Facilities Management in the Nigerian Public Sector

Facility Management embraces the concepts of cost-effectiveness, productivity improvement, efficiency and employee quality of life. Facilities Management (FM) is the integration of multi-disciplinary activities within the built environment and the management of their impact upon people and the workplace. Effective facilities management which is the efficient integration of the available resources with the activities of an organization is vital to its success.

At the corporate level, it contributes to the delivery of strategic and operational objectives. On a day-to-day level, effective facilities management provides a safe and efficient working environment, which is essential to the performance of any business –whatever its size and scope. 

The FM sector is still in its infancy, having been organized in its current format just about three decades ago but it offers great challenges to the Public. The ability of an organization to create, manage and sustain the most appropriate structure that would eventually translate into a value added service is the thrust of this discussion.

A value added approach can be said to involve the organization of an entity or operation through the setting up of cost structures, allocation of resources including its people, equipment, information systems, materials etc. Considerable value can be added through effective organization and management. Nigeria is the country with the largest population of black Africans in the world. With a population of 150 million, one out of every four black persons in the world is a Nigerian.

This country, which is rich in mineral deposits especially crude oil was colonized by the British until 1960 when it obtained independence. Infrastructural and facility development in the colonial era was motivated not by a desire to develop the country but to service industries and other interests in Europe. At independence (1960), Nigerians took over the helms of affairs in governance but the policy thrust of government remained the same. 

This resulted in government embarking on massive developmental projects, which although useful to the society however had no sustainability programs built into them. Thus development projects that were meaningfully conceived and executed failed not long after they are commissioned into operational use. In view of the above situation, it has become imperative that a re-engineering of the procurement process, the management of construction and the facility management of projects in Nigeria be embarked upon as a national priority. It is even more imperative as the main source of income to the country, which is crude oil, may not continue for much longer to be the hot cake in the international market as it is today.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF FACILITIES MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA

FM in Nigeria has a long history beginning from the colonial period where the Public Works Department (PWD) was in charge of both development and management of public facilities. Although this predated the birth of Facilities Management in the USA, what the PWD did then was FM.A decade after independence Nigeria experienced a boom in national earnings occasioned by the 1973 oil crisis which created an opportunity for massive infrastructural development by the various levels of government in Nigeria. Unfortunately, this development was not matched by efforts to manage and maintain these facilities hence the deterioration began soon after commissioning.

THE IMPERATIVE OF FACILITIES MANAGEMENT

All over the world in the last ten years we have seen the aggressive and positive impact of the Facilities Manager in the building industry. Their emergence can be traced to one thing-the quest to optimize resources deployed in facility management and improve the bottom line for the private sector or effectiveness for the public sector.

Facility Managers are the managers of non-core services charged with optimizing costs and improving the service levels in support of core businesses, as part of the drive to improve competitiveness or efficiency in the case of the public sector. Facility Managers have before them the opportunity to drive beyond improvements to existing ways of doing things to areas of cause rather than effect. It is often the case that they deal with the symptoms of facility failures rather than the root causes. To improve facility performance is the goal –not to manage an overhead more effectively, but to seek to remove it entirely by transforming it from a cost center to an asset. This is the only route wherebypublic sector funding can be easily accessed.

It is the role of the Facilities Manager to challenge existing norms, to seek new methods of doing work in order to bring about marked and sustainable improvement in performance, not just within facilities areas but in the core of the business as a whole. Facilities Managers should not be content only to manage services, rather they should seek involvement in finding solutions and innovative ways of addressing core business challenges.

FACILITIES MANAGEMENT IN ABUJA BEFORE 2003

Before 2003, there were no clear cut cases of facilities management operations and partnerships aimed at implementing FM policies and observing international FM benchmarks in Nigeria. FM was only practiced by the multinational oil companies with offices in Nigeria. Consequently, public buildings in Nigeria degenerate not long after commissioning as signs of premature physical, economic and functional obsolescence become conspicuous. 

This was the situation before the reform program commenced in 2003. For example simple forms of obsolescence noticed within the Federal Capital City Abuja include such physical characteristics as structural deterioration, inadequate sanitation facilities, structures in disrepair or lacking in elementary maintenance, presence of refuse accumulations in yards and streets, adverse environmental influences such as noise, odor and dust. This results in declining property values and presence of a large number of unoccupied buildings.

FACTORS THAT HINDERED EFFECTIVE FACILITIES MANAGEMENT IN NIGERIA.

