ENABLING SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT OF BUILT ASSETS IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES: PERSPECTIVES OF FACILITIES’ DIRECTORS
Main Article Content
Keywords
Higher Education Institutions, Infrastructure, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sustainable Procurement
Abstract
The commitment of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to Sustainable Development (SD) seems to be yielding limited results. This is evident in the procurement and delivery of built assets within HEIs in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study reports on facilities directors’ perceptions of the challenges to sustainable procurement in HEIs within SSA. The identification of such challenges would contribute, significantly, to the extant discourse on how to stem the drift. A qualitative phenomenological research design is utilised. Forty-Three HEIs across two different countries in SSA- Nigeria and South Africa were selected based on purposive and convenience sampling. Facilities directors in these HEIs were interviewed through face-to-face and telephone interview sessions. Documents and webpages concerning the procurement of such buildings were also reviewed. Emergent data from these sources were thematically analysed. Findings indicate that Business As Usual (BAU) mode of procurement has remained the norm in most of the HEIs in spite of their professed commitment to SD. Challenges identified include: the seeming obsession of HEIs, acting as clients, with low front-end cost of project delivery; poor awareness of what SP entails; absence of skills required to champion the cause of SP within such HEIs, and non-specification of SD based requirements in the contracts documents. It is expected that this study would contribute to deepening existing knowledge concerning implementation of SD in HEIs in SSA.
Article Metrics Graph
Article Sidebar
Article Details
The Journal of Construction Project Management and Innovation (JCPMI) is committed to the principles of Open Access publishing and upholds the ethos of freely disseminating research findings to enhance knowledge and understanding within the field of construction project management and innovation.
In accordance with our commitment to open scholarly communication, all articles published by JCPMI are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC). This licensing agreement allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the original author and source are credited. The license also ensures that authors retain copyright over their work while allowing the wider community to access, use, and build upon the content.
The terms of the CC BY-NC license are designed to facilitate the following:
- Attribution: Users must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. This can be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or their use.
- Non-Commercial: Users may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- No Additional Restrictions: Users may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
By publishing with JCPMI, authors agree to these terms and ensure that their work is accessible and reusable under the conditions of the CC BY-NC license, thereby contributing to the ongoing exchange of knowledge and information in an Open Access environment.
Creative Commons CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License