (2004), there are usually various causes and types of cracks that affect the performance of a building. For example, design deficiencies and construction deficiencies. The causes of cracks  in the school buildings  can occur due to chemical reactions in construction materials, changes in temperature and climate, foundation movements and settling of buildings, environmental stresses like nearby trains, earth quakes etc. Faulty design, bad quality materials, wrong method of construction, weather effects and lots of wear and tear can create cracks in walls, floors and ceilingsAll these causes have given an impact of rework to the construction industry. Rework is meant by doing something at least more than one time due to the reason not fulfilling the requirements as stated by the Construction Industry Development Agency (1995). In addition, the cost of rework is amount to 5% of the total construction costs (CII, 2005). For an example, the construction industry of United States expended $1,502 billion in 2004 for total construction cost (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2006) and $75 billion was wasted by rework cost in year 2004.
 
Besides, there are few stages of defects in building which are patent stage, latent stage, progression stage and recurring stage. The patent stage and latent stage defects often can be seen in new buildings and the defects occur throughout the building life cycle (Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz, 2015).
 
On the other hand, the types of defects that affect the building is poor workmanship, construction material, lack of supervision and maintenance, limited time and cost, faulty design, climatic condition, and external environment (Ahmad, 2004). The reason why defect occurs in the buildings might have due to non-compliance with the Building Code and does not follow the standard procedure when constructing the work. Therefore, maintenances are needed in order to prevent these types of defects from occurring.
 
Maintenance of building is essential in order to sustain and preserve the building to an acceptable condition. Acceptable standards mean to sustain the utility and value of the facility. Moreover, the purpose of maintaining the building is to retain the value of investment, maintain the building in a good condition so that it can provides its function fully and have a good appearance (Al-Hammad, 2014). However, the expenditure cost for maintaining the building is high and it will continues or even to increase the cost in the future. According to Rendeau et al. (2006); Booty (2006), it shows that 70% of the operating costs from the building is contributed towards to maintenance considering the fact that more than 90% of the life time of a building project, it requires maintenance work.
 
The contractor also responsible for repairing the defects that have appeared in the contractor works within 12 or 24 months from the date or practical completion (Minter, 2016). During this 12 or 24 months, any defects that occur under the contractor works, the contractor need to repair it immediately under the contractual obligations. Usually the defects occur in the new buildings are due to the designer latent stage defect and also the contractor patent stage defect (Olanrewaju & Abdul-Aziz, 2015).
 
In Nigeria, high-rise buildings less than 10 years old would have structural defect in terms of cracks  that can cause danger to the residents and also to the public (Anthony, 2013). In fact, all new buildings have problems in defects like surface cracks .The reason why many defects occur in the new high-rise buildings was due to poor workmanship of the labour, lack of skilled supervision and etc. The most important is many new high-rise buildings have defects from the moment of completion.
 
Based on the research done by Anthony (2013), he has inspected more than hundreds of old and new high-rise school buildings in the nationwide and found out that many cracks  occur in the buildings that they have inspected
 
In a nutshell, school management should always conduct inspection in order to prove safety for the school building and they can identify any defects at the early stage and rectify it to provide safety and health for the residents. By thus, the purpose of this research is to determine the causes and prevention of cracks school buildings in Nigeria and also to determine the possible solutions for the cracks.
 
1.3          Problem Statement
Construction deficiencies such as poor workmanship and low quality of materials, design deficiencies like not according to the specification and faulty design, limited time and cost, external environment and etc. lead to various types of cracks in school buildings. In Nigeria, cracks in school building are too many unabated and the impacts of cracks  are high maintenance costs, poor user satisfactions, dangerous to the students and the buildings cannot function properly. While there is information on defects/cracks in buildings in general, such is not available for new buildings, though theoretically, new buildings should be free from defects/cracks. Therefore, this research project aim to evaluate the causes defects of cracks in school buildings.
1.4          Aim
This research aimed to evaluate the causes and prevention of cracks on school building.
1.5          Objectives
In order to achieve the aim of this research the objective has been listed as follow:
     To determine the causes of cracks/defects in school buildings
     To determine the types of cracks/defects in school buildings
     To determine the solutions for cracks/defects in school buildings
1.6          Research Scope and Limitation
 
This research is mainly focus causes, types and solutions for cracks/defects in school buildings in Nigeria. Qualitative method which is interview will be used to collect the data from the interviewees. The limitation of this research is limited of time. Therefore, the interview can only be carried out at some selected schools which is located in Nigeria.
1.7          Significant of the study
 
The significant of this study is to find out the major causes of cracks that occures  in the schoolnbuildings and determine a possible solution in order to minimize the cracks. Other than that, the reason why I select this topic for my research study is because I personally interest in understanding the problems in a deeper manner and want to gain more knowledge and also experience so that it would be useful for me.