FACILITY MAINTENANCE OF BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE IN NIGERIA

Transcription

1 Engr Kelechi Eke MNSE, FMP, CFM PTP/O/NM, SPDC Industrial Area, Port-Harcourt, Abstract: Nigeria has an estimated population of 150million people and a housing deficit of about 12million housing units (Akeju, 2007). Thus, the need for additional housing infrastructure and effective facility maintenance of existing building infrastructure cannot be over-emphasized. Building infrastructure serves various purposes residential, official, medical, recreational, entertainment and sports. Materials used for the construction of buildings in Nigeria varies depending on cost and geo-physical and environmental factors (where the building is located), owner/user s attributes, design factors and end-uses of the building. These factors play a key role in the cost and structure of maintenance of the buildings. This paper examines the challenges of facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria and proffers simple, cost-effective and practical solutions to them. Research was taken from international best practices promoted by International Facility Management Association, own experiences as a facility manager, research reports and interviews on the subject by other professionals. The finding shows low level of knowledge and professionalism in facility management in Nigeria and consequent inability to sustain the functionality of building infrastructure in Nigeria and subsequent loss of economic benefits. An effective building infrastructure facility maintenance practice requires a thorough understanding of the building design and use, material usage, customer requirements and pro-active management of changes in those requirements, defect diagnostic ability as well as the incorporation of sustainability needs. Key Words: Building, Facility, Infrastructure, Maintenance, Sustainability

2 A. Introduction Building infrastructure is a term used to define a building as well as all the areas associated with it needed to ensure its functionality. According to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA, 2014), Facility Management is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology. Facility management comprises nine core areas namely: planning and project management, operation and maintenance, real estate, quality assessment and innovation, leadership and management, human and environmental factors, finance, communication and technology. Facility maintenance falls under Operation and Maintenance core area of facility management. Facility maintenance of building infrastructure covers all sets of activities required to sustain a built environment to perform its intended functions. Most building infrastructure in Nigeria whether owned/used by Government, companies or individuals are very poorly maintained largely due to poor maintenance culture and relatively high cost of maintenance [Usman N.D., Gambo M.J. and Chen J.A, 2012]. B Methodology The methodology adopted for the development of this paper includes Real Estate/Facility Management studies carried out by the author in Shell Housing Estates in Edjeba, Shell Club and Field Logistics Bases in his capacity as a Site Manager in the company. Literature review on facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria was also carried out. Interviews were granted to architects, builders and engineers with decades of building design and construction experience. Review of research reports on facility maintenance of building infrastructure by the foremost facility management association in the world, the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) was also made. C Literature Review Facility Management is still a relatively new profession in Nigeria. There are very few professional facility managers in Nigeria. No Nigerian university or higher institution offers any academic programme in Facility Management unlike in the developed countries. Most of the research on facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria was carried out by academics. Industry professionals have published very few research reports in the discipline. Existing literature on the subject focused on residential buildings with little attention paid to commercial and industrial building infrastructure in Nigeria. However, this challenge was overcome through networking within the International Facility Management Association where there abounds substantial reports on the subject. C1 Standard Facility Maintenance Practice for Building Infrastructure A standard facility maintenance practice for building infrastructure will take into consideration the following factors: Type of facility maintenance Functional areas of facility maintenance required Factors that influence the facility maintenance/customer requirements Sustainability factors and requirements 1

