Organisational forgetting in historic public buildings: Climate Adaptation and Industry 4.0 Challenges in Nigeria’s PWD Legacy Buildings (1947–1966)
1 Lecturer, Rivers State University, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Nigeria.
2 Visiting Lecturer, University of Port Harcourt Business School, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Research Article
International Journal of Frontiers in Engineering and Technology Research, 2026, 10(02), 059-067.
Article DOI: 10.53294/ijfetr.2026.10.2.0017
Publication history:
Received on 15 May 2026; revised on 24 June 2026; accepted on 26 June 2026
Abstract:
Nigeria’s First Republic regional legislative buildings in Kaduna, Ibadan and Enugu remain physically visible, yet the project documentation needed to explain their design, construction, alteration, conservation and climate-responsive adaptation histories has largely disappeared. This paper investigates the paradox of physical survival and documentary loss in Nigeria’s built heritage. Its objective is to examine how public-sector institutions lose, neglect, or disown built-environment knowledge over time and to explain why such loss matters for sustainable conservation, adaptive reuse, climate-responsive retrofitting and Industry 4.0 readiness. Using archival searches, field observations and comparative review of six legislative buildings constructed between 1947 and the 1960s, the study identifies four mechanisms of organisational forgetting: restructuring-induced amnesia, technological discontinuity, post-conflict purposive forgetting and generational discounting. The findings suggest that documentation loss is not merely an archival or technological failure, but a behavioural and institutional problem shaped by fragmented responsibility, weak stewardship, resource rationalisation, disrupted organisational memory and limited accountability for preservation outcomes. The paper argues that Industry 4.0 tools such as digitisation, automated cataloguing, cloud storage, artificial intelligence and digital twins can support heritage management only when institutions first establish custodial ownership, metadata discipline, documentation audits and preservation routines. It further shows that missing drawings, alteration records, material specifications and maintenance histories obstruct climate-sensitive conservation because they make it difficult to assess embodied carbon, plan adaptive reuse, evaluate structural vulnerability and design low-impact retrofits. The paper proposes a documentation governance framework and a pilot heritage documentation programme anchored in public works institutions, universities, archives and professional bodies. It contributes policy-relevant insight for sustainable built heritage preservation and Industry 4.0 transformation in developing economies.
Keywords:
Built heritage; Climate-responsive conservation; Documentation governance; Industry 4.0; Organisational forgetting.
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Copyright © 2026 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0