• As FHFL disburses N68b for affordable housing
The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) and Family Homes Funds Limited (FHFL) have agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on capacity building for FHFL staff on costing and cost management of construction projects in order to ensure national housing programs adhere to stipulated regulations.
The agreement was reached last week when NIQS leadership, led by President Olayemi Shonubi, paid a courtesy visit to FMFL’s headquarters in Abuja.
During the visit, Mr. Femi Adewole, Managing Director/CEO of Family Homes Funds Limited, expressed his delight at NIQS’s offer to train his organization’s staff, noting that the gesture will ensure that its projects adhere to all regulations in a manner that guarantees the structural integrity of the buildings.
“Towards achievement of this goal, we will work in partnership with public and private sector developers by providing competitively priced direct financing – both debt or equity to finance projects that meet our strategic objectives,” Adewole said.
Adewole said FHFL Homes Funds Limited was excited by the hand of fellowship extended to it by NIQS while assuring Nigerians of his organisation’s readiness to work with critical stakeholders in the built environment to catalyse the provision of at least 500,000 homes and the creation of 1,500,000 jobs in the process.
Earlier, NIQS President called on FHFL to adopt stamped Bills of Quantities (BOQ) from registered quantity surveyors as requirement for funding housing development.
Shonubi said that only BOQ signed and sealed by a registered quantity surveyor should be accepted from developers seeking finance from FHFL under the affordable housing funds.
According to him, “doing so will ensure that only realistic and workable estimates are provided by these developers and thus reduce time and resources wasted in evaluating such schemes that are later found to be unrealistic.”
Expatiating, Shonubi said the adoption of BOQ duly signed by certified quantity surveyors will also enable FHFL take full advantage of the competencies and inherent core values of professional cost managers, namely transparency, accountability, probity and value for money in developmental projects.
The NIQS president then urged FHFL to assist members of the institute own their own houses, particularly in states like FCT, Niger, Lagos, Rivers, Kano, and Kaduna, where the institute has sizeable members and where costs of owning a home could be a challenge, especially for its young members.
Shonubi made a special appeal for consideration of members of the FCT chapter of the institute, whom he said had already applied for an allocation of a parcel of land under the mass housing programme of the FCT.