3 C1.1 Types of building infrastructure facility maintenance. Standard facility maintenance practice for building infrastructure is classified into two broad set of activities: Preventive Facility Maintenance. This includes all facility maintenance practices that are embarked upon as part of a scheduled maintenance activities executed before a facility starts to malfunction or breaks down or ceases to provide its intended function. Corrective Facility Maintenance. These are maintenance practices that are embarked upon after a building infrastructure or any of its components breaks down or ceases to provide its intended function. Good facility maintenance practice emphasizes and utilizes preventive facility maintenance to reduce the incidence of breakdowns or malfunctions in a building and hence reduce the need for corrective facility maintenance. C1.2 Functional areas of facility maintenance of building infrastructure. Facility maintenance activities for building infrastructure is classified into the following functional areas: a) Civil Maintenance: Civil maintenance of a building includes all the elements of civil engineering construction of a building that requires maintenance. It is broadly categorized into: o Carpentry o Plumbing o Tiling o Glazing b) Heating Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC) Maintenance. This includes the maintenance of all equipment used to achieve heating, ventilation and air-conditioning services in a building. This includes maintenance of air conditioning systems: split and window units, packaged unit air conditioners, chilled water and direct expansion central air conditioning systems; ventilation: expeller fans, ceiling fans, standing fans, chimneys; heating: water heaters, mini-boilers, home warmers, etc c) Electrical Maintenance. The electrical maintenance of building infrastructure includes the maintenance of all electrical fittings and installations in a building such as: o Lighting fittings indoor and outdoor o Plugs and sockets o Earthing and lightening protection systems o Distribution boards However, electrical maintenance in facility management does not include major electrical equipment and installations such as big pumps, generators, etc. d) Janitorial Maintenance/Services. This includes all elements of cleaning services required within a building such as cleaning of desks and tables, doors and windows e) Horticultural Maintenance. This includes maintenance of outdoor vegetation, grasses and lawns, gardens, parks, etc associated with a building. It is an outdoor complimentary service to janitorial maintenance C1.3 Factors that influence facility maintenance of building infrastructure/customer Requirements. The facility maintenance practice of building infrastructure depends on a number of factors. These factors include: a) Occupier/owner of the building The owner or occupier of a building determines whether facility maintenance will be executed or not. This decision is influenced by the behaviour or attributes of the owner or occupier. An owner or occupier with a facility management orientation or passion will likely be interested in the development and implementation of facility management of a building. 2

4 b) Economic value/benefits of the building the decision on whether or not to implement facility maintenance is also determined by the economic benefits/value of doing it (compared to the cost of not doing it and the cost of implementation). The options are weighted before arriving at a decision. c) Cost of implementation of facility maintenance a high cost of implementation of facility maintenance of a building will discourage its execution and vice versa. d) Type and quality of building materials used the contents and context of facility maintenance of a building infrastructure is also determined by the quality and type of building materials used. For example, poor quality building materials will require more frequent breakdowns and more frequent maintenance interventions and thus relatively higher cost of implementation. This tends to discourage facility maintenance practice. The converse is true when good quality building materials are used. Similarly, effective facility maintenance practice requires that the maintenance tasks are designed according to the facilities or installations in a building. This means that the civil maintenance facility maintenance for a glass building will be different from that of a metal building (e.g. a warehouse). The facility maintenance practice that needs to be deployed in a building infrastructure depends on the structural design and the fixtures and fittings in the building. C1.4 Sustainability factors in Facility Maintenance of Building Infrastructure. A good facility maintenance practice should also incorporate sustainability factors. According to Olagunju (2012), sustainability issues of building include ways of constructing, maintaining and cleaning a facility that maximizes its health, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and durability. This helps to keep the functionality of the built environment and preserves its value. The best time to incorporate sustainability factors in the facility maintenance plan of any building infrastructure is during the conceptual design of that building. C2 Types of Building Infrastructure in Nigeria There are different types of building infrastructure in Nigeria. The building infrastructure type varies from one of the country to another. Generally, there are eight major types of building materials for main structural works namely (Sanders, 2014): a. Brush b. Cement c. Earth d. Glass e. Ice f. Metal g. Rock h. Thatch 3

5 Fig 1: Thatch house in southern Nigeria: (source: N/B: such buildings are still found in some rural settlements in Nigeria Fig 2: Modern building in an urban settlement in Nigeria (source: Of these types, cement is the most commonly used in Nigeria. Other materials also used in Nigeria are earth, glass, metal and thatch. For internal fixtures and fittings, various different materials are used depending on the category, i.e., electrical, HVAC, etc 4

