The President of Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN), Alhaji Murtala Aliyu, in this interview, urges quantity surveyors to diversify into agriculture and mining sectors. Excerpts:
The theme of this year’s annual assembly for the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN) is diversification as a viable strategy for the quantity surveyor. What areas are you looking at diversifying into?
For now, we are looking at agriculture and mining and the third area is ICT. For everything you do now, ICT has to be the backbone.
What possible opportunities can a quantity surveyor get in these sectors?
I will tell you first of all, why the choice. Now, when you look at the economy generally, you find that the direction of the people is in two sectors; agriculture and mining. Agriculture because of our huge population and the continuous demand for natural resources, the reliance of our neighbours on us and so on; agriculture will remain viable for a long time.
Secondly, before now, we have collaborated with the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) to hold a session on energy, oil and gas. Looking at the other aspects of the extractive industry, Nigeria has huge potential in mining. So, a lot of activities, a lot of investments will be going into mining; so this is one frontier we will be looking at.
The quantity surveyors are cost experts and if you take agriculture, you find out that major construction companies are getting involved in agriculture because it is modernising and it requires world-class infrastructure. So people going into the sector have to look at what they are going to invest initially and what they are expected to get like you have in every investment. From that perspective, the cost experts will play significant roles. I was made to understand that companies like Julius Berger and SCC are already getting involved in agriculture. You will also find out that the quantity surveyor has a role from estimating what exactly the inputs will be, at what level, programme of work and the expectations per area. All these are cost issues that the quantity surveyor will be concerned about.
Then in mining, both surface and sub-surface mining, a lot of things happen and there are aspects that involve cost. At the initial stage, there is labour-you extract, refine and dispose-the-waste-all, these are processes that will involve the quantity surveyor.
When you go to sub-surface mining, there is tunneling and a host of others; there are quite a number of dimensions to the quantity surveying work in mining.
Actually, the international construction measurement standard has developed a section on standardising measurements in mining alongside those of dams and irrigation activities. So, along the line, mining is becoming significant, so sophisticated, machine-involved and labour-intensive that the role of a quantity surveyor will be needed there.
To sum it up, we want to encourage our members to either provide services to agriculture and mining or participate as investors because these are not areas that are the exclusive preserve of any profession.
What is the extent of the impact of the rising cost of building materials on the quantity surveyor?
Well, a number of things. One, any time the economy shakes, the first victim is the construction industry. When it comes to the rising cost of materials, then, it becomes worrisome because projects will experience a cost avalanche, which means there will be delays in delivery, there may be a substantial increase in the cost. So, when a client has a budget for a project, he either has to raise the financing or borrow to be able to complete the project.
Now, in a country where we have a lot of abandoned projects, this is quite worrying, because escalation in cost of materials will certainly impact on the completion timetable, on the budgets of projects and will also discourage clients who have not started their projects, which means our members and other professionals in the built environment will have less patronage. So, these are some of the worrying aspects of the rising cost of materials to the construction industry and to our members.
Has the built environment professionals forged a common front to meet with the government and stakeholders in the manufacturing industry to find a solution to the problem?
We haven’t done that yet but I can tell you that there is a group called Forum for the Regulatory Bodies of the Built Environment of Nigeria (FORBBEN). Presidents and registrars of these bodies have been meeting and we are looking at common issues like local content, issues like encroachment of professionals into other professional fields. We will be meeting soon and this is one of the issues that we raise and then forge a common front. Like I said, it is not going to affect quantity surveyors alone, it is going to affect projects, and anything that affects projects is going to affect all professionals in the built environment.
Now, one of the areas that we must bring the government’s attention to is the area of use of local materials. You cannot be importing a substantial part of building materials and expect that buildings will cost less. Anytime there is an escalation in the exchange rate or inflation, the cost of materials will rise. But if we produce it locally, we can escape the exposure to the vagaries of the foreign exchange rates.
We are talking to the Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute and National Raw Materials Exploration Agency to see how the use of raw materials researched here can be deployed to the construction industry, otherwise, we will continue to import and we will continue to experience high cost in projects execution.
Have they identified some of them (materials) that can come in as a stop-gap?
We are working on that and at least for low-cost housing, others can be used. And the government should encourage joinery, carpentry or woodwork companies to come up so that we don’t import doors, door locks and hinges from any other country. These are things we can manufacture here but the government must be deliberate about it. It’s not just about saying we will give you a tax break, no; it is about encouraging investors to come in. Even when we collaborate with foreign investors to produce them in this country, it will be cheaper than when we import them.
So FORBBEN is barely six months old and we will be collaborating in this respect. But the issue of the cost of materials is not just the exchange rate differential, we need to produce more locally and in fact, get used to using our local materials because our population is huge, our consumption is huge and if we keep importing, we will be in trouble.
Largely, you are saying this scenario will also affect the delivery of low-cost housing for Nigerians?
Yes, not only low-cost housing, it will affect all projects. But what I am saying is that, for us to salvage mass housing, we need to encourage the use of local building materials.
Certainly, if the government has the intention of constructing houses, then it will budget more for it because the cost will be huge.
The government has initiated a very ambitious mass housing project under the National Economic Sustainability Plan. Do you see the rising cost of materials derailing this project?
Yes. In the first place, I think, from experience, the government putting so much energy into this mass housing has not worked so far. What they should do is encourage developers to invest in the sector. Housing should be private-sector driven. The moment you expect the government to start constructing houses, contracts awards and all that will come in and it could only go some distance. Look at Shagari Housing Estates; some of them are still there abandoned. So you can see the failure in mass housing by the government because, most times, many things are not taken into consideration. The need assessment, they don’t look at the peculiarity of the environment, they have a one-size-fit-all kind of arrangement that goes round the country and you find out that people don’t take it. Or they take it to the outskirts where there are no infrastructures and people do not go there.
An investor will not do that; an investor will look at an area where he can sell his houses. So, the government should concentrate on developing the mortgage market and not constructing houses.
