By Abdulai Haruna, GNA
Accra, Oct 1, GNA-The International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) Ghana Chapter has urged the Government and Private Institutions to consider Facilities Management as a key priority to ensure the functionality and safety of various institutions.
Mr Sampson Opare-Agyemang, President of IFMA Ghana, who said this during a seminar aimed at advancing the knowledge and skills of facility management professionals said his outfit was ensuring that government and private institutions knew and understood what facility management was about.
The association, he said sought to draw the attention of state institutions about the important roles Facilities Managers played in keeping the built environment safe.
He said IFMA had trained about 22 people in the country adding "looking at the number of public institutions and the facilities we have and then having just 22 trained people is very sad".
Mr Opare-Agyemang said they were going to train more people on facility management going forward and added that they were planning to get government to start running an educational curriculum on it in schools across the country.
Currently, KNUST is the only institution running a Masters course on Facility Management, which started last year and the President said they were focusing on government agencies because the government owned more property than any individual in Ghana.
He added that the facilities were poorly handled because of the absence of Facility Managers.
Ransford Ampratwum, a Facility Management Professional from Sandvik and the guest speaker for the event, said Facility Managers must ensure that safety for the people working in those facilities were Paramount.
He stressed on the need for all facility managers to create an emergency plan for the facilities they manage as such plans were necessary for the safety of people working in those facilities in the event of emergency.
He encouraged all facility managers to teach workers in their facilities how to use emergency gadgets or materials.
He also stressed on the need for collaboration between Facility Managers and Architects on how to design certain facilities for easier management.
GNA
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