FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN A SELECTED PUBLIC ACADEMIC BUILDING IN NORTH CENTRAL NIGERIA

S.N. Gaiya, C. Gofwen, E. O. Ola-Adisa and L.D. Dabi

Department of Architecture

University of Jos, Jos

Email: olaefeadisa@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Buildings and their surrounding environments are important assets of an organisation, therefore they have to be well kept and maintained, so as to achieve the purpose of design. Maintenance is critical and should be well planned, because poor maintenance planning may cause negligence of some facilities, which will call for higher cost of repair when damaged. With the emergence of facilities management policies, maintenance planning can be improved, as maintenance is one of the key roles of facilities management. Therefore maintenance can be properly planned, especially for preventive maintenance, by daily maintenance and routine checks on facilities. The maintenance department are faced with challenges, which include cost of poor maintenance; laxity by users in reporting maintenance needs of the facilities they use, few maintenance officers, which makes routine checks difficult as it is time consuming and also, the process of approving maintenance needs is usually slow. Maintenance can be improved by employing more maintenance officers, educating facilities users on the importance of maintenance and its implications if not done on time and also there is urgent need for computerized maintenance which is being processed as this will bridge the communication gap between users and the maintenance department and also the maintenance department with the relevant authorities for approval of maintenance needs.

Keywords: Corrective Maintenance, Facilities Management , Planned Maintenance