6 Buildings can also be classified according to its functionality or purpose into: a. Agricultural buildings e.g. silos, pen-house, etc b. Residential buildings bungalow, storey, buildings, etc c. Educational laboratories, libraries, etc d. Government post office, embassy, etc e. Industrial foundry, brewery, etc f. Military bunker, armoury, etc g. Parking and storage hanger, garage, etc h. Religious church, mosque, etc i. Transport airport, parking garage, etc j. Infrastructure data centre, control room, etc k. Power stations gas power station, hydro-electric power station, etc l. Others hospitals, bookshop, etc D Findings The findings of this paper define the challenges of facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria as enumerated below. D1.1 Challenges of Facility Maintenance of Building Infrastructure in Nigeria Despite decades of evolution of building infrastructure design, construction and maintenance in Nigeria, the country is still faced with a myriad of fundamental problems and challenges in the industry especially, in the facility maintenance business of building infrastructure. The challenges can be grouped into the following broad categories: a) Socio-cultural challenges. This is one of the biggest challenges to effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria. It is known that Nigerians generally have a poor maintenance culture. This has contributed immensely to the prevailing neglect of facility maintenance of building infrastructure in the country. It is seen as a waste of enterprise to spend resources maintaining a building unless significant malfunctioning of any of its components occurs [Odediran S.J., Opatunji O.A. and Eghenure F.O, 2012]. b) Technical challenges. There are several technical challenges that have militated against effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria. These technical challenges include: Building design flaws. Poorly designed buildings are more expensive to maintain. Besides, typical building designs in Nigeria usually do not incorporate human factors engineering and maintenance considerations. This partly explains why it is only realized after a building has been put to use that some aspects of the maintenance can only be executed at a relatively high cost due to poor human factor engineering design e.g. suspension of lighting fitting at an elevation that requires a scaffold or mobile lift for its maintenance, installation of the condenser of a split unit air conditioner in a multi-storey building high up the external walls of the building without any access to the condenser from inside the building. These design flaws makes facility maintenance of these components to be expensive with much higher resource requirements and could discourage the execution of (preventive) maintenance activities. In addition, sustainability factors (which ensure that the functionality of the built environment can be maintained) are hardly taken into consideration during building design in Nigeria. This has also contributed to increase facility maintenance cost of building infrastructure in Nigeria thus discouraging its practice. 5

7 Errors during building construction. Poor supervision and unauthorized changes in design during the building infrastructure construction often distorts facility maintenance elements of the design thus making the execution of the later after commissioning to be cumbersome. Poor defect diagnostic ability and limited technical knowledge. Professional facility management practice in Nigeria is still at its infancy stage of development. There are very few professional facility managers and facility management companies in Nigeria. Consequently, the required defect diagnostic skill as well as overall technical knowledge for effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure is still lacking amongst many people currently involved in facility management practice of building infrastructure in Nigeria.The International Facility Management Association (Nigeria chapter) has a lot of contributions to make towards the development of professional facility management (and maintenance) practice in Nigeria. Weak standards and poor enforcement of standards. Nigeria s building codes and laws are weak and needs improvement especially in the areas of human factors engineering and the incorporation of facility maintenance elements in building design. Improvements in the building codes and standards needs to made and also dutifully enforced especially during building construction. Poor quality of building materials. There is abundance of fake and sub-standard building materials in Nigeria. This is partly responsible for the relatively high failure mode of building infrastructure components in Nigeria and the consequent high frequency of replacement of malfunctioning or defective components. This has facility maintenance cost in the country to be high and discouraging. c) Economic challenges. Facility management cost of building infrastructure in Nigeria is very high (because of the factors discussed above). This tends to discourage the few people and mostly corporate organizations that try to practice facility maintenance of buildings. The preponderance of fake and sub-standards building materials, limited technical knowledge of professional facility maintenance/management of building infrastructure, frequent re-work, etc, have all contributed to reduce the application and growth of facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria. In addition, many corporate organizations do not set aside dedicated budget for the facility maintenance of their building infrastructure. Where they do, such budgets usually become targets of downward review (thus limiting the effectiveness of facility maintenance) whenever any form of financial challenge arises. E Implications/Recommended Solutions to Challenges of Facility Maintenance of Building Infrastructure in Nigeria The application and development of effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria requires the following actions: a) Socio-cultural re-orientation of the people. There is the need to change the socio-cultural orientation of poor maintenance culture of the Nigerian people in favour of pro-active maintenance culture in general and effective building infrastructure facility maintenance in particular. The Government has to lead the way in this campaign of re-orientation by setting a good example through the application of effective facility maintenance of Government buildings. The campaign will become most useful when it is demonstrated to people that effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure is cheaper and sustains the functionality of the built environment. b) Incorporation of sustainability and maintenance factors in design curriculum. Sustainability and maintainability should be incorporated into primary and secondary school curriculum to enable the inculcation of proper maintenance culture in youths at the developmental stage of their lives. Similarly, the curriculum in the higher institutions for architecture, building technology, engineering and other disciplines that have interface with facility management should be modified to include 6

