FMCC President’s BLOG – May 2020

Friday, May 15th, 2020

What comes next in the pandemic is top on my mind because it is top on the minds of FMs everywhere, in both our professional and personal lives. The professional imperative for all of us is service, so we are all doing, learning, informing, and staying informed at high, sometimes disorienting speeds. This month’s feature by Dale Schuss takes the returning to operations point of view. Even basic O&M measures and provisions for as long as the pandemic persists will put pressure on budgets.

I also want to call attention to the blog by Stephen Brown, “A Great Time for Staff Development”. Stephen teaches and trains in preparations for a variety of FM credentials, in ways suited to diverse clients, industries, and geography. He began cautiously working with training that featured on-line interactive instruction several years ago. He now finds the number, variety, and quality of applications of this method ready for main steam. The pandemic, of course, speeded large scale adoption of online teaching, but its rise in utility and popularity was already underway – for good, basic reasons of time and cost.

Here is an example of what can be done, albeit speeded by urgency. This afternoon, I will participate as a judge for a group of High School students competing in a Facilithon, a competition introduced six years ago by The Facilithon Pipeline Inc., a not-for-profit hosted by SkillsUSA in their annual competitions in several U.S. states.  IFMA chapters assist in the competition on site – or did – until the pandemic. In the space of less than a month, the Pipeline core team has taken the competition from in-person to live online, where gathered students participate in a one-hour quiz, a facility project, and address a spontaneous emergency in that project. Total student time, including intervals for judging, is about two hours. Judges devote about a half day – optionally more – working from their location at the time.

FMCC looks forward to giving encouragement and closely focused scholarship awards as Facilithon competitors progress in FM focused education after High School. These are the future clients of FM consultants, or perhaps FM consultants themselves, up ahead. If you would like to judge, get in touch? The FM future needs you.

***

FMCC Elected office succession – Every year beginning in May, FMCC and the other IFMA Components elect officers, each following its succession plan. If you think that you would like to serve as an elected officer in FMCC, please contact any of the present Board members or send a note to Board Secretary Dale Schuss at secretary-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org. In addition to administrative functions, serving on the Board of FMCC involves interesting collateral duties and brings extensive networking opportunities. Then there is, as we say in Louisiana, lagniappe, meaning something extra without cost. For Board members, that would be the satisfaction of serving your colleagues and your profession.

***

Board Meeting – Invitation  If you would like to join-in an FMCC Board meeting, please contact president-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org for the link. There are usually about 15 guest spots available. Meetings take place at 2:00 PM CDT on the third Wednesday of each month except the month of World Workplace (September in 2020.)

***

New Member opportunity – If you are relatively new as a member of FMCC and would like to give an interview, please contact secretary-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org  or president-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org , or any FMCC Board member. Outside of the U.S., FMCC Regional Directors are available and may better appreciate your circumstances and styles of communication.

***

The Newsletter editors gratefully accept commentary, blogs, news, and anecdotes about your own work, projects, problems, needs, opportunities… The newsletter derives directly from the web site, so your material will appear there, in news, blog, or events.

The FMCC Board welcomes comments, suggestions, and reports of error or malfunction. We keep a to-do list and rework it often. Contact webmaster-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org or editor-newsletter@fmcc-ifma.org.

FMCC BLOG, May 2020
David Reynolds
president-fmcc@fmcc-ifma.org
c: +1 504 481 2627