HOTEL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT FROM FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE IN NIGERIA

HOTEL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT FROM FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE IN NIGERIA

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

An organization is composed of people, facilities and systems put in place to achieve specific objectives. In most cases, the objective is to render service(s) in pursuit of money or in fulfilling social obligations. The people, the facilities and the systems interplay in order to achieve the given goal. The facilities are composed of buildings, infrastructure and support services. The system is the inter-link and the web that binds people and facilities together and turns them into a production system. As a production system, it is subject to wear and tear apart from the fact that both facilities and the people respond to the dictates of life cycle. The sustenance of a virile system implies proactive management as re-echoed by Thorncroft (1965:14) when he averred that estate management has gone beyond the day-to-day routine activities of the estate manager but what he called the ‘shaping of an estate’. What properties within the estate should be retained and what might be sold to the advantage of the organization. What opportunities are there for adding to the estate, by buying in new property or by terminating leases previously granted out of the ownership? Is the policy to be one of disposal of property to raise This is strategic property management and its essence is the realization that the built estate is a valuable resource, which, along with other resources, such as manpower and finance, can help to deliver the corporate goals of an organization (Worthing, 1994). Some of the tools of strategic estate management are maintenance management, property management and facilities management. BS 3811 (cited by Seeley 1976: 2) defines ‘maintenance’ as: ‘work undertaken in order to keep or restore every facility to an acceptable standard’. Beyond engineering components, the importance of maintenance in property investment is re-echoed by College of Estate Management (1993: 1) in its definition of estate management as:

        being concerned with the administration of tenanted land, including letting, control, rent assessment and collection, insurance, repair and renewal, and in general the care and maintenance of the estate with particular regard to conserving and improving its revenue – earning potential. The College of Estate Management (1995: 321) defined property management as “the application of management principles to property assets with the aim of maximizing their potentials’’. Thus, facilities have become crucial, very important and elements that cannot be dispensed with. Sustenance of facilities however, have gone beyond maintenance management or property management due to the need to meet the trinity of investment objectives which are to preserve capital, to enhance its value and to earn a net cash profit on the capital invested Hanford (1970). The trend now is facilities management which Spedding (1999) defined as ‘the practice of coordinating the physical workplace with the people and work of the organization, integrating the principles of business administration, architecture and behavioral and engineering sciences’.

Facilities management is not completely new. It is an offspring of maintenance management and property management. These specialties have been expanded and broadened. Owen (1995) affirmed that facilities management became recognized as an identifiable management concept in the United States at the start of the eighties and has been practised in the United Kingdom since 1983 with the main growth occurring in the nineties. All the functions, which are now incorporated under facilities management umbrella, existed prior to the recognition of facilities management. What facilities management has achieved, which is new, is an understanding that a coordinated and integrated approach to a range of business activities can add value to an organization’s process. This trend is captured by Alexander’s (1996:1) definition of facilities management as “the process by which an organization delivers and sustains support services in a quality environment to meet strategic needs”.

Undoubtedly, facilities management has come to stay as a profession in Europe and other developed nations of the world. However, in Nigeria its existence and even its practice are not sufficiently documented. The Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers’s 28th Annual Conference of March 1998 focused on the theme ‘Facility Management in Nigeria – The Estate Surveyor and Valuer’s perspective’. That Conference might be regarded as the pioneering effort on facilities management awareness in Nigeria particularly from the estate surveyors’ point of view though it does not necessarily mean that elements of facilities management had not been in operation before 1998.

Other professional institutions such as The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, The Nigerian Institute of Building and The Nigerian Society of Engineers had organized seminars and workshops on facilities management.  Presently, there has been much argument as to whether it should be a distinct professional calling at all. However, some surveyors do not see any difference between facilities management and maintenance management or property management while others doubt the practicability of its principles being applied in business circles in Nigeria Ojo (2002).

Chapters: 1 - 5

Delivery: Email

Number of Pages: 120

Price: NGN 10,000 

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Masters Project Topics in Estate Management

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