Alpha Mead, others host facility roundtable, World FM Day

In a strategic move to draw attention to the need of sustaining infrastructure assets, Alpha Mead Facilities has called for collaboration between private and public-sector players in the real estate sector.

This move, according to the Group Managing Director of Alpha Mead, Femi Akintunde, an engineer, is in response to feedbacks from the previous edition of the event where their has been calls to include the public sector in discussions around Facilities Management and Real Estate contribution to Nigeria’s GDP.

The Nigerian FM Roundtable is an annual Business-to-Business, high-calibre event initiated in 2012 by Alpha Mead Facilities, in commemoration of the World Facilities Management Day; and has played host to close to a thousand top executives the public and private sectors in Nigeria and Ghana.

Speaking at a pre-event media parley in Lagos, Akintunde, said that the global theme for the World FM day; ‘Enabling Positive Experiences’ highlights how FMs across the world are playing integral roles in enabling positive experience for all stakeholders in the Real Estate value chain.

He however noted that given the dynamics that characterize the Real Estate industry in particular and Nigeria’s economy in general, the company has domesticated the global theme to reflect the current realities within the country’s Real Estate and FM industry, thus, the theme for the 2018 Nigerian FM Roundtable will be; ‘Enabling Positive Experiences in a Post-Recession Real Estate Market.”

According to him, the theme is quite apt considering the slow recovery of the real estate sector despite the country exiting recession few months ago. “While we acknowledge that the macroeconomic fundamentals have improved in recent time, activities in the Real Estate sector have not responded accordingly, we are optimistic that as FMs, we can stimulate the desired growth in the property market by enabling positive experience for facility users,” he said.

Meanwhile, the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Nigeria Chapter will be celebrating the 2018 World Facility Management Day with the students of the Government Technical College, Agidingbi, Ikeja.

The theme for the celebration is, “Enabling Positive Experiences: Inspiring the Technical Students for a better tomorrow.” IFMA Nigeria President, Pius Iwundu, said that the World FM Day has become a veritable platform that promotes the importance of facility managers in the overall growth and preservation of infrastructure and assets in built environment.