Wayne Whitzell, Christa Dodoo, and Maria Gonzalez-Burgos explore key global facility management trends, challenges and opportunities influencing regions such as Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe in 2026.
What will facility management look like in 2026, and how does that future differ across regions?'
In this episode of the Connected FM podcast, host Wayne Whitzell, Second Vice Chair of IFMA’s Global Board of Directors, is joined by IFMA Global Board of Directors Chair Christa Dodoo and facility management leader Maria Gonzalez-Burgos for a global conversation on the trends, challenges and opportunities shaping the profession worldwide. The conversation examines how technology adoption, workforce skills, and leadership expectations are evolving differently across regions, while reinforcing the universal importance of soft skills, data, and strategic thinking as FM professionals prepare for 2026 and beyond.
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: [00:00:00] If you don't have the soft skills to treat your vendors, your teams, your stakeholders, and your end users, probably you're not gonna last there.
Host: Welcome to Connected fm, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by ifma, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network in advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get started.
As we enter a new year, one question is top of mind for facility managers everywhere. What does the future of FM really look like? In today's episode, host Wayne Wezel, the second vice chair of ifma a's Global Board of Directors, is joined by Krista Du, the chair of imas Global Board of Directors and Facility management leader Maria Gonzalez Burgos.
For a global conversation [00:01:00] on the trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the profession in 2026. Together they explore how technology adoption, workforce skills, and leadership expectations are evolving differently across regions, while reinforcing the universal importance of soft skills, data, and strategic thinking.
As FM professionals prepare for what's next. Now let's get into it.
Wayne Whitzell: Hello everyone. Welcome to another Connected FM podcast here at IFMA. Your host here for this episode. That's me, Wayne Whitzell second vice chair on IFMA's global board, and I am the strategic accounts lead the tech sector for solid surface care. And I'm very excited today because we get to talk about the I in IFMA International.
This is a, a global podcast we have today and very, very excited because the, the two people we have here, I've gotten to know very well in [00:02:00] the past year. And we have some people that are able to really talk about nuance in their region and give us an insight into what's going on there and where they think the future is, is headed that way.
So, I'd like to do a little quick round of introductions here with everybody and let's, let's start with our, our global chair of IFMA Christa Dodoo. Christa tell us a little bit about what you do and where you're calling in from.
Christa Dodoo: Thank you very much Wayne. As you mentioned, my name is Christa Dodoo, I'm the global chair for IFMA. Calling from Rome where I'm based out of. I work with the UN World Food Program currently in charge of workplace strategy and safety. Overlooking the global real estate and facilities portfolio. Also occupational health and safety which has been a priority for the organization recently.
And then on my my role as global chair. I support the team with yourself and other board members to ensure that some of those operational and [00:03:00] tactical work that we do as safe and professionals, we incorporate that in the association in terms of resources, training and guidance or policy documents that we help. To ensure our industry is positioned in a way that provide resilience and sustainability for years to come. So happy to be here with you and looking forward to joining this conversation.
Thank you,
Wayne Whitzell: you, Christa. Very happy to have you here too. Now let's move on to our friend Maria. Maria, you are pretty impressive in your own right here. I have come to know that you are trilingual and that you're really getting involved a lot with us in reaching out to our, our latam members and partners down there and, and have taken on some teaching opportunities down there, And, but tell us a little bit more about your history and, and, and what you do.
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: Well my name is Maria Gonzalez Burgos. I am basically right now in Orlando, Florida. But I've been working in facility management for over 20 years. I am an architect by [00:04:00] trade.
I am also IFMA CFC member. I am also IFMA LATAM supporter and member. And I am also an IFMA Central Florida chapter member. And both. Of the board for the chapter in my region.
Wayne Whitzell: Excellent.
Let's get right to it. So. I, I wanna say maybe eight years ago I did a, I moderated a panel on global FM at the Silicon Valley chapter.
And this was when we had John Martin still with us. And he was kinda the big dog on the panel. And we had a few other people. And, and what we did is we went through what it would be like to be a global fm because there's a lot of people that have dreams and desires of what that that's like. And we had these panelists lay it out and said, okay, well, some days you're up at 2:00 AM and some days you're the same day, you're, you know, you're going to to to bed at the same time you don't sleep. it's a challenging world. It's a different kind of world in, in, in global fm and the only constant is change, as they say.
And there's a lot of things going on that [00:05:00] might be different in your region versus the US North America and so forth. So part of what we'd like to do today is to really just get a, a feel for what's going on in your region and, and if there's any contrast maybe with what you see going on with maybe the US-centric approach that sometimes we can get, myself included, could get a little myopic a about facilities here and not kind of look over, well, what's going on here?
Are there best practices? What are the trends? Is there anything they're dealing with that's either they've fixed or are they ahead of the curve and we should be looking at now? So, you know, with that, Christa, I'd like to go to you first. Can you just talk a little bit about some of the things that are going on in, in your region right now? Is there anything that's popping up? Any, anything that, that you think we should be aware of or things that you find interesting right now?
Christa Dodoo: When we talk about global trends and what is going on, I will for today's discussion, we'll talk a little bit about what's going on in Africa with some of my experiences.
In most of my portfolio that we're managing [00:06:00] is across Africa and Middle East Asia. And then we have a large portfolio in Europe as well. So. I will try and share some of the trends, issues, challenges, opportunities that I've seen in those areas. One thing that I see across all those regions in terms of commonalities when we're talking about trends, especially looking at Africa, looking at Middle East. It's technology. And I, I know that that's not sound like a peculiar to only that region because that is a global trend. But looking at Africa in middle specifically technology is shaping those industries and those. Development in very different ways. So when you look at Middle East, for instance technology is the driving force in our infrastructure is being developed. There is a lot of smart cities ongoing in the Middle East. The government and the local authorities are investing in ensuring [00:07:00] that technology, smart, sustainable cities are a national agenda. It's more just led to private entities to do. When you look at Qatar, when you look at Saudi Arabia UAE. There are very big cities, smart, sustainable cities being built now, which the government is putting all their effort and resources behind.
So it shifts the way the industry focuses and the way the industry thinks. So everyone is looking at how can we ensure that we get ahead of this trend and, and I'm using trend very lightly here. Because I don't think these are trends really anymore. I'll say these are priorities that these economists are looking at.
So they are making it a priority, as in this is what we think. First, we think about smart cities first. We think our smart technology, smart infrastructure first. That [00:08:00] forms some of the base for the way cities are being developed and the way cities are being planned. On the flip side in Africa, yes, the economists are thinking about technology, but not in the same way Middle East is doing. They are thinking about technology and saying, how can we leverage all this uptake in iot, in technology to incorporate that into our existing infrastructure? So those are priorities in the same work stream, in the same vertical, but it's being approached differently. So yes, a lot of private investors. Looking at coming into the space in Africa and seeing where are the opportunities for us to see how we could introduce smart technology into this market. How can we ensure that higher value urban market have value development, that have all these investments have gone into how can we bring technology [00:09:00] to increase the value in these infrastructure?
So. Those are the, the trends that I see now in those two markets specifically which are being managed very differently, but it's the same technology.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah, it makes me think of what's the starting point. Where someone picks up the technology and uses it, and some people start at different points. For some people it's a baseline that we're starting from scratch and using this fully formed solutions that are out there in the world now. So the, the kind of accelerated use of those technologies and growth could be very fast for some developing countries that now have a fully formed solution that's been worked out in other places.
