Experts in the real estate and facilities management industries argue that increased investment technology in real estate and a greater emphasis on capacity-building will be key drivers of growth and sustainability after the pandemic.
Industry leaders and stakeholders conducted talks at the Nigeria Facilities Management (FM) Roundtable, and these were their inputs.
In recognition of World FM Day, the Nigerian FM Roundtable is a yearly leadership, business-to-business, and policy roundtable sponsored by Alpha Mead Facilities, the FM component of Alpha Mead Group.x
In honor of World FM Day, the Nigerian FM Roundtable is a yearly leadership, business-to-business, and policy roundtable sponsored by Alpha Mead Facilities, Alpha Mead Group’s FM subsidiary.x
Speaking at the event’s opening, “Africa’s FM and Real Estate Beyond the Pandemic: New Realities,” he said: New real estate technology approaches.” ”As businesses continue to open globally, it is now time to shift from survival mode and build the economy to the path of prosperity,” said Wale Odufalu, Alpha Mead’s Group Executive Director, Corporate Service.
“As an industry organization, we recognize that technology in real estate and facilities management will play critical roles in this return to normalcy, and it is incumbent on us to use platforms to set an agenda for repositioning Africa as a global investment destination post-pandemic.”
Femi Akintunde, Group Managing Director of Alpha Mead, detailed the company’s journey during the pandemic’s outbreak, noting that a combination of a new approach to people, culture, products and services, as well as technology in real estate systems, which is a recipe for driving African organizations from stability to growth.
“We realized we needed enough capacity to stay afloat and become more efficient in what we do,” he said. We recognized that we had significant responsibilities to our employees, customers, shareholders, regulators, financial advisers, and a variety of other stakeholders, so we created frameworks, methods, products, and technology to assist us in responding correctly to their various interests.
Building risk-based capacity and embracing technological approaches to facilities and asset management, according to another speaker, Mark Norris, a Director at Asset Reliability Consultant Limited UK, is the road of success for the real estate sector in Africa.
Norris, who gave a talk titled “Risk-Based Asset and Facilities Management in the Era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA),” noted that in the face of the pandemic’s widespread cash shortage, he suggested optimizing investment while balancing cost, risk, and performance.
“In this era of VUCA, the pandemic has helped us focus on what is genuinely vital to businesses,” he stated. We investigated which business procedures are critical and which facilities/departments are most significant to our operations. Then we may look at the systems and assets that are contained within those facilities.”
Speaking about the pandemic’s influence on Africa’s real estate supply chain, Wole Olufore, Managing Director of Alpha Mead Facilities, said the period showed the usefulness of systems and technology for firms that operate across borders.