The Governor of Oyo State, Mr Seyi Makinde, says that there should be more investment in facility management to create a sustainable environment in the country. Makinde and other facility management experts made the call at the 2020 Facilities Management Round-table conference.
The governor stated that the roles of facilities management in creating and maintaining a sustainable environment should be likened to governance.
Using the coronavirus pandemic as an example, he said technology had played a critical role in helping to manage people and restructure the environment globally, but facility management had played a critical role behind the scene.
Makinde said facility managers should be commended for their contributions to the health, safety and productivity of people during the pandemic, adding that there should be more focus on the profession.
He said the state government had been having a running battle with space and that rather than take up the various offers for existing spaces to be adopted as isolation centres, his government had taken a different approach with considerations for the longer term. He said,
“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, and 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. 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.”
Makinde said the state was taking the difficult route of redesigning places to be able to handle both management and control of the COVID-19 cases.
The Chairman of Alpha Mead Group, organisers of the FM round-table conference, Mutiu Sunmonu, noted that although the global theme for the World FM Day was ‘Celebrating the environment’, current realities had necessitated the contextualisation of the theme.
“I believe the theme we have chosen is very topical to help all stakeholders appreciate the fuller ramification of facility management as not just a profession that manages buildings, but a business function that manages the environment for business sustainability and people productivity,” he said.
