In a renewed effort to mobilize and empower facility managers with knowledge acquisition at all levels, the Nigeria chapter of International Facility Management Association (IFMA) recently marked the 2016 World Facility Management Day with a public lecture. The theme of the programme held at the Freedom Park, Lagos was Empowering People for a Productive World.
The day witnessed the convergence of notable Nigerians including religious leaders, business owners, students, artisans, corporate organizations, professional bodies and many others.
Speaking at the occasion, President of the Association, Mr. Richard Okesola, disclosed that, the annual celebration was initiated in 2008 by the Global Body of Facility Management with the aim of raising the profile of the Facility Management (FM) profession.
He added that, the global theme for this year’s celebration was “Empowering people for a productive world”, just like the theme of the lecture. According to Okesola, “the appropriateness of this year’s theme cannot be overemphasized considering the enormity of Nigeria’s infrastructural, educational, health, leadership, economic, social and security challenges. These limitations have continued to affect the productivity and the wealth creating ability of Nigerians and the nation as a whole.
“Nigeria is enormously blessed with all forms of resources needed to make a better living. What is however lacking is our collective resolve to create for ourselves a proper, decent and sustainable standard of living. Nevertheless, with the abundance of resources in Nigeria, including a very resilient human capital force and the profession of Facility Management championing and directing this noble desire of creating a high quality living standard for all, Nigeria will surely rise again.”
To achieve and sustain this, Okesola stressed that all Nigerians have very important roles to play, irrespective of their areas of expertise. Important roles in creating homes and workplaces anyone should be proud of. “We must be genuinely inspired and motivated to efficiently and happily discharge our responsibilities toward building a wealthy nation and a very productive work force. All we need do is to embrace this evolving culture of facility management by “THINKING FM and LIVING FM”, wherever we find ourselves pursuing our daily activities,” Okesola stressed.
Emphasising further on maintenance culture he said, “We must never be weary of desiring an improved living standard . We must constantly and continuously think of better and most efficient way of discharging or delivering our services. As FM practitioners we owe our society and by extension the world, a duty strong enough, to challenge, motivate and inspire everyone to be at his or her best no matter what vocation you are into”.
The keynote speaker, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo, reiterated that institutions and government establishment must understand that employees, given the right tools and open opportunity, will always contribute positively to the development and bottom-line of such organization. He added that delegation, value appreciation, shared vision and information dissemination are major elements in achieving improved productivity.
The Chairman of the occasion, Mr Idorenye Enang spoke on empowering people in relation to service delivery. One of the discussants, Hubert Eke, a process improvement expert also spoke extensively on self development while another discussant, Mrs. Omowale Ogunrinde spoke on empowerment in relation to sustainability. Engineer Best Ogbonna from ITF, also a discussant, shared his experience on empowerment in relation to human capital development.
IFMA was established in Nigeria in 1995 by a group of well-meaning professionals who subscribed to the cliché of courageous leadership to achieve premium quality performance in diverse areas. The aim of these multi-disciplined professionals from international institutions like Mobil and Chevron was to establish international standard of facility management and quality maintenance of structures in Nigeria.
The body has pulled together a good number of facility management professionals who today have, through their individual and corporate involvement, built the relationship that is gradually shaping the future of IFMA’s high quality activities through education, training, lectures, facility tours, interactive seminars and research.