Maybe more first world places maybe that have had the economies to be early adopters of those things. So it'd be interesting to see how, how it's just like children, right, that are digitally native, that you give them an iPad versus Gen X, where, you know, we grew up with, a corded phone. And how we've adopted technologies. It's gonna be interesting to see that. And I think one of the other things too, I think it was the Netherlands, I, I should have written this down, [00:10:00] but that have begun building data centers under this city blocks and using the heat exchange technology to heat city blocks with the data center. So we start thinking about that in our country. We're gonna start propping these things up left and right all over. But are we thinking of it in those terms? So there's another way to us kind of lift our heads up. And really one of the things that, we all do is we want to make everyone aware of some of these opportunities.
So, yeah. I like what you said there, Christa, that there's, you can have the same kind of technology and same thing, but it's, it's how it's being used in different areas or what their perception of that is gonna be could be different. But it's the same thing.
All right.
So, so Marie, I'm gonna, I'm going to go to you there and I'm also interested too, in, in addition to what you see going on and so forth, and we're gonna actually come back to Christa about this afterwards. But can you also, in addition to your answer, incorporate what you see with the people you're interacting with the potential pipeline of our future comrades here in, in the FM profession. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: Sure. And this is interesting [00:11:00] because technology, it is without a doubt evolving in our industry and facility management is, drastically changing because of technology, ai, IO, ot, whatever we using to really run buildings. It's exactly the same happening across the G globe.
It's not, it's one region or or another. It's something that is changing the perspective around how is to really run buildings. In Latin America, what is really interesting is that the region is so diverse in terms of who is managing the buildings, but also what is really the focus on the specific country.
We're talking about the region that used to have major hubs or clusters for this big million fortune or 500 fortune companies that used to put the cluster for their headquarters in Latin in one specific place. It used to be Venezuela in the past. The big hub and then Argentina [00:12:00] switched to that. Now we see places like Brazil, Mexico, as the main hubs for running latam as a region.
However, the people it's still different because we're talking about different languages when we talk about Brazil and, but Latin America. The Hispanic latam e, even speaking the same Spanish is different at diverse culture in every country. So the standardization of processes across region is particularly different than any other place.
We talk about more transformational leadership, where you can really get into the point of connecting people as the core of the business, making sure that the fm either FM professionals like the, the ones that are coming from trades or FM in the strategic piece to understand the fact that the people is the most important piece to, [00:13:00] to really run buildings.
And the other aspect that is really triggering what is happening in Latin is that hospitality is most more important than any other thing. So the human customer center service relationship that the FM develop with clients can really drastically change the perspective of what is facility management in Latin America.
We probably don't have the same access to technology due to the cost associated to bring in technology or the fact that we really need to train the people in the use of new tech emerging technologies. But it's more easy to capture good customer relationship with clients or guests or end users with the fm.
So now, the companies are really changing the view of what is [00:14:00] facility management. It's not only anymore just the guys who used to clean the space or maintenance the housekeepers, not anymore. We can really see the value of the profession as the people, as the core of the business because we're creating revenue at the end.
If you notice people going into the office, that's what the client wants. Even if you are on the site internally, you are in house and FM and not a service provider, you need to present some metrics to showcase that people are returning to the space. That's one of the trends. And the other one that is really another big difference is that we have this coworking spaces more often than in the past in Latin.
There's WeWork spaces, there's places that are, are more hybrid. So the facility manager is not someone probably that is 24 7 there, because the [00:15:00] WeWork is managing the the space. But you need someone at the end to manage the relationship with the
Wayne Whitzell: Mm-hmm.
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: That's the key.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah.
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: So we talk, we are talking about more portfolio management.
Integrated with, with fm corporate real estate as a whole in the past used to be one side and the other, and they don't talk Now is it's a different perspective.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah, well, I mean, you're an architect. That's, that's one divide that we typically have in our industry is that a and DO and m chasm that exists between those two worlds. And then you know, the corporate real estate world is another kind of chasm that, that we have there with, with different views and different end games and different goals. And in talking about circular economy and also talking about really putting a connectedness between all of those worlds. 'cause if they make that circle work, everybody's got to be talking and quite frankly, have some skin in the game. And we may even need to re-look at how [00:16:00] we do accounting CapEx opex too in that.
