THE FACILITHON rules updated 2-25-2015

Unanswered Need

Are you an employer running short of facilities talent? Are you a long-term facilities  professional in need of a protoge? Perhaps you’re nearing retirement and you’re wondering who’s going to replace you when you’re gone.  Until recently, the question was largely unanswered. Amongst organizations focusing on this “Skills Gap”,  the International Facilities Management Association, in particular, has worked hard at addressing this issue, beginning with creating accredited degree programs at colleges and universities over the last 10 years. The IFMA Foundation’s is also undertaking the daunting task of potential secondary curriculum, something their brain-trust and institutional horsepower are well suited to.

One critical element had yet to be addressed; specifically the business end of post-secondary education, where will the students come from to fill these programs? Our team, The FM Pipeline Team, successfully worked to address this need through liaison with SkillsUSA, the nation’s second-largest high school Career Technical Student Organization.

New School

Initially formed as the IFMA-Madison New School Committee in 2010 , the autonomous FM pipeline team emerged in 2014 to activate the pipeline via a long-planned competitive event called The Facilithon. The team initially created the Madison College 1 year FM certificate program in 2012 and voiced the need for a High school pipeline for said programs.

The team created two different unique stand-alone liaison programs, the second of which had multiple paths, hooks and incentives. Unfortunately, both liaison programs failed. We recognized that, even if they succeeded, there would be no means to replicate nor scale in any manner, as there was no common structure with which to navigate. Each school administration, staff and advisory team is different.

We had an epiphany- instead of attempting to reinvent the wheel, we needed to find a partner who already holds sway and commands a large voice in the environment, one who has a method of replication through existing pathways. That organization is SkillsUSA.

The updated team includes a number of IFMA Fellows and a number of highly-activated volunteers who decided an autonomous start-up venture would work best to get a locally-owned, yet immediately-scalable solution moving.  Because the New School team had already laid the groundwork in 2010-2012, activating The Facilithon was really a low-risk exercise, gaining immense success and honorable mention through SkillsUSA.

SkillsUSA staff shared that in its first year one should anticipate 2-4 students, sacrificial lambs to test the program, allowing tweaks for a successful second year. Due to our unique model and lots of volunteer hours, our initial program had 30 registrants for a 20 participant event limit.

More importantly, our volunteers talked at length with over 1000 SkillsUSA students in WI through an interactive “are you one in thirty” presentation, quickly elevating the Facilithon above the din. That’s right, after just one year, there are over 1000 high school students in just one state that know not only what Facilities Management is, but know that they, in many cases, have the right stuff to become a great FM themselves.

Meet Facilithon

Our marketing campaign was rather unique, focusing on a student’s attributes rather than a high school’s curriculum and using “Wiggly Guy”, a 3 D characterization of an ideal Facilities Management student. Wiggly guy changed minds, opened doors to instructors who initially told us “We don’t teach Facilities.. whatever that is, in our high school”. Upon getting Wiggly Guy, they understood that 1 in 30 of their students was perfect and the career wasn’t about classes, it was about a student’s character.

The Facilithon is a three-part event, incorporating a test, role-play and the FM challenge, an emergency situation  the student needs to address on-the-fly. While our team expected to tweak the program significantly, it turned out to work really well and illustrated native flexibility and frugality, manifested in not only the profession, but the program itself. Given that it’s a paper event not requiring hardware, it requires little funding or setup and easily converts to the SkillsUSA post-secondary level merely through more difficult questions.  Facilithon is much like a Facility Manager, covers lots of ground without being top-heavy.

If you’re an IFMA, BOMA, HEA chapter for example, or a NFMT subscriber or participant, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll help you start you own State Facilithon; The FM Pipeline team, through SkillsUSA across America, are ready to help you activate new FM champions … at work.