Players in the real estate industry are calling for the creation of a supervisory body to regulate the real estate industry in the country.
The Managing Director of NTAC Properties Limited, Mr Jerome Eshun, who made the call, explained that such a body, when established, must be empowered to check unscrupulous and shoddy service providers in order to bring sanity into the real estate sector.
“We believe that there should a high body above the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) to help regulate activities of the real estate industry in Ghana,” Mr Eshun told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS on the sidelines of the Ghana Facilities Management (FM) Roundtable event on May 17, in Accra.
Facilities Management Day
The Ghana FM Roundtable was held in commemoration of the 2017 World FM Day Celebration.
The World FM Day is an annual event celebrated by Global FM, a worldwide alliance of member-centred FM organisations that provide leadership in the advancement of the profession through FM institutions.
The Ghana FM Roundtable forum which was organised by Alpha Mead Facilities and Management Services brought together players from various sectors of the Ghanaian economy to deliberate and share opinion on how best to improve FM in Africa.
The event also provided the opportunity to increase awareness and deepen understanding of FM and how it could support business profitability and productivity in Ghana.
Strategic discipline
Mr Eshun underscored the need for the country to embrace FM as a critical and strategic discipline to support business profitability and productivity.
“Organisations increasingly occupy complex buildings and use sophisticated technology for communications and control. Professional FM is needed to plan, maintain and manage these facilities. It is part of the drive to meet the higher demands of organisations and individuals. And whether as employees, customers, students or patients, people have higher expectations of their living, working and leisure environments,” he said.
He observed that a good FM could deliver flexibility, adaptability and sustainability, saying: “It can also help organisations respond to cost pressures or the need for greater security.”
“Beyond buildings, it can enable remote working. Today, facilities managers are expected to understand their company’s core business and contribute to the bottom line—not only by reducing operating costs, but also by improving the productivity, revenue-generating capacity and image of the entire organisation,” he stated.
He also indicated that the introduction of FM in Ghana was positive for the industry as professionalism would be brought to the fore.
Challenges in Ghana
For his part, the Group Managing Director of Alpha Mead Facilities and Management Services Limited, Mr Femi Akintunde, said FM professionals were good stewards of the earth’s limited resources.
“They engage best practices in sustainability whenever possible to ensure operations are energy efficient, environmentally sound and promote the wellbeing of occupants,” he said.
According to him, facility professionals also help preserve natural resources, work to limit organisational footprints and prefer doing business with other similarly responsible organisations.
However, Mr Akintunde said the low awareness and the level of Ghana’s current development was the cause of underutilisation of facility managers.
“We have not seen it as a necessity before now, but when I come to Ghana, I see more modern buildings being put up. The last thing you want is for those buildings to begin to deteriorate. A lot of countries have entered into that trap. You can’t afford that in Ghana. You have a unique opportunity to get it right now, and put those things in place which advanced countries of the world have done before now. So we need to feel the necessity and awareness level needs to rise,” he noted.
He tasked the media to be a vehicle of development in Ghana by maintaining the country’s status as an attractive business destination and invite more foreign investments that would create employment.
He was, however, quick to add that the services of the facility manager was relatively costly and designed for the high earned. — GB