So, Christa, I wanna turn to you about the people. And you have a wide perspective here because you get to interact with other associations similar, to ifma and maybe on a smaller scale around the world. And one thing I've heard, and I haven't had a chance to actually experience this myself, but. I've heard that in Europe, it's not uncommon for FMS to be viewed as a professional degreed program and, and maybe an elevated view potentially of fm. I don't know if that's an accurate or if, I think that was just a colloquial thing that I heard from talking to some people. But whereas here, it's a challenge because if a, if a, you know, a kid in college says, you know, Hey parents, I, I, I wanna become a facility manager. They might still be thinking, this is, you're gonna carry that big ring of keys on your belt and drive that little van around and fix toilets. And not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, a lot of us started in our, in our FM careers that way. But I've heard that the perception is a little bit different in, in some of the other, other countries.
Can you maybe talk about the people quotient and, and [00:17:00] how how it, how FM is viewed in, in these other regions?
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Christa Dodoo: Yeah. You are, you are really right. When culture plays a key role in how the industry is being perceived. You know, yes. In Europe. Profession because infrastructure development, urban development, and facilities management a whole has really advanced in Europe as a region. So. [00:18:00] As much as still a very technical profession, there are that technical component which is still there because we can never get away from it.
Completely. I know we all speak about moving from the ONM and boiler room to the corporate room, all the s that we use, but let's face part, bottom line. Facilit Management is about maintaining the building, maintaining the space, and ensuring that we bring value to the building. We can't do that. Forgetting completely our foundation, which is ensuring that you need the right technical people to ensure that the boiler room is functioning, that is still part of management, you know, and there's no shame in that. We just need to embrace it in its totality. So yes, there is that technical component. There is a huge. Population of people who go into that technical [00:19:00] aspect of managing the workspace and managing the infrastructure. And it's not frowned upon. when I was in Vienna for a, a few years, when you speak to young people who have come out of school after high school. It is very common to see people going into a vocation to learn any form of vocation, and it is encouraged because there's nothing wrong with it. You need those people in that full circle lifestyle of the infrastructure to make sure it functions. So it is embrace. There is also the. Huge population of that professionalizing the industry where they play their strategic role, they sit in the boardroom and provide that value to the investments we are putting in our buildings.
So I, I'll say that in Europe it's being recognized more holistically and that perception is a little better compared to other [00:20:00] regions. I see a bit of that in the Middle East as well. As I mentioned earlier, with that elevated approach of seeing national development and national agenda going into infrastructure and even developing, they do recognize that you need a skilled labor to be able to manage those facilities.
So there has been a huge wave of people going into that role. So facilities management is not just seen as. Cleaner or the janitor going around with a bunch of keys, the more they see that as a really strategic role. Not so much in Africa. it's still been challenge in some areas and, and of course Africa is a very diverse regions.
The economies are very different when you compare North Africa to some parts of West Africa and then East Africa to Southern Africa, the economies are so different. So the way they manage facilities are very different. And [00:21:00] then the perception and the culture that comes with that is very different. But in the, in that region. There are still that challenges for people seeing that as a professionalized industry. So I will say the way it's been affected and understanding and educating people on what that role means, I think there's still a lot of work to be done. So, yes. When you mentioned facilities management, you get a eyebrow raise. What is it? What do you do? Oh yeah. You are the cleaner. You are the janitor or you, you know, the maintenance guy. And then you need to educate them and tell them, I do more than that. I do this as well. Space planning, design, security, all that, that comes with it. But I think overall, comparing even five years, 10 years to now. We've made huge advancement. We've come along way, and I think we still that trajectory and [00:22:00] in a few years it will be seen. When you mentioned facilities management, no one would've to ask you what you do. Just like no one ask you when you say, I'm an architect or I'm an engineer. No one ask you what you do. They only ask you what kind of engineer are you? So I
think we will get there. There's a lot of education to be done but we as professionals, I think we need to get out of our head and accept our role. And not take offense with people seeing us as just cleaners or maintenance guy, and just use that as opportunity to let people know, yes, we do that and more. So I think that's one of the culture shifts
beyond regional boundaries that we also need to do.