The factors that militated against the effective management of facilities Nigeria but not limited to:

•Inadequate budgetary provisions

•Inadequate skilled professionals

•Lack of FM policies and where they exist they are not well implemented

•Failure to seek for planning approvals from development control departments

•Deferred maintenance due to lack of finances or wrong priorities

•Breakdown rather than preventive maintenance

•Bureaucratic bottlenecks in government

•Poor maintenance culture arising from lack of knowledge or corruption

•Foreign building materials with high cost of replacement

•Power outages

•Faulty Designs i.e. poor lighting and ventilation to office building

•Poor construction works

•Improper or wrong usage of facilities

•Substandard building materials and consumables

THE NEED FOR CHANGE

Organizations of all kinds in different economies around the world recognize that the rising cost of occupying buildings, providing services to support business operations and improving working conditions are important factors in profitability. Success can depend upon reducing the costs of being in business. As buildings become more complex, user expectations rise and the pressure on them to perform increases. 

Therefore increased regulation to ensure health, safety, welfare as well as protection of the environment has added new responsibilities on public sector Facility Managers to manage their workplace. In Nigeria a reform program was initiated in 2003 to address the issue of poor maintenance of public facilities and infrastructure using the federal capital territory as a pilot scheme. Thus an agency to handle the facility management of the newly built federal capital city was born.

ABUJA METROPOLITAN MANAGEMENT AGENCY (AMMA)

The Abuja Metropolitan Management Agency was formed in October 2005. The responsibility of supporting the daily business and activities of government facilities and infrastructure in the Federal Capital City rests with the Abuja Metropolitan Management Agency and its workforce.

They are the people you see around the city everyday who strive to keep the environment within the Federal Capital City clean, beautiful and most importantly, operating smoothly. They coordinate Infrastructure Management, Transport and Telecommunication, Environmental Management, Building Operation and Maintenance, Information Technology and Support Services for the Federal Capital City, including:

ABUJA METROPOLITAN MANAGEMENT AGENCY (AMMA)

•Response to all calls for repair and maintenance

•Regular maintenance to facilities

•Specialty services such as painting, renovations & improvements and work-by-contract

•Maintenance of driveways, entryways and walkways

•Landscaping services, including planting and care of flowers, shrubs, lawns, and trees

•Road and walkway cleaning services, local hard trash removal, receptacle pickup services and waste collection & disposal

•Assistance with emergency response

PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROGRAMME IN FM

Furthermore in order to tap into the resources available in the private sector, the Federal Capital Territory Administration mandated its investment company to provide facilities management operations to public buildings in the FCT through Public Private Partnership arrangements. Consequently, public buildings in the federal capital were categorized into revenue generating and non-revenue generating facilities and various forms of PPP arrangements were designed to suit their specific natures.

OPERATION AND MANAGEMENT CONTRACTS

ABUJA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CENTRE AND EAGLE SQUARE

The Abuja International Conference Centre and Eagle Square were classified as revenue generating facilities and designed to be managed by a single operator and manager. The preferred method of delivery chosen by the FCTA is the Management Contract.

A transparent and competitive bidding process was carried out and an FM company was selected to operate and manage these facilities which had hitherto been a drain on public resources. The successful operator and manager Messrs Integrated Facilities Management Services Ltd, (IFMS) working with a consortium of events managers, hospitality industry consultants and financial managers will be totally responsible for the funding, rehabilitation, operation and maintenance of the facilities and will be expected

to run the facilities as a going concern. A profit sharing ratio between the operator and manager and government has been worked out and accepted by government.

GAINS OF THIS ARRANGEMENT.

Upgrade in the facilities and services in the facilities.

Zero allocation of funds by government for the maintenance and upgrade of the facilities.

Efficient service delivery.

Expulsion of bureaucratic bottlenecks in the system.

Increased revenue generation.

Government focus on core business of governance.

INTERNATIONAL FACILITIES MANAGEMENT JOINT VENTURE COMPANY

This arrangement was embarked upon by Government to promote investment in facility management by entering into International Joint Venture with established foreign companies with a view to attracting them to Nigeria and getting them to transfer their technology to Nigerians. This was vigorously pursued as solution to the dearth of facility management expertise in the country.

TECHNICAL SERVICES PROVISON APPROACH

This option was embarked upon by government to provide technical support to Nigerian facility management companies in order to build their capacity and improve their efficiency. This was being done in realization of the fact that the challenge of FM in Nigeria is enormous and government need to support local companies to meet that challenge.

CONCLUSION

The challenge of managing public sector facilities is a daunting one. With the perennial lack of adequate funds, ill motivated workforce compounded with a thick bureaucratic system that bothers about effectiveness rather than efficiency, public sector facility

managers must necessarily devise new ways and means to promote efficient FM practice in the public sector.

Samson Ameh Opaluwah

President, Abuja chapter of IFMA

October, 2007