On maintenance economy, facility management and state infrastructure

Infrastructure provision is at its lowest ebb in developing nations because of dearth of funds, high rate of corruption and lack of a maintenance economy. These infrastructures are developments like roads, farms, housing, lifts in highrise buildings, security, water, industries, sewerage, dams, bridges, electricity grid, telephone lines, parks, medical facilities, educational facilities, sport facilities, markets and so on, which are necessary for the smooth operation of a community. Infrastructure bridges the gap between people and opportunities for food security, shelter, employment, medical care, education, transportation and security. Sustainable infrastructures like clean energy, sustainable buildings, electric cars and waste recycling plants can help reduce greenhouse gases emission and mitigate climate change. Businesses cannot avoid the use of sound infrastructure in their day-to-day activities.

The impact of shortage of essential infrastructure in developing nations can be reduced to a bearable minimum by economical, efficient and effective management of the available infrastructure through adoption of a maintenance economy. Most businesses in developing nations fail due to lack of a maintenance economy. Businesses must therefore see maintenance culture as a tool for infrastructure provision and conscientiously embrace it. Infrastructure, including plants and machineries, deteriorates after long years of abandonment and suffers wear and tear after intensive usage without proper maintenance. Infrastructure has a lifespan like human beings. If not managed properly, infrastructure’s life will be cut short! Disservice, mal-functioning and non-functional infrastructures are as good as no infrastructure. Adequate maintenance of infrastructure will elongate life and reduce dearth of infrastructure.

Facilities management starts with facility planning and can serve as an essential tool for facilities provision. Communities throughout all developing nations are facing unprecedented economic, social and environmental challenges that make it imperious for the public and private sectors to collaborate in business. Most glaring amongst these challenges is the dearth of infrastructure especially in the urban areas. These new forces are incredibly diverse, but they share an underlying need for modern, efficient and reliable infrastructure as Robert Puentes indicated in a 2015 study. The infrastructures in developing nations are not only inadequate, they are also grossly non-functional due to poor management and decay. For communities to experience strong business growth, essential and functional infrastructures must be available, especially roads for distribution of goods and services.

Clean environment, functional facilities, concrete roads, steel houses, glass roofs, asphalt pavement, fibre-optic cable and clean energy are the important building blocks of economies. They are the inputs of physical infrastructures which are needed for smooth running of the economy. Infrastructure enables trade, energises businesses, connects workers to their places of works, moves raw materials from production areas to industrial areas, creates a level playing ground for everybody and creates opportunities to succeed in business and protect communities from incessant natural disasters. Cameras on expressways, for example, can serve as monitoring devices to detect parts of the road in bad condition, real time. Bently Nevada’s System 1 is an example of software that can provide proven asset health management for real and sustainable results. It is particularly good for management of production machinery.

Facility management, according to the International Facility Management Association (IFMA, 2023), is a profession that encompasses multiple disciplines to ensure functionality, comfort, safety and efficiency of the built environment by integrating people, place, process and technology. In April 2017, the International Standard Organisation (ISO) published the ISO 41011:2017 standard for facility management and defined facility management as the organisational function which integrates people, place and process within the built environment with the purpose of improving the quality of life of people and the productivity of their core business.

Nwannekanma and Onyedika-Ugoeze writing in 2019 on this subject stated that facility management is capable of contributing towards reducing facilities costs, increasing the capacity to generate revenue and improving the productivity, image and core business of organisations. Probably, the greatest challenges facing infrastructure development in developing nations today is not infrastructure design, finance or the availability of technology for construction, but maintenance of the infrastructure after delivery. Maintenance can help elongate the lifespan of infrastructure and reduce their demand.

Most infrastructures in developing countries are in states of decay, disrepair and/or abandonment due to neglect and overuse without being maintained. The National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, which was a cynosure of all eyes, is a shadow of itself now. It has been left without maintenance for years. The Chartered Institute Of Building (CIOB) in 1982 defined maintenance as “works undertaken to keep, restore or improve every facility, that is, every part of the building, its services and surroundings to agreed standards determined by the balance between need and available resources”.

Writing in 2011, M.O. Adedokun asserted that “without a strong maintenance culture, efforts at infrastructural development will amount to nothing”. While the demand for infrastructure is increasing geometrically, the supply of infrastructure by the public and private sectors is increasing arithmetically due to paucity of funds and in some cases, infrastructure provision remains stagnant necessitating effective management of the available structures for economic development/growth. The roles of infrastructure provision in the successful operation of businesses can best be viewed with the number of industries in Agbara Industrial Estate in Ogun State, Nigeria, that have folded up due to lack of good roads. Guinness Nigeria Plc, understanding the importance of good road infrastructure to business entities, undertook the construction of the road leading to its plant in Ikeja under Lagos State tax holiday programme.

Former Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said Nigeria will require N1.3 trillion to fix its roads in 2022. This came after a lot of havoc had been caused by the state of Nigeria’s road infrastructures which had decayed, failed and/or been abandoned. W. Olatunde, in a 2009 article, is of the opinion that “understanding the importance of project sustainability will mean incorporating long term facility management agreements in all major projects”. These projects include business concerns. He went further to state that Nigeria was littered with laudable but failed projects due to lack of maintenance culture. Business survival depends on how effective facility management can be used to provide infrastructure in developing nations. Businesses which are desirous of saving costs of production and improving performance should take maintenance economy, that is the planning, budgeting for maintenance and execution of maintenance as at when due, serious.