Wayne Whitzell: And I think part of the pathway out of the cave, so to speak is, is really getting outta that tactical day-to-day mindset and thinking more strategically and implementing those. We, it's the classic, we spend so much time working in our business that [00:23:00] we don't work on our business. We spend so much time as a clearing house for problems and cold sweat.
And the way one of my friends explains it is we're at the red line every day. And when you're at the red line every day, you just, you're struggling just to keep your nose above the waterline so you don't go under. And I, I see you know, because we, we have, oPEX mindset. It's amazing.
We spend all this money and we build these beautiful, luxurious buildings with, you know, gold and baby steers. And then now we, we say, well, we're gonna give you this much to maintain this, or, you know, why does it cost so much to maintain the windows in this 70 foot atrium that we put in here? And it's, it's so I, I think getting, I've often said to people that, you know, a co a complaint I hear often is we don't have a seat at that table.
And I've said that to some fms, Kristen, I imagine both of you are, are like this. They, they look at me and say, well, I've always had a seat at that table, because they just. That's the way they thought their mindset, like you're saying, get your mind changed about this. so Maria, let me, let me go to you here.
What are some of the challenges that [00:24:00] you see specifically in Latam, that if you said, look, if I could just wave a magic wand and solve, and that would, you know, knock down a lot of dominoes with, with one effect.
What, what would you do if you had complete control over that? What would you change?
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: Yeah, I think it's just a piece of making sure that we are educating people on the business. But particularly latam runs, most of the FM industry in regulatory compliance, and we are talking about different countries with different regulatory and compliance processes to follow.
And, and it depends the industry, if we talk about the pharma industry, it will be completely different than the finance industry in terms of following procedures. We're not even talking about global client procedures or global and company procedures. We talk about the local. Regulations or, or whatever.
The ISO 41,000 is asking the facility manage management to [00:25:00] comply. If I have this magic ball to really see the problems ahead I will definitely would like to train people in reading dashboards. If we have the data driven to help us to do better and more efficient way of savings or whatever is the target, it's more easy to understand the problem ahead of time and, and have the after action review ready the root cause analysis paper in front of you just to run whatever is the problem and, and not replicate that.
My experience in the past I can, I can really use the examples of my teams where I can really see situations ahead. And in one country to another. If you have a floating in one place, you have a floating in every other place. It's not a country thing or it's a, or, it's a unique thing. When you have a float, [00:26:00] you really need to solve the situation.
But when you have this understanding of processes very well, the practitioner in fm e, even if he's a technician. General maintenance technician or the facility manager in one site, they can replicate exactly the same procedure no matter what country it is or are multi-site. And the magic trick for the leader in facilities, especially the leader who is managing a multi-site portfolio, a multi-region portfolio, my advice is all the time have this governance process.
Open with the people. This one-on-one. Every time we go into the site and we do these walkthroughs and you're walking around the space and you ask the people, what is your big challenge here? of the time I, I am hearing I don't have people skill. manage [00:27:00] situations. And this is something that we can do in IFMA, right?
That we have this continue education where people can really have lunch and learns well, I used to have lunch and learns with my team. Take this training quickly, easy. And next time you have a situation, you know exactly what to do. And maybe it's not happening again. Or maybe it's happening again, but you know exactly what to do.
People needs to feel more comfortable in what they're doing without fearing that a mistake or a failure in a procedure can really cause their job. Because we know that we have emergencies and facilities, but we can really be on top of predictability. And this is something that maybe we need to change a little bit more, and we already passed it.
