Knowledge of Building and Construction Materials among Polytechnic Students

Knowledge of building and construction materials is fundamental to Architecture, Quantity Surveying and Building Technology practice. This paper therefore examines the knowledge of building and construction Materials among the polytechnic students from Architectural Technology (ARCH), Building Technology (BT) and Quantity Surveying (QS) program at Federal Polytechnic Nasarawa, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 174 Higher National Diploma (HND) students about their familiarity with major materials used for the construction of residential houses. The data were analyzed using SPSS (version 16.0) to run descriptive statistics and analyses of variance (ANOVA). The findings revealed that there exists a significant difference among ARCH, BT and QS students with respect to familiarity with construction materials. Students from ARCH scored the highest mean for all materials compared to students from BT and QS. These findings reveal that ARCH students were more familiar with the construction and building materials compared with BT and QS students. This study pioneers and provides a major impetus for future research. Further, it can trigger further research across all the departments of various Schools with respect to a common knowledge or skills students are expected to acquire.