Facilities management training should focus on operational skills

I get very frustrated when people say no one is interested in the building services profession. I say: “Well, what are you doing to help this industry tackle the skills shortage?” As chairman of CIBSE’s Facilities Management Group for the past five years, I firmly believe much more can be done to promote the profession and that both CIBSE and the FM Group have yet to fulfil their potential.

We’ve made a start. This year’s publication by CIBSE of Guide M Maintenance Engineering and Management has done much to raise the profile of the facilities manager. To coincide with publication, the CIBSE FM Group is working hard at encouraging engineers and others to get involved in facilities management. The group has more than 4000 registered members and, although it is rooted in engineering services, it strives to embrace the whole range of FM. It even encourages non-CIBSE members to get involved in its activities and events.

Action FM, a collaboration of leading FM organisations, including CIBSE, is also working to promote the profession. Its other members include Asset Skills, BIFM, CIOB, FMA, IAM, RICS and the Young Managers Forum. Its primary objective is to raise the profile of facilities management to the widest possible audience by targeting business, government and education and training providers. Business media organisations and dedicated facilities management publications are also involved. Action FM is about to issue a guidance paper, titled Inside Out, urging directors of large organisations to consider FM resourcing options for the future.

As effective engineering services are essential to the success of all buildings, it follows that FMs in this discipline will be the most sought after. However, with most services graduates opting for a career in a design consultancy, the number of operational engineers entering the FM profession is declining rapidly. Add to this the lack of organisations prepared to train and nurture operations engineers, and the future of this specialism looks bleak.

The current initiatives should provide a great opportunity to attract more people to the profession. In particular we need to create, support and develop graduate operational engineers. The CIBSE FM Group is trying to get operational engineering on to degree design courses and other training outlets. We are also promoting work placements for schoolchildren so they are aware of the opportunities in a career as a building services engineer.

CIBSE should develop a path for building services engineers to move into engineering operational management

I believe CIBSE can and must do more for the FM industry. It needs to develop a path for building services engineers to move into engineering operational management. This would not only help develop more operational engineers, it would allow CIBSE to expand by developing its membership. Through its affiliate routes the institution could even encourage practitioners of “soft services FM” to join. And if the right training was in place, these soft FM practitioners might eventually be able to cross over to engineering and operational FM.

Over the last few years, the focus on energy and sustainability has highlighted the need for excellence in facilities management and operation in buildings and across whole property portfolios. I passionately believe that operational building services engineers are best placed to occupy the vacant territory between influencing designs and the effective operation of a building.

We should act now to establish the education of engineers in operational building services. After all, what have we got to lose? With the increasing emphasis on the sustainability and operational cost, at least we’ll have better qualified engineers with a better understanding of how buildings work. Many will be talking about risk and sustainable solutions – but the best will have taken ownership of the issues and will be successfully managing that risk.

Original print headline - FM action stations

For more information visit www.cibse.org/groups and www.actionfm.org