The times of reactive maintenance long time ago. So let's start focusing more on predictive maintenance in te in terms [00:28:00] of the future of our industry.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. Yeah. I think what you said at the very top about reading dashboards just about everything you said after that can flow from that concept where we can maybe take some someone, and we're seeing this already because of the talent gap. We're seeing a lot of very green, younger folks coming into the industry, and that's fantastic, but they're coming in with zero knowledge, but a possibly a lot of hospital. Experience, possibly a good mindset. They're being hired for their ability to, to run around from building, to building. But you being able to use good data, obviously that's the, that's the key, is that the data has to be good and making decisions during that wisdom gathering phase of their life.
Right? So this is gonna be, okay, just feed me the information I need to go over and do this. I need to take this data and, and create this action from this data. And maybe not understand completely how a chiller works, but that there's an alarm going off and it's accurate. And then I can track that alarm against some other data.
And start to your point, making [00:29:00] predictive analysis. And the, the, the net spins off cost savings less downtime, less wrench time, all of that ha has big impact. and then if you're savvy as. As an fm, you start packaging that up in a report that you generate on on one of the chat models and serve it up as a report saying, look at what we've done by, by u utilizing this. So I, I, I think the, the talent app is something I see. Daily in, in in my US travels and, and dealing with folks. And I see, especially like the outsource providers, they'll bring in some very green people, but the advantage they have is they say, well, we've got an entire international conglomerate behind this 18-year-old kid that we're putting in this building so that if he or she starts to waver, we've got a backstop that's internationally deep to help them.
They just need to raise their hand and say, I don't understand this, and then they're okay. and while they're doing that, they're getting training from internally, like one of the big three or whatever, or through us through ifma. But that, [00:30:00] that wisdom gathering portion I think is very important.
I, I think what I'm looking at with a a lot of the younger people entering the field is they're very, since they're so tied to the, the use of the phone and texting and so forth is one of the things we really need to hire for is the human connection, their ability to interact with other people.
Like I have no doubt with both of you, if I walked through e any of your facilities with you, there would be people that would say, hi Christa, hi Maria. Or, or you would know what's going on in that facility because you managed by walking, you have communication, you know how to not take things personally.
And that's, you know, that's something I think that we really need to be aware of and coach in some of the new generation of fms who might have grown up digitally native and are used to texting their answers as opposed to interacting with a human that has a concern. so Christa, looking to the future for you also, I mean, we touched on that with technology and the use of all of that. But where do you see the adoption of AI and [00:31:00] day-to-day FM operations and strategy.
Where do you see that building of the future, that city of the future? What does that look like to you? And what is the impact to humanity there?
Christa Dodoo: I, I think looking at AI and the impact all depends on our ability and preparedness to adopt AI and use it to our advantage, and I think. That is going to be the determining factor for me, I think region by region or even individual basis. the researcher much did recently, the rise of the analyst. There is a component there that you talk about storytelling. You know, and I, I'm glad you and Maria both talked about data, the relevance of data and all that. We have the data. We've always had the data, but what we use the data for and how we'll be able to take this huge amount of data, [00:32:00] compress it into very practical, strategic, and meaningful way.
Utilize that data, bring that dashboard. So Maria is talking about, make it easier for us to communicate to people, to bring that human touch because you need that data to be able to have that human element to be able to elevate your relevance in organization.
I think for me, that's where we need to start because there's so much data and we are not So let's use that to tell our story and then we can go next step into the future when we have that. Operationalizing mainstream into what we do on a day-to-day basis, then we can start thinking about all these fancy things that the building can do, because those things, we are still doing them anyway. And you need the data from that in, you know. So let's talk about data. Let's talk about relevance of data in this UCI.
To elevate that impact of [00:33:00] data in the way we manage our facilities. And that is the starting point for me, and that's where we see real impact.