8 maintenance and sustainability factors. This will also help the future industry practitioners to be well aware of the need for the incorporation of facility maintenance elements in building infrastructure right from conceptual design. c) Collaboration between Government, NSE, IFMA and other Professional Societies. The Government should also liaise with professional societies such as the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) and the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) to collaborate on the ways and means of encouraging the development and growth of facility management (maintenance) practice and profession. This will help to improve the knowledge and skills of facility maintenance practitioners and thus help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria. d) Adequate field supervision during building construction. The Government should also strengthen the responsible organs of Government responsible for approving Approved For Construction (AFC) design and drawings for building infrastructure so as to make them more effective and efficient. This also includes strengthening the field supervision of building infrastructure during construction in order to avoid cutting corners and making unauthorized deviation from the AFC design and drawings. e) Curtain the proliferation of fake and sub-standard building materials. The Standard Organization of Nigeria (S.O.N.) should be made more active and stem the proliferation of fake and sub-standard building materials in the country. This will help to reduce the growing cost of facility maintenance of building infrastructure and so help to encourage people to put facility maintenance of building infrastructure into practice. Conclusion Most building infrastructure in Nigeria is poorly maintained. Little attention is given to building infrastructure maintenance once commissioning is achieved. Thus, there is usually unchecked rapid deterioration of the facilities in the built environment and consequent loss of functionality value. Poor facility maintenance culture is particularly prominent in Government institutions. This is the right time to encourage the development and growth of facility management (maintenance) practice and profession in Nigeria. This is the right time to create awareness about the benefits of facility maintenance of building infrastructure. This will help to sustain the functionality of the built environment in the country and also enhance its value. The Government and professional societies (such as the NSE, IFMA, SON, etc) involved in the regulation, enforcement of standards as well as the practice of facility management should collaborate and remove the barriers to effective facility maintenance of building infrastructure in Nigeria and so encourage its development and growth. References 1. Akeju, A.A. (2007): Challenges to Providing Affordable Housing in Nigeria: page 1 2. International Facility Management Association (2014): What is facility management: pg 1 3. Odediran S.J., Opatunji O.A. and Eghenure F.O. (2012): Maintenance of residential buildings: users practices in Nigeria: Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences (JETEMS) 4. Olagunju R.E. (2012): Sustainability of residential buildings in Nigeria: an appraisal of the factors that influence maintenance of residential buildings standards: Civil and Environmental Research Journal, Vol 2, No. 4, pg 1 7

9 5. Sanders Phil (2014): Eight types of building materials: pg 1 6. Usman N.D., Gambo M.J. and Chen J.A. (Sept 2012): Maintenance culture and its impact on the construction of residential buildings in Nigeria: Journal of Environmental Science and Resources Management, Vol 4 8