• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Paul Erubami: Entrepreneur redefining Nigeria’s facility management through training

Story 2_Paul Erubami

Quality shelter remains an essential lifeline for the sustainability of any society and Nigeria’s rapidly growing population is reflective of the need to keep up with the requisite facilities to satisfy these ever-growing needs.

Paul Erubami, founder and CEO of Max-Migold Ltd, a facility management company that provides training, advisory, quality audits, efficient energy management, asset management, recruitment, and document digitization among others is on a mission to build capacity in facility management through consultancy.

According to him, industries that fail to involve the services of facility management often fall short of required standards in providing services.

He, therefore, calls for refocusing on efficient management in the built environment through facility management.

“Nigeria is building at a pace that has never been seen before anywhere on the continent. Technology is advancing in such a way that we are having new types of buildings; green, smart, intelligent buildings,” he says.

“We are also developing more interests in the facility management industry in Nigeria, but we lack the capacity. There is no organization focusing on building capacity for managing our built environment,” he further says.

He notes that his organisation has identified gaps in the skills of managers in the construction industry as individuals without appropriate knowledge in the industry now manages building constructions without employing the services of a facility consultant that understands how buildings degrade over time.

He defines facility management as a multi-discipline that people are not focusing on, adding that it is the body of knowledge for managing buildings.

“We also found a huge deficit in energy efficiency and provision for the facilities. This does not necessarily mean we have enough power for our built environment, but because we are wasting 40percent of the power we are generating.”

“We engage with a lot of clients across the country and realize that we could save electricity and diesel cost for up to about 30-40 percent just by intervening and using some smart systems. We want to close that gap through training,” he says.

He believes there is an increasing demand and vacancy in the facility management space in Nigeria, and basic shelter can transform to new heights of safety, comfort, and functionality through innovative implementation of quality facility management.