Estate surveyors update skills for facilities management of AMCON
By Jude Njoku
Determined to participate in the facilities management of Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, NIESV through its subsidiary, the NIESV Learning Centre, NLC, last week, organised a two-day training programme to update the skills of estate surveyors to handle the multi-billion Naira jobs.
One recurring decimal at the workshop was the poor lack of maintenance culture in the country, which has rendered public utilities unserviceable.
Director -General of the Learning Centre, Mr William Oruka Odudu told Vanguard Homes & Property why the Centre packaged the training programme. “Our members have just been earmarked to participate in the facility management of Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, and we felt that before they are formally appointed, they should be educated to know what facility management is all about and the difference between facility management and property management.
By coming to this training, they would be able to know the difference and know the scope of work involved in the management of facilities as opposed to the management of land and buildings. We invited experts in the field, some of who are engineers and estate surveyors and valuers to rub minds with members of the profession,”.
Odudu who was the 12th NIESV President explained that apart from being involved in the facility management of AMCON, estate surveyors will also assist in the sale and valuation of the properties belonging to the corporation.
A former NIESV President ,Chief Charles Adebiyi gave the distinction between facility management and property management.
“A Facility Manager provides total activity requirements in a way that the organisation can separate core activities and leave those core activities and face those core activities and leave those non-core activities to someone, that is to the Facilities Manager to operate for him in such a way that the cost harmonises with the aspirations of the owner of the organisation.
You can hand your property over to someone who manages the real estate dimension of the property. If there are services involved in those real estate, he manages them but it different in from incorporating the activities of that property management into the core activities of that organisation. The facility manager does not necessarily get involved in the core business of the company,” he said.
Chief Adebiyi maintained that those who refuse to engage the services of facility managers will end up accumulating a lot of waste.
The chairman of NIESV Facility Management Faculty, Pastor Stephen Jagun who described facility management as an emerging profession in this part of the world that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology.
Pastor Jagun who is the immediate past President of International Facility Management Association, IFMA Nigeria, decried the scenario in which “some of our people still have this notion that some people are encroaching into our field; the world has gone beyond that”.
