‘Ghana must have trained facility managers’

The President of the Greater Accra Chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Mr Sampson Opare-Agyemang, has underscored the need for more facility managers to be trained in the country.

At the launch of the 2019 World Facility Management Day in Accra last Thursday, Mr Opare-Agyemang said when this was done, both state and privately-owned facilities would be managed effectively and better maintained.

A facility manager is someone whose job role is to make sure that buildings and their services meet the needs of the people that work in them.

Mr Opare-Agyemang said the difficulty that was faced in maintaining most facilities properly in the country was because there were not enough trained professionals with the technical know-how in facility management.

"It is said that Ghana lacks a maintenance culture, but, in fact, what we lack is an educational programme and training for facility managers,” he said.

World FM Day

The World Facility Management Day will this year be observed on May 15.

The day will celebrate and recognise facility managers for their work in making facilities healthy, safe and productive.

In Ghana, the day’s celebration will focus on "empowering the facility manager through training to enable positive experiences".

More education

Mr Opare-Agyemang said the celebrations in Ghana would pay particular attention to facility management education.

He said the chapter would go on an inspection tour of some facilities in the country to check their maintenance systems and also look at ways of improving them.

He urged the public to take advantage of facility management programmes that were being run by the chapter.