Makinde, others laud facility managers’ role in COVID-19 crisis

The Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde has lauded facility managers for their contributions to health, safety and productivity of people during ongoing CoVID-19 crisis.

Makinde noted that as with governance, people hardly commend facilities managers when things are going right, but immediately the ‘ball drops’, everyone remembers their roles.

The Governor stated this during the 2020 edition of the Nigeria Facilities Management (FM) Roundtable held via a webinar. The Nigeria FM Roundtable is an yearly thought leadership, business-to-business, and policy roundtable sponsored by Alpha Mead Facilities, the FM Subsidiary of leading Total Real Estate Solutions Company, Alpha Mead Group, in commemoration of the World Facility Management Day.

The World FM Day is a day set aside to celebrate Facilities Management and enable conversations on the important role the profession plays in enabling people productivity, business profitability and environmental responsibility.

Participants at the forum include, leading environmentalist, Dr Desmond Majekodunmi; Prof. Babatunde Green, Managing Director, Alpha Mead Healthcare Management Services; Mr Jerome Eshun, Economist and Former Managing Director, NHTC Properties, Ghana; Francis Gasana, among others.

Speaking on the theme of the event ‘Managing the Environment in a Time of Pandemic: People, Places, and Technology’, he observed that facility Managers create and maintain a sustainable environment just like governance stressing that globally, technology is also playing a critical role in helping to manage people and restructure the environment to effectively control and contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Makinde said, “Facility Management is playing a critical role behind the scene. I have repeatedly stated that in Oyo State, we will be following the dictates of science, data and logic in our fight against COVID-19. Science requires that we isolate infected people, logic dictates that we must consider our socio-economic factors before deciding on our control and containment measures. Data will continue to help us improve on our environmental strategies for a prosperous state. If we do not take these things into consideration, our strategies will fail”.

He said, “One of the things people have complained about in our management of the COVID-19 pandemic, is the enforcement of directives. But we know that social distancing is not innate to people. So rather than a hard stance, logic is guiding us to invest in sensitization and ensuring that people get the right incentives that will make them adhere to the guidelines”.

The Governor disclosed that the administration was taking the difficult route of redesigning places to be able to handle both management and control of CoVID-19 cases stating that although it was an expensive and time-consuming effort, but government remain committed.

The Managing Director of Alpha Mead Facilities, Wole Olufore, charged facility management professionals “to help the communities, government and private businesses to offer supports in managing people and places by leveraging technology in a way that ensures continuous safety during CoVID-19 and speedy recovery post-pandemic.

The Chairman of Alpha Mead Group, Mutiu Sunmonu, noted that although the global theme for the World FM Day is ‘Celebrating the Environment’, current realities have necessitated the need to contextualise the theme.

“The theme we have chosen is very topical to help all stakeholders appreciate the fuller ramification of FM as not just a profession that manages buildings, but a business function that manages the environment for business sustainability and people productivity”.