A framework for outsourcing facilities management services in Nigeria's public hospitals

Literature has established FM as a global business model that continues to explore how organisation can grow faster through expansion into new markets, find new ways of fostering innovation through collaborative outsourcing that will achieve right balance between the decision to outsource, risks and legal requirements embedded in the service level agreement (SLA) between client organisations and their FM outsourcing vendors. The study aims to develop and test a framework for outsourcing facilities management services using data from Nigeria’s public hospitals. The specific objectives are among others; to determine a set of key factors that influence the decision to outsource facilities management services in public hospitals; to conduct an empirical survey of facilities management services outsourced in public hospitals; to access the satisfaction of users of outsourced FM services and model the satisfaction of users on quality of outsourced facilities management services using SEM; and assess the probability and severity of risks associated with outsourcing of facilities management services in public hospitals. Data for this study were collected using a cross sectional 2-strand questionnaire survey and case study. During the first strand of questionnaire survey, a total of 85 responses were received from the six states comprising the study area while 11 of them were discarded due to missing data resulting in 74 usable responses. This gave an overall response rate of 45.4%. A total of 246 survey responses were received during the second strand of questionnaire survey. Of these, 38 were not fully completed and therefore discarded leaving 208 as usable responses. This resulted in an overall response rate of 25.1%. The case study component involved semi-structured interview section with 4 participants representing 4 cases (3 hospitals and 1 FM organisation). Findings revealed that 25 of the 31 factors were significant in explaining the decision to outsource FM service in Nigeria’s public hospitals; while 15 of them grouped into 5 broad categories were recommended for framework construction based on their factor loadings during analysis. Also, 6 facilities management services including plant management and repairs; general cleaning services; waste disposal and environmental management; landscape maintenance; security; and catering/restroom management are completely outsourced in all the 74 hospitals. Findings additionally revealed that service quality in relation to catering, plant maintenance, waste management, security, landscape maintenance, and cleaning services received very high satisfaction ratings from respondents. Findings also established 24 out of the 35 risk factors as critical, 4 factors as somehow critical, and 5 factors as not critical. Besides, 9 risk factors were selected based on their factor loadings from PCA to develop the outsourcing framework. Drawing on theoretical analysis and input from the questionnaire survey and case study, an outsourcing framework comprising 4 components was developed to assist public hospitals administrators achieve sustainable best practice resource management. It is recommended among others that further research be conducted to develop standardised criteria for vendor selection processes