Mr. Wole Olufore, Executive Director, Commercial; Mrs. Wale Odufalu, Deputy Managing Director; Engr. Femi Akintunde, Group Managing Director; Prof. Babatunde Green, Managing Director, Alpha Mead Healthcare Management Services (AMHS) and Mr. Amaebi Fiderikumo, Executive Director, Finance all of the Alpha Mead Group at 2018 Nigerian FM Roundtable pre-event press conference recently held in Lagos.
In a strategic move to draw attention to the need to sustain infrastructure assets to enhance the fortune of the Real Estate industry, Alpha Mead Facilities & Management Services Limited, a subsidiary of one of Africa’s leading Real Estate Solutions Companies, Alpha Mead Group, is using this year’s edition of its annual event; The Nigerian FM Roundtable, to seek ways of collaboration between private and public-sector players.
This move, according to the Group Managing Director of Alpha Mead, Engr. Akintunde, 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, Femi 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.
Furthermore, Engr. Akintunde noted that the company has also implemented some feedback it took from attendees in pervious editions of the event by increasing public sector participation. “This year, we will be taking a clinical look at the infrastructure sector with focus on how Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Facilities Management can optimize the performance of existing national infrastructure assets.
“We will therefore have discussions that are focused on using the PPP model and Facilities Management to optimize performance of existing national infrastructure assets and explore strategies to build new ones in response to our nation’s infrastructure deficit”.
According to Akintunde; “we reckon that PPP arrangements like what government is considering are critical to enabling the prosperity of our market. Therefore, discussing a sub-theme like this at this year’s roundtable will beam the light on the short-comings of existing concessioning projects and make a stronger case for the strategic involvement of Facilities Management as a sustainable strategy for PPP projects”.
Keynote address for this year’s edition will be delivered by Mrs. Winifred Oyo-Ita, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation. According to Alpha Mead GMD, this is because the company recognizes that for our nation to attain its full potential in terms of infrastructure development, capacity building and human capital development will play key roles.
“Our choice of Mrs. Oyo-Ita is therefore to help use an event like this to beam the light on the concept of positive experience in different sectors of our economy and demonstrate how government can collaborate with private sector stakeholders to improve the living conditions of Nigerians and economically prosper our nation,” he concluded.
Some of the confirmed speakers expected at the event include; Chidi Izuwah, Ag. Director General, Infrastructure Concessioning Regulatory Agency (ICRC); Ope George, Director General, Lagos State Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Office and George Etomi, Principal Partner. GEPLAW.
Others include; Kunle Osilaja, Group Head, Real Estate, Ecobank Plc; Udo Okonjo, CEO, Fine & Country, West Africa; Tokunbo Talabi, President/CEO, Superflux Int’l Ltd; Erejuwa Gbadebo, Chief Executive, International Real Estate Partners (IREP) Nigeria and Prof. Babatunde Green, Managing Director, Alpha Mead Healthcare & Management Services (AMHS).
By Marc Philips
