EFFECTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
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EFFECTS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON FACILITIES MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
ABSTRACT
This study looked at the impact of information technology on facility management practises at a few Lagos hotels. The descriptive survey approach was used in this study’s research design. The study’s population consisted of all staff members from five (5) selected hotels in Lagos State. Yawane Taro’s formula was used to calculate the sample size.
The sample method used was a simple random sampling method. The data was collected using a structured questionnaire on the “effect of Information Technology on facilities management practises.” The demographic data were analysed using frequency and percentage, the research questions were analysed using mean scores,
and the two hypotheses formulated in the study were analysed using the chi-square method at the 0.05 level of significance. According to the findings, information technology will improve facility management practises in Lagos State; facility management practises will have a substantial impact on service delivery practises in Lagos State hotels, among other things.
CHAPITRE ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of The Study
With globalisation in full swing and people constantly travelling to and from many countries, the hotel sector has numerous hurdles in adapting these various cultural influences (Seo, 2007). Customers value dependability and prompt service delivery in the hotel industry, which is a highly competitive industry.
To thrive and achieve their objective, all such organisations must give high-quality services to their clients. Top management may foster high-performance cultures by their efforts to foster a quality-oriented organisational atmosphere and their active participation in boosting quality through employee engagement and long-term customer relationships (James, 2011).
Maintenance is the effort involved in various technical and administrative actions to keep a physical asset in good shape or restore it to the point where it can perform a specified function.
Maintenance is also defined as restoring or retaining an item’s ability to perform an initially specified function, and all actions aimed at this are considered maintenance activities.
Maintenance is an investment because resources are spent today to do maintenance in order to save money or receive greater benefits in the future than if the resources were not spent. Despite this, maintenance is often separated from actual investment because it is a question of restoring or maintaining an old function.
A maintenance decision maker should examine how to stay informed, how to make decisions, and the reality that the future is unclear, therefore there is a need for future planning.
The notion of maintenance supports minimal adjustments where the rationale is known ahead of time. It is also appropriate for an industry with more fast modifications in its specific building structure. Because the hotel sector is influenced by technical and sociological developments, small upgrades are required.
In general, hotels are complex and expensive to maintain since they have distinct schedules and uses for guest rooms, restaurants, health club, swimming pool, retail store, and each has a functioning engineering system necessary for its upkeep. As a result, maintenance must be performed throughout the year,
requiring skilled staff to provide building services, operation, and maintenance, augmented by outsourced contractors. Despite its complex processes, the maintenance of engineering systems is crucial in the hospitality business because its efficacy immediately affects the quality of hotel services,
which has a direct and significant effect on guests’ impressions of the hotel. As a result, the establishment of an appropriate maintenance strategy is gaining attention, and increased reliance is placed on it to maintain high system availability while also achieving acceptable environmental conditions for the occupants.
The quality of the hotel’s lodging, as well as its food and beverage, has a considerable impact on customer satisfaction and willingness to return. Maintenance management is also important in enhancing energy efficiency and keeping total expenses low. The running and maintenance costs of engineering systems,
specifically in-house staff, outsourced contractors, energy usage, and equipment deterioration, must be adequately monitored and regulated. Outsourcing is a popular hotel industry approach used by management to reduce operational expenses in a difficult business environment.
The goal of such a plan is to boost productivity, increase revenue, reduce operational costs, and lessen risk. It enables the hotel to concentrate its efforts on its core competencies while strengthening its ability to react in an ever-changing business environment.
The trend in Nigeria today is that facilities maintenance and sustenance must be geared up in all sectors of the economy, including hotels. As a result, in order for business to be conducted in any hotel,
constructed assets must be appropriately managed if the business is to maintain the capital invested, increase its value, and sustain a reasonable return (NOUN, 2014).
Academics and practitioners are becoming interested in facilities management (FM). The former see it as a rapidly emerging field with abundant sources of data that may be utilised to explain or develop new theories about how we manage buildings and other physical assets.
Depending on whether the major interest is in delivering or acquiring FM services, the latter see it as a profit opportunity or a means of minimising operating costs. The use of information technology (IT) as a technique of accessing, managing, and exploiting data is shared by both.
Because FM is concerned with long-term operations as opposed to the medium-term activities involved with asset design and construction, there is both room for improvement and motivation to do so.
Indeed, the concept of continuous improvement is easier to apply to long-term, continuous processes than it is to projects (Atkin and Leiringer, 2006).
The introduction of office automation technology and the Internet has profoundly transformed the facility design process (Roper and Beard, 2005). Wireless device development is currently one of the most actively improving fields of information technology. Remote communication can now be offered more efficiently and flexibly than with solely wired networks in the past.
From the early analogue devices used for simple FM objectives, it is apparent that the growth of IT hardware has had a considerable impact on Facility Management. The next two stages of development are digital wired devices and systems.
Later, wired remote sensing/controlling devices and associated systems became the most significant facility-related hardware improvement areas, whereas wireless system improvement was in the centre of attention over the previous two decades.
Meanwhile, more readily available gadgets that could be employed in Facility Information Systems have been invented (Boz’any, 2006).
Facility Management is a unique application field for these devices, with a strong need for remote communication devices due to the possibility of great distances between working people and gadgets.
