ASSESSMENT OF THE UTILIZATION OF DIFFERENT STRENGTH CLASSES OF CEMENT IN BUILDING CONSTRUCTIONS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

Building collapse in Nigeria is so rampant now to the extent that it's gradually not becoming a news when one occurs. Several factors being attributed as the cause of building collapses are based on opinions and in some cases based on investigative reports of selected buildings collapse. These factors are speculative since some intrinsic properties of debris materials tested during the investigation of selected collapse might be lost due to the impact of the collapse as a result of falling from great height and other debris falling on the tested material that these properties were intact before the collapse. Also, since the major causes of collapse in Nigeria is mostly attributed to poor construction process and the use of substandard material, this study assesses the quality of cements used in some selected sites and freshly produced cement from factory to compare with relevant standards, it also assesses the level of knowledge of the Nigerian construction professional using these cements to measure its applications. It was found out that the cements used in these selected sites were not all to standard even though all the freshly purchased cements met the required standard, this indicates that other factors might be responsible for the drop in standard properties. It was also observed that many of the professionals still need more training on the application of the different cement classes in structural concrete work.