‘State of a country’s real estate is reflection of what its people accept as quality’

One of the major issues challenging Nigeria’s quest for development and economic growth is the shortage of human capital. This shortage is especially pronounced in some specialized but integral sectors such as Real Estate and Facilities Management. In this interview, WALE ODUFALU. Deputy Managing Director, Alpha Mead Facilities & Management Services (AMFacilities) highlights the impact of these limitations and how Alpha Mead Training Centre (AMTC), a Strategic Business Unit of AMFacilities, is responding to the challenge. She speaks with CHUKA UROKO. Excerpts

A major hindrance to Nigeria’s economic growth is the shortage of human capital in some specialized sectors such as real estate and facilities management. How do you think this can be tackled?

First, we need to appreciate the fact that the human capital challenges confronting the Real Estate and Facilities Management (FM) sectors today are not peculiar to these sectors. They are reflections of the shortage of skill set, which is common place in the larger society, and the literacy level of a preponderant part of the Nigerian nation. This situation has prevailed due to the misplaced priorities of critical stakeholders in our educational system which is reflected in inadequate budget, poor regulatory framework, and compliance monitoring etc.
Another contributory factor is the fact that our system is skewed towards book learning rather than developing cognitive skills. For instance, a well-grounded Facility Manager must be both process-driven and solution oriented; because however the extent to which he can express these skills is determined by the quality of training he has received. If the educational system he passed through only focuses on the ‘What’ rather than the ‘Why’, there is no doubt he will remain narrow-minded and at a loss when confronted with situations that demand innovative thinking.
We also find students learning technical courses without the requisite tools or using obsolete equipment. How do you expect them to effectively manage today’s sophisticated buildings? Setting up technical training centres is largely unprofitable for the private sector. Unfortunately, the government who should fund this is not fully living up to its responsibilities.
In a multi-disciplinary industry such as FM, professionals require a wide range of skills and competencies to manage the people, process and place to the benefit of all stakeholders. So, it’s not enough to be an Engineer who knows how to fix a lift; you must develop commercial prowess, inter-personal skills, emotional intelligence, good presentation and communication skills, sadly, these are not adequately addressed in many FM trainings today.
For instance, a Facility Manager who lacks the necessary business expertise cannot satisfactorily make a case to the Board of Directors for a budget review or asset replacement, so the facility suffers, stakeholders lose their return on investment, and the industry remains plagued with dysfunctional assets.
Indeed, the state of a country’s real estate is a reflection of what its people accept as quality and your perception of quality is directly relational to your level of exposure and education. If we will have long term and sustained improvement in the real estate and FM sectors, we must redefine our educational system to focus on creativity, cognitive intelligence and production rather than mere administration.

Could these challenges be responsible for Alpha Mead’s decision to float a Training centre?
The truth is every decision we take at Alpha Mead is driven by our passion for the FM industry. As a leading FM company in Africa, we appreciate the fact that our position comes with huge responsibilities; so setting up Alpha Mead Training Centre to bridge the current skill and knowledge gap in the industry is for us one of those responsibilities.
Our goal with AMTC is to replicate global standards while maintaining local relevance. To drive this, we concluded that we have to extend the knowledge of how we have indigenized international FM standards to the Nigerian built environment to the industry. AMTC is designed to produce more trained and skilled professionals that can deliver better output and improved value to the FM customers.

What are the objectives of the institute and how does AMTC differ from any other professional FM training centre available in the marketplace?
Our value proposition is to develop more FM professionals who are in tune with global standards and can deliver best practices in the local market. That is a training proposition that can hardly be matched in Nigeria’s FM space today.
In addition, our facilitators are thorough-bred FM professionals with international exposure. They are seasoned experts who have delivered profit to customers on some of the most complex FM projects you can think of in Africa today, so they are sharing their knowledge from that point of experience.
However, we are actually glad we have other training centers out there and we appreciate what they are doing. Our disposition to this is that the more FM training centres we have in the industry, the more competent FM professionals the industry has, the better the service offering the clients gets.

Three years down the line, what is your assessment of the training centre and what are the major milestones it has achieved?

Our progress has been quite significant. In the past three years of our operations, we have trained over 2,000 FM professionals in the industry on different courses; and going by our survey, the customer satisfaction rating has been very high. The testimonials we get from our participants have also been very encouraging.
Within this period we also became the Global Training Affiliate of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) international, and a recognized centre of the British Institute of Facility Management (BIFM) in Nigeria.

Since inception, how much would you say AMTC has contributed to the growth of the FM industry at large?
As an organization, our leadership position in the FM industry has been sufficiently fueled by AMTC. The centre also presents us with a trained and ready workforce to deliver high levels of excellence to our customers.
Every member of staff passes through the training institute. Some of our employees are certified IFMA professionals who are either locally or internationally trained. This also enhances our understanding of international standards and when they return, they localize the experience.
Recently, we noticed the influx of new entrants into the FM industry and we responded to that trend by designing a training that concentrates on; ‘How to run a successful FM business’, and we are encouraged by the feedback from the participants. Some industry analysts have wondered why we are organizing training for potential competitors, but if you relate that to my initial statement about how Alpha Mead does things, you will understand that our interest is largely on the improvement of the industry.

What mechanism or strategies does AMTC employ for monitoring the impact of your training on candidates after attending?
Before anyone commences training at AMTC, we usually have a pre-training assessment that helps us to understand where you are, what your current level is, what your needs are, and what are your expectations from this training. The findings of that assessment are passed on to the Facilitators and that acts as a guide during the training.
At the end of each training course, we have the customer satisfaction survey which measures every aspect of the training – the delivery, facilitator, content etc. The feedback is evaluated and we take note of the areas of improvement. The feedback is communicated to the facilitator and by the time he is taking another class, he can easily implement the necessary actions. This has helped us improve the quality of our training over time.
One of the best ways to measure how well you are doing in any business is gauging the number of referrals you get and we do get a lot of them courtesy of past participants.

What trends should we look out for in the industry and how is AMTC positioning to develop capacity for these trends?
FM is taking an interesting turn in Nigeria. We are seeing a lot more outsourcing in the industry today, especially in the corporate and commercial Real Estate space. Before now, most corporate organisations prefer in-house FM, but currently, particularly in the face of current economic challenges, a good number of organizations seem to be focusing on their core business and outsourcing business support services such as FM. For instance, some of the top five companies in the Oil & Gas sector and Telecoms have outsourced their FM to AMFacilities.
We also we are seeing technology play a strong role in FM today. The need to do things faster and more efficiently has occasioned this tilt and FM companies are responding to this demand in an increasing manner.
Another welcomed trend is the commitment by firms to train their Staff. When we started AMTC, most of the participants funded their training due to their employer’s inability to identify a suitable training centre that meets their specifications or unwillingness to fund such trainings. But this is changing, as we now seeing organisations footing the training bills of their employees.
Also, slowly but surely, we are also beginning to see clients emphasis on value rather than just price when procuring FM service. Previously, the lowest bidder takes it all. But many firms have had their fingers burnt by giving the jobs to the lowest bidder, and are now realizing that beyond reducing the actual fees paid to the FM company, they can reap the benefits of reduced cost in the long run through innovative solutions provided by a truly professional FM companies.
These trends will definitely impact the kind of trainings we offer in terms of content and platforms. We take cognizance of these changes and you would be seeing a lot of improvements, particularly technology-based learning and training solutions from us in the coming days.