The Council of Registered Builders of Nigeria (CORBON) has advocated a proactive approach to maintenance in healthcare and tertiary institutions’ facilities nationwide.
It said that a reactive approach is not suitable, especially as human lives are involved in such facilities.
CORBON Chairman, Dr. Samson Opaluwah, who led the call, yesterday, at the opening of the second yearly general meeting/conference of the Nigerian Institution of Builders in Facilities Management (NIBIFM), a division of the Nigerian Institute of Building (NIOB), said the maintenance unit should be part of the design and construction team in tertiary and healthcare facilities, adding that emphasis must be placed on training and skills development activities to keep up with advancement in technology in such facilities.
Opaluwah said well-qualified and experienced maintenance managers and workers should be appointed to achieve effective maintenance while a functional maintenance schedule should be put in place and strictly adhered to, to prevent crucial equipment failures.
He said: “Adequate resources should be provided for facilities’ maintenance by critically analysing the cost expended on them over the years and making necessary projections to arrive at a more adequate estimate to cover the cost of maintenance in the future.
“Where facility management is procured through outsourcing or contracting, the facility manager must demand detailed records from the contractors into the client system to enable him to have a complete picture of all maintenance activities at any given time. The contractor must not be allowed to own the client’s records within his own computerised coding system.
“All relevant safety measures should be put in place and observed, such as wearing protective wears, informing people on the job about the safety measures in place and ensuring that such measures are well known.
“Location of the facility manager’s whereabouts must be known at all times. This is vital information in case of emergency. He must not be out of reach. First aid facilities must be provided at strategic locations applicable and qualified personnel must be available to provide treatment and maintain required record.”
Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, Prof. Kabiru Bala, said although both tertiary healthcare institutions as well as tertiary educational institutions seem to have similar core service, the support services substantially differ. He, therefore, called for deliberate considerations in designing Facility Management (FM) plans for each of these institutions, bearing in mind the variability in the scope of their support services.
He said: “Previously, Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI) mostly prevailed in healthcare centres. Unfortunately, experiences from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic have shown that tertiary educational institutions could equally harbour infections that can have devastating consequences. Good practice expects that both institutions should integrate in their FM plan some pandemic preparedness strategies on infectious control. The pandemic preparedness manual prepared by the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) on infectious control is resourceful for FM practitioners.”
