The International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Ghana Chapter, is calling on government to step up efforts in dealing with high level of deterioration of state facilities, especially the built environment.
While others blame the deterioration of state facilities on maintenance culture, the association believes it is lack of trained or professional facility managers, hence, government must establish appropriate legislations and a department or an agency that will be manned by professionals for infrastructure management.
“The role of government in achieving a sustainable built environment cannot be over emphasised. The IFMA – Ghana Chapter wants to encourage government to establish appropriate legislations and ensure its compliance.
“Also, government must ensure the design of public buildings through the use of environmentally compliant materials, and enforce professionalism.
“Establishing a government FM department or agency for infrastructure management and regulation is critical.
“The association has also suggested that government adopts the Public-Private Partnership model that guarantees long-term maintenance and sustainability of the built environment, or outsourcing facility management to professional organisations is the best practice,” President of IFMA – Ghana Chapter, Sampson Opare Agyemang, said at a press launch in Accra ahead of the World FM Day.
He argued that facility management influences the health, safety, productivity and well-being of people who utilise the built environment, and must be top priority for businesses and private organisations as well.
“The challenge today in our built environment is not just bad maintenance culture as we always say; but the challenge is, firstly and more critically, the lack of skilled manpower and secondly the lack of understanding of the value of FM by governments, business owners and financial institutions,” he said
He also stressed on the importance of every organisation having a facility manager to ensure safety, as well as the need to inculcate facility management into the educational curricula.
“We have started a project called ensuring the running of facility management courses at 10 technical universities in Ghana, and we’ve gone through more than five and we are helping them develop syllabi which runs facility management. That is the only way we can get facility managers in all our institutions, ensuring the functionality of their built space,” he said.
World FM Day
This year the Ghana Chapter of the International Facility Management Association will be marking the day in Accra at the Nobel International Business School, as part of the worldwide celebrations on May 11, 2022 on the theme: ‘Leading a Sustainable Future’, focusing on the health and well-being in a covid era hybrid working environment in Ghana.
World FM Day is celebrated once a year to celebrate the profession that impacts a greater percentage of the 17 Sustainability Development Goals: The Facility Manager.
The day will see speakers delivering speeches on topics such as the strategic role of facility management in sustaining the built environment, and the health and well-being of people in a covid era hybrid working environment.
