Sustainable facilities management for smart buildings: A case study of the Heritage Place, Lagos

Abstract

A recent development within the metropolis of Lagos State, Nigeria is the emergence of smart buildings aimed at providing safer, more secure, productive and comfortable business environment. A major challenge to the sustenance of such edifice is the delivery of strategic facilities management services to maximise the building’s efficiency and achieve expected return on investment. This study investigates sustainable facilities management practices in smart buildings using the Heritage Place as a case study. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 19 facilities management personnel and 68 users of the facility. chart, mean score and Spearman’s Correlation were used as the descriptive and inferential statistical tools, respectively. The results show the most frequently practiced sustainable facilities management practice to include: compliance to the preventive maintenance schedules for Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and prompt response to repairs and corrective work activities in the facility with mean scores of 5.00 and 4.90, respectively. The results further show that the facility users were dissatisfied with the level of implementation of sustainable facilities management practices, except in integrated pest management and optimised waste management where marginal satisfaction were recorded, respectively. The study recommends a sustained effort by smart buildings stakeholders at implementing sustainable facilities management practices in order to significantly and continually improve operations and maintenance activities in the buildings. And that the efforts of facilities managers for smart buildings should be geared at the delivery of strategic facilities management services that meet the expectations of users of the facilities.