Abstract:
The building construction industry in Ethiopia in general has been found to be among the
main consumers of resources and energy. Moreover, the materials wasted on
construction site during operation exceed the allowance level considered during design
stage. This materials waste is shooting up the cost of the house, which is challenging for
the government who constructs the house and transfer to the registered house seeker. Due
to this, the house seekers failed to afford the cost of final project and the contractor’s
profit was minimized.
The objectives of the research were to investigate how much construction materials
wastage was costing housing project budgets in Addis Ababa city administration saving
houses development enterprise. The study identify the mostly wasted construction
materials during operation, the major cause of construction materials wastage, and
suggesting some frame work to mitigate the effect of construction materials wastage on
housing project cost.
The main tools for the collection of data include questionnaires, interviews, site visit and
observation that used to identify the mostly wasted materials, cause of construction
materials wastage during operation and to what extent materials wastage was costing
housing project.
The findings of this research indicate that the first five mostly wasted construction
materials on housing construction sites are Concrete hollow block, Timber formwork,
Cement, Reinforcement bar and Tiles. It is also concluded that the three most important
factors contributory to construction material waste generation on building sites are
materials handling and storage, design change and revisions and operation.
The study revealed that the cost of waste incurred, on average in these four sites is 7.6 %
of the total cost, ranging from 5.2 % to 9.5 %. This indicates that minimization of
material waste in the housing construction projects would therefore lead to substantial
saving on the purchasing cost of building materials, in addition to savings on dumping
costs. The results of this study recommended that there is a need to establish a new
construction waste department to develop waste management policies and develop the
effective strategy to reduce construction waste.
