The Building and Road Research Institute was founded in 1952 under the name of the West African Building Research Institute. It consisted of engineers from Nigeria and Ghana and was based in Accra. In 1960 the Nigerian members left the Institute to form their own body, triggering a name-change to the 'building Research Institute of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, with the Institute moving to the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, at Kumasi, in 1963. One year later the remit of the Institute was expanded to cover research relating to roads, the name of the Institute also changing to its current form, reflecting this.