Facility Management and Automation Systems are mostly used to manage buildings, although in some circumstances, the supported FM activity has been expanded to include the property’s undeveloped exterior areas.
The use of wireless elements may be considerably more comfortable and cost-effective than any wired option for managing huge facilities, but the quality of FM services may also be greatly improved. The advancement of IT hardware has had a significant impact on activities related to Facility or Building Automation Systems (Boz’any, 2006).
Some experts believe that Facility- or Building Automation Systems (FAS, BAS) are components of the Computer-Integrated Facility Management System (CIFM), while others believe that they are two separate,
independent systems; however, in those networks, these components are usually integrated in the same information system, usually through a shared database.
A lot of circumstances and incidents in Nigeria aid and abet the development of hotels. The first is public sector involvement, which was prevalent at least until the late 1990s. Hotels were built to provide lodging for government visitors and patrons. Hotels were built for a variety of purposes, including status and profit.
Second, international events and requirements may necessitate the development of a hotel. Examples include the now-defunct Durbar Hotels in Lagos and Kaduna, which arose as a result of Festac 77. In Abuja, there is also the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel (now Transcorp Hilton).
This arose as a result of the formation of Abuja as Nigeria’s capital city. Such hotels are owned and administered on behalf of the public by government-appointed personnel. However, many of these hotels have been plagued by mismanagement, which has resulted in facility depreciation and progressive collapse Bode-Thomas (2003).
Third, there are privately owned hotels, which are normally on a smaller scale than government-run hotels. Even if they have diminished in some way owing to age, degree of use, or the passage of time, they are still thriving. The most intriguing part of hotel development is the private sector’s continuous interest in its development.
The Federal Government owns the hotel, which is currently being refurbished to revitalise its decrepit facilities. Despite the non-proactive nature of some of these hotels’ facilities maintenance,
other hotels in Nigeria are not far behind in adopting facilities management as a strategic management principle to gain a foothold in the market, as evidenced by what is published in daily newspapers;
for example, Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja Lagos, Le Meridien Hotel, Victoria Island Lagos, and Nicon Hilton Hotel, Abuja (Bode-Thomas, 2003). If these massive investments are to be retained, sustained,
and increased, it is necessary to analyse what thriving hotels are doing to stay in business, particularly with regard to the management of their facilities and property assets.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Strategic management tools are used in many successful firms, although other businesses rarely seek to use them, even if they succeed for a time. In a turbulent climate, large organisations with many departments cannot succeed without long-term planning (Arthur and Gamble, 2004).
The slow deterioration of many once major and successful hotels and restaurants in Lagos over the last decades indicates a lack of understanding about the impact of strategic management on the region’s hotels and restaurants’ long-term high performance.
Is the decline in sales and earnings due to top management’s failure to manage the hotels strategically in a changing environment? The development of tourist hotels is an area with significant untapped potential.
There exist communication gaps between project participants such as the designer, builder, and owner in a building project. The disparity is significantly more visible in facility operation and maintenance. When a building is finished, the owner receives not only a new facility, but also a wealth of project information in both print and electronic form.
It is then up to the owner to make sense of everything at their own time and expense. Technology has the ability to overcome existing communication gaps, but it has been hampered by the industry’s unwillingness to integrate new improvements.
Cell phones and electronic mail have had an impact on business, education, and virtually every other aspect of life, including the construction industry.
Documents and drawings can be sent to someone in a second, and wireless phones can connect people halfway around the world. However, the construction industry has yet to completely capitalise on technology’s potential and lags behind other industries. This study consequently examines the effect of information technology on facilities management practices in some selected hotels in Lagos.
1.3 Scope of The Study
The study’s overarching goal was to analyse the impact of information technology on facility management practises in a sample of Lagos hotels.
Specific goals are to
1. Investigate the level of facility management practises used in hotels and restaurants, as well as their impact on hotel performance in Lagos.
2. Explain the critical function that current information technology plays in facility management in Lagos state.
3. Investigate the impact of facility management practises on service performance in a Lagos hotel.
4. Highlight the key elements that help or hinder technology adoption and deployment in the hotel business.
1.4 Research Questions
1. To what extent are facilities management practises implemented in Lagos’ hotels and restaurants?
2. Will information technology improve hotel facility management and maintenance?
3. What effect do facility management practises have on service delivery at a Lagos hotel?
4. What are the primary barriers to technology adoption and implementation in the hotel industry?
1.5 Research Theories
1. Hotel facilities management and maintenance practises will not be improved by information technology.
2. Facility management practises will have no substantial impact on hotel service delivery in Lagos.
1.6 Significance of the Research
The tourist business in Lagos state would benefit from the study’s conclusions since hotel facilities will be considerably upgraded, making them more appealing and safe for guests.
The findings of this study will advise the management of hotels in the state about the importance of using information technology in order to compete advantageously and meet worldwide standards.
Customers of hotels will gain, and their contentment will be guaranteed.
1.7 Research Topic
This research was carried out in a few hotels in Lagos, Nigeria.
1.8 Limitations of the Research
The study was hampered by a lack of precise data on the number of registered hotels in Lagos, as well as the refusal of hotel managements to offer information on the nature of facility operations at the hotels.
1.9 Operational Terminology Definition
Maintenance: operations performed to ensure that hotel facilities are in good functioning order.
In the hotel industry, facilities are the equipment and structures that help with service delivery.
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