BGEN opens physical office in Nigeria, harps on youth capacity development

Specialist, multi-discipline engineering solutions business, BGEN has begin physical operations in Nigeria. The firm has over a decade provided third party services in Nigeria.

They are also committed to empowering and developing capacity of young Nigerians through its academy kicking off in the coming year.

Speaking during a press briefing in Lagos, Vinnie Edge, international & strategic business director at BGEN said BGEN is growing organically at the moment and over the next couple of months, after building it’s core team, it will open the academy and start to train locals but at the moment, it is going to be dependent on volume of sales and orders.

“We do have some interesting work in the pipeline. We have started interviewing people just a small number for now. But once we hit our target, in the next 12 to 24 months, then we will open the academy for training.

“The talent and the hunger I have seen in this country to learn and develop is inspirational. We want to use our UK expertise to help nurture and develop the talents and provide experience and also if we feel the people have during the six months probation, are committed and have the hunger, we will then look out for more qualifications,” Edge said.

He said the training will be diverse ranging from design engineers, to project management to electricians amongst others, adding that BGEN has invested about half a million pounds in Nigeria already.

Edge said BGEN plans to extend its service offerings to farmers, chemical processes, just to mimic what we do in the UK.

“We are at the early days of our operations at the moment. We plan to grow organically in order to build a very good team of engineers, managers and artisans, electricians and mechanical fitters in order to execute our projects with support from our UK expertraites, designers, managers and specialist engineers, he explained.

He further explained that the services it provides are mechanical and electrical services including design and management, HVAC and building services, instrumentation and control systems, LV assemblies and system integration, LV/MV power distribution, piping systems and steel fabrication.

Also speaking at the press conference, Bolaji Sofoluwe, chairperson, BGEN International, Nigeria said one of the things that BGEN always recognizes even abroad is that when a Nigerian is hired, they put in their best because they will work hard.

“Nigerians are usually very intelligent, smart and resilient. They can adapt to very difficult circumstances. We discovered that this could be a really challenging environment to work but when you have the right local talents, then you can overcome those challenges because that is their local habitat and that is where they have grown up and lived,” Sofoluwe explained.

She said being able to train local talents and being able to bring them up to the world standards, means they will be pushing better engineers and entrepreneurs into the eco system and this can then help SMEs to grow.

“Why should it be only the corporates and multinationals that can afford expensive mechanical engineers to make sure their facilities function well ?Smaller industries and SMEs should be able to afford the same and the only way to do that is to push quality into the system. That is why we are very focused on training local engineers because it is not just about us, it is about the general ecosystem,” she added.