Filmo Group Responds to Ali Baba’s Comments

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Late last week, emails were flying back and forth between the management team at FILMO Facilities Management, in response to Ali Baba’s comments about the absence of a maintenance culture in Nigeria. As a facilities management company, you can trust that things got heated when opinions varied.

“One thing that will continue to cost us money in Nigeria is the absence of a MAINTENANCE CULTURE.” Ali Baba wrote. He also added that “We do not have the habit of building for the future. That our developments are not anticipatory and that we do not build our roads taking traffic growth/impact into consideration.”

OM responded:

Dear Ali Baba, thank you for your thoughts but I simply disagree with the phrase "Nigerians Lack a Maintenance Culture". First, we need to consider what maintenance is all about, and it is about preserving a condition or situation. According to the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) there are (4) Major types of Maintenance which are; Preventive, Corrective, Breakdown and Predictive Maintenance. I'll only consider one of the aforementioned types of maintenance which is Breakdown Maintenance. The others explain themselves based on their names.

Breakdown Maintenance is a type of Maintenance that is carried out when an equipment or a system fails, otherwise called "run to failure" maintenance. This means no form of care and concern is shown to this system until it fails or gets to a discomfort state. We can see this in our infrastructures and public systems because down to the local government, they do not carry out Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM), this is not their culture (attitude or way of life).  Instead, they practice breakdown maintenance, then re-award it as a contract, and then corruption reaches its peak. Therefore, let us change that statement that Nigerians lack Maintenance Culture, to we ONLY practice a Breakdown Maintenance culture. What we need to do is adopt a Preventive and Predictive maintenance culture instead. 

 TJ replied:

I’m sorry but I agree with Ali Baba 100%. Majority of Nigerians simply do not have the culture of maintenance as a nation! This lack shows in everything we do from planning to implementation, where the theme is “anything will do or that will do’’. We repeatedly use assets until they break down. This also shows in the way people don’t service their cars until the shaft falls off on the road or the engine knocks. Projects built with hundreds of millions of Naira often have no provision for Forward Maintenance Regimes (FMR). This is why it is VERY important we take it upon ourselves to correct this culture through partnerships with State & Federal Governments on FM blueprints, consultancy, and even master training classes for artisans to promote maintenance within the society.

OM replied again:

I still disagree with Ali Baba all the way. Instead of saying we lack maintenance culture, I'll rather say we are not disciplined and we don't enforce our laws. It is also good to be specific in the type of Maintenance we are discussing here. I think we lack planning, strategy and our dreams are very shallow. When we achieve little we celebrate cos we don't look into the future. This is absence of Sustainable Facilities Management‎.

Let's take a look at the TVs in our homes for instance, do we carry out any form of Maintenance on it? No we don't, we just run it until it gets spoilt and then we replace it. Do we carry out PPMs on MCCB's (miniature circuit breakers), of course NO. I can go on and on with clear examples, up to our mobile phones. We just use it until it fails, this is because it was designed this way. Therefore, we CANNOT just say we lack something when we cannot classify even the specific maintenance we are talking about

I think what we need to advocate for is Facilities Management and not Maintenance because they are two different things. The key stakeholders in Government don't have a blue print to manage the country's infrastructure. Minister 'A' comes and does what he feels is right, Governor 'C' is elected and he stops what the former started. In fact, we are really confused and I advise we readjust our philosophies, else in the next 10 years, we may not have moved from point A to B. Countries like Malaysia, Dubai, etc. had a plan and pushed ahead with a common goal.

Maybe, just maybe the advent of the Facilities Management Bill will change the face of our decayed infrastructures in the country. With this few words of mine, I vehemently oppose the motion of saying that Nigerians lack Maintenance Culture, but I agree without any iota of doubt that we lack Facilities Management approach in addressing our nations assets. Thank you.

FILMO Facilities Management (FFM) is a market leader in management solutions. The company has invested heavily in acquiring the latest FM technology and experienced manpower, which it now deploys in delivering Facility Management services to commercial and residential units across 8 states in Nigeria. Some of their clients include Schlumberger, NETCO, Etisalat, LSDPC and Access bank

They are fully committed to maintaining the value of your assets by providing tailored solutions to improve your day to day operations, all benchmarked against British Standards of Facilities Management.

For a detailed list of their services visit:http://www.filmo-group.com/filmo-facilities-management

For daily office and home maintenance tips, how to reduce diesel cost to your company and FM best practices, followhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/filmogroup

To request a brochure or book a consultation, email info.ffm@filmo-group.com