Wayne Whitzell: So this view that we have globally, there's some things that I'm hearing that transferable building is a building is a building, right? It's just the options of how humid it it is in your area. The expectations of the people that are there. But there are some things that are common across the board that, that we can definitely take from all of this.
And a common human experience of how people want to be treated and how they want to be the right temperature in their, area, and some of the challenges that that I see with people in the industry, I think there's the perception , in our industry. Is still very narrow. And you mentioned something, you know, Christa, that you said, we have all these different areas. What part of FM are you in? And, and I hearkens back to something, we had a keynote speaker, I think it was Chip Heath or Dan Heath. I get them mixed up. They're brothers, but they said that we're the decathletes of the business world. And doing all of these [00:34:00] different things and doing them well. You know, one day you're throwing that javelin, the next day you're doing the high jump, maybe doing the high jump a lot of days in a row. And I think that if, with education and getting people aware of what it is that we do in our industry and making it an attractive choice.
So let me ask you this. In your regions, do you see. The pathway being people falling into facilities or do you see them, like, I see a lot of that in the US where they go from reception, hospitality, mail room, even non-related operations areas and falling into the career. And then 20 years later, they're senior fm.
Or do you see more pathways through degreed programs and through education and maybe coming out with a degree in a related built environment field and coming in there and what could we learn from each other in that regard, say from a US to other countries? And I'll kick it to you, Maria, first.
Maria Gonzalez-Burgos: Yeah, and, and this is really interesting how [00:35:00] the perspective of facility management as a career exists. In Latin America, particularly Latin is interesting how the translation of facility management doesn't really exist in Spanish or in Portuguese because when we say facility management, we say like an admin of something.
So we're not even saying that It's related to system processes, people, tools. We are just mentioning admin. So an admin person is whatever is not related to this field specifically when you really, really need people with technical skills. But the soft skills is something that we can develop. And the people when I go into this, speeches with, with teams or in my own [00:36:00] teams, I'm always try to rely on the make it methodology of make it personal. And we like to say, don't take it personal and this is one thing, but when I say make it personal is when you really taking the ownership of the dues of being an FM and I switching the, the word of admin all the time. So people is not thinking about I need to, to study an MBA or be an administrator in order for me to manage systems, processes, and tools. No, you can go to a trade, you do a, a, I don't know, a certification in hvac, and then you acquire the soft skills and you're ready to be a facility manager because a facility management profession is soft skills pure. If you don't have the soft skills to treat your vendors, [00:37:00] your teams, your stakeholders, and your end users, probably you're not gonna last there. Everything will collapse eventually. Someone with very good technical skills, that is very good reading floor plans, blueprints and dashboards is very good doing that, but it. Very probably poor in managing that relationship with the people in the building. And that's soft skills. So we can really ask people if you want to be a facility manager or want to study this profession, you can start going into the field as a trade and then you can acquire all the leadership skills that you need, the coaching the whatever is in between. It's possible, although there are schools for facility managers and we have the CFM and the FMP and everything that that is also [00:38:00] at top of this profession is good.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah, those soft skills are marrying those with the technical, I think is, again, there's a common humanity. We have whatever country that we're in the ability to lead people, the ability to create that psychological safety and clarity wherever we are. And you know, there's the old saying was, and the customer's always right, but I think elevated leaders know, well, I. If you take care of your employees first, they will take care of the clients without your intervention. And that's almost like a, a Deming I'm a big fan of, of Alfred's Deming. My wife introduced me when when, when she was taking her classes in college and. And said you gotta check this guy out. And building quality into the system not doing things as an audit after the fact, but building it from the very beginning. And that's, that's something that I've, has always resonated with me and I see a lot of parallels between what, between that and FM obviously. I mean, there's a whole lot of Six Sigma that flows around everything that we, we, we do here in fm. But I, I'm gonna give, give you the last word here, Christa. With the unique perspective you have meeting all of these different people around the world and [00:39:00] different organizations and so forth. How do you see ifma positioning itself in the global market as a resource, as the go-to place, not only for the technical, but for the soft skills as well.
