DETERMINATION OF QUALITY OF SANDCRETE BLOCKS USING COST ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL INPUT
OLUSHOLA NDEFO OKIGBO AND ABU AMOS GANA
Department of Quantity Surveying
Federal Polytechnic Bida, Niger State Nigeria
E-mail: olusholaokigbo@gmail.com, amos.abu38@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Sandcrete
blocks are the most commonly used blocks in the construction of building in
Nigeria. The importance of sandcrete blocks cannot be overemphasised. Despite
all the government effort to ensure good quality production of sandcrete blocks
in Nigeria, many block industries are still producing blocks that are below
standard. Many researches have proved this beyond reasonable doubt. In order to
make this proof clearer this paper focussed on using the cost of materials
input to determine the quality of the blocks produced by these block industries.
In achieving this two commonly used types of blocks and mix proportions were
considered. After a careful and detailed analysis it was found out that the
total material cost of producing 467blocks of 150mm thick (6”) using 1:6 mix was
N82,698.00 while the selling price in
the market was N46,667.00. Also the
cost of producing 304blocks of 225mm thick (9” size) using 1:6 mix was N82,698.00 and the selling price was N45,652.50. With this analysis the
questions is how are the block industries making profit? It was concluded that,
if the block industries are really producing their blocks up to the set
standards, they cannot break even on the prices these blocks are being sold by
the industries. It was also concluded that the blocks are not up to the
standard set by standard organisation of Nigeria SON. The researcher
recommended that the organisation and law enforcement agency should put more
effort in monitoring the block industries so as to ensure good quality in the production
of the sandcrete blocks.