Factors Affecting the Pre-Contract use of the Bill of Quantities

Abstract

Debates over the preparation, use and relevance of the Bill Of Quantities (BOQ) in the construction industry have been long standing without commensurate research effort to address the problem. The objectives of this research are to determine the extent of use of the BOQ in the Nigerian construction industry, evaluate the criteria for the use/benefits of the use of the BOQ and to evaluate the factors mitigating the use of the BOQ. Data were collected through the administration of questionnaire on 53 randomly selected construction consultants. Majority of the respondents (47.2%) were quantity surveyors, 20.8% were builders, 17% were architects, 9.4% were civil engineers and 5.7% were mechanical and electrical engineers. The data collected were analysed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Key findings are that use of the BOQ constitutes 46.35% of construction professionals' overall workload, and the most important benefit of the use of BOQs in Nigeria is that they provide common bases for competitive bidding. The five most important factors mitigating the use of the BOQ at the pre-contract stage are: limitation in scope and spread of dedicated computer software for BOQ preparation, Absence/lack of implementation of legislations compelling the use of the BOQ, BOQs are not supported by emerging procurement systems, BOQs are expensive to prepare and lack of complete information on which to base the BOQ. This research provides useful information on the strength of the factors affecting the use of the BOQ at the pre-contract stage.