Christa Dodoo: We need to understand the markets, we need to understand the region and what the needs of the various professionals are before we can support. Upscale them. And based on the conversation just between me and Maria, you see what the huge differences are across the region. So what the people in Latin need is not what the people in Europe, middle East, Africa, or Asia.
In Europe for instance, there is this huge wave of decarbonization and deep retrofitting. We all know there are a lot of old buildings in Europe. That needs to be retrofitted to be sustainable. Especially since little over a year ago, the energy performance of buildings directive was passed by the [00:40:00] eu parliament.
Now a lot of countries are ensuring that decarbonization play a key role. And who are the professionals supposed to do the decarbonization. You know, how do we provide that level of skills? So ifma being part of those conversation and we were part of the conversation when the directive was being passed, ensuring that we contributed to the text for that directive.
We have those partnership with renovate Europe. Campaign for instance, where we know what the needs of the people are, what resources and tools they need in Europe to be able to support this decarbonization. So being in those conversations, being the forefront, that helps. When you come to Africa I've mentioned already about the huge market growth and the fact that there is building a skill going on.
There is technology being their celebrator. [00:41:00] The bottleneck here is the people, the skills, and the resources to be able to use. This technology to ensure that there is that lifecycle, entire building lifecycle stewardship that they need to perform. So again, if not being aware that this is what the market in Africa needs to provide the tools and not just in the tools, because you cannot pick the tools.
Canada in US, for instance, and just give it to November in Africa and expect that that is gonna be relevant. It's not. So tailoring our resources, and we've done a good job of that with the OM reports. All this research work that the team is doing, so that is, is helping. One last thing that I wanted to mention which I find very interesting, is also we as an association being prepared to learn.
And know what [00:42:00] that evolution of the industry is to be able to be at the forefront and provide that school tool. So a couple of weeks ago, I was in Dubai for the IFMA Global Middle East Conference. I was talking to a couple of the members and one of our chapter leaders, he used to manage, he used to work at ima, which is a property developer that puts up the khali, managed the fountain.
In front of Bej Khalifa downtown, and he was telling me all the, you know, the juicy details behind the scenes, the timing of the fountain dances and how that happens. And it's the same system that is used at Bellagio in Vegas. So he was telling me how it is being done. There are money that it goes into maintaining it on a monthly basis and whatnot.
This is not taught in any school. What I, and this guy as a PhD in facility manages, he, he teaches [00:43:00] in a university in Dubai for facilities management and all that. He's called engineering degree and all that, but he did not learn how to manage functions and put in 50,000 LEDs on the bench, kalifa us advertising and all that.
But that is where the industry is going now, and we need to also, as an association, be ready to learn that this is the evolution of the industry and we need to be prepared to put the resources, the investment. To provide the resources for our professionals, upskill them to be able to ensure that they manage infrastructure.
And I think that is where our focus should be. And that is where our focus has been the past year. There's still a lot more we can do, but for me it comes down to that skills, skills, skills. But it needs to be relevant skills. It needs to be tailored to the region. It [00:44:00] need to be relevant for the organization, for the industry, and whatever verticals, oral work streams that the professional needs.
That is the only way we are going to stay relevant as an association, and that's the way we're going to stay relevant as an industry.
Wayne Whitzell: Hmm. Well said Madame Chair. Absolutely. Well, I'll just leave everyone with this. I encourage everyone to get involved I think there's a lot of opportunity for us who have been in the industry and not just an opportunity, but almost a a moral imperative that we need to do this for the next generation to really start feeding that pipeline and identifying these skills that we need. So listen, it's been a pleasure talking with both of you.
I, I, I, I look forward to all the other things we have planned in the coming years and working together, and, to thank you both for your time and we'll catch you on the next Connected FM podcast.
Thank you.
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