The annual Nigerian Facilities Management (FM) Roundtable will be holding by the second week of June this year with special focus on how to build resilience for the future in order to hedge businesses against risks and economic downturn.
The Roundtable, already in its fourth edition, is a fully facilities management, real estate-based event hosted by Alpha Mead Facilities (AMFacilities) and Management Services Limited to commemorate the World FM Day—a day set aside internationally to celebrate the FM industry and practice.
AMFacilities is Nigeria’s gateway to professional facilities and management services delivery and has, in the past eight years when it opened for business, demonstrated strong passion for the growth of the industry through professionalism and global best practice.
The key objectives of the World FM Day are to recognize and celebrate achievements of facilities managers around the globe, present a platform for the improvement of standard practice of the FM profession, develop agenda for its improvement globally, and address identified challenges experienced at the local levels to enable practitioners to meet global best practice and standards.
“Here in Nigeria, the objectives are not different. We have sufficiently drawn from the global agenda for this day to form the basis of our discussions for the past three editions, and this year is not different”, Femi Akintunde, the CEO, AMFacilities, told journalists at a press conference in Lagos recently.
Akintunde informed that as a leading FM company, their interest was in nurturing the industry to be able to absorb the opportunities in the market, explaining that the FM Roundtable was one of the many windows explored to institute standards and promote professional FM practice in Nigeria.
“Particularly, our motivation for this event is to, through it, stimulate a standards-driven facilities management sector that can sufficiently support Nigeria’s growing real estate and infrastructure market to contribute significantly to the nation’s GDP”, he added.
Like many other well-meaning corporate citizens, AMFacilities is also concerned about Nigeria’s dwindling revenue arising from failing oil price and current economic realities, hence the choice of ‘Building Resilience for the Future’ as theme for this year’s event.
The CEO considered this choice as apt, explaining that it was consistent with the role facilities management would play in helping businesses hedge against risk and downtimes. “We have carefully selected top executives and professionals within Nigeria’s business environment to come and deliberate on how facilities management can continue to help business stay resilient in the face of global economic realities”, he assured.
Wale Odufalu, the company’s General Manager, Corporate Services, noted that over time, the facilities management industry has grown, saying that what the industry is today isn’t what it was five years ago.
For that reason and more, she said, “our approach to this year’s roundtable is industry-specific; industries where facilities management plays critical roles will converge at a mini-roundtable within the event to discuss peculiar FM issues related to their industry”.
“Specifically, stakeholders from the Oil & Gas, Real Estate and Infrastructure, Financial Services, Telecommunications and Public sectors will come together to discuss the FM components of their businesses and how it can help strengthen their business against market tides”, she added.
CHUKA UROKO
