Jean-Pierre Segers and Jos Duchamps of Brains and Trees explore the importance of learning and development in facility management. They discuss bridging skill gaps, highlight IFMA programs and emphasize lifelong learning and certification for FM professionals to thrive in a changing industry.
Jean-Pierre Segers and Jos Duchamps of Brains and Trees emphasize the critical role of learning and development in facility management. They discuss the diverse educational backgrounds of facility managers and stress the need for ongoing training to bridge skill gaps. Highlighting programs by IFMA, such as the Facility Management Professional Program, they underline the importance of combining managerial, technical, and emerging technology skills. They also touch on the impact of regulations and the shifting job market post-COVID. The conversation concludes with a call for lifelong learning and certification to ensure the future success of facility management professionals.
00:00 Introduction to Facility Management
00:58 Meet the Experts: Jean Pierre Segers and Jos Duchamps
02:10 The Importance of Training in Facility Management
03:26 Bridging the Skills Gap 06:06 IFMA's Training Programs
07:54 Sustainability and Regulation in Facility Management
08:58 The Evolving Job Market and Lifelong Learning
11:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Jos Duchamps: [00:00:00] Fundamental for the existence and the future of facilities management, that actually we need to close the gap between the needs and the people and the skills of the people of today.
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're ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get started.
In today's episode, John Pierre Segers and Josh amps of Brains and Trees explore the importance of learning and development and facility management. They discuss bridging the skills gap and emphasize why lifelong learning and certification for FM professionals is important. Now, let's get into it.
Jean-Pierre Segers: I'm Jean Pierre [00:01:00] Segers. I'm from Belgium and I am the co-director of a newly founded company now one and a half years ago called Brains and Trees and we are big believers that learning and development is a key issue for companies governments and all stakeholders out there. There is a big need to bring facility management. In the core of the thinking of people and industries, not only in the built environment, but in all aspects connected to facility management.
I'm thinking about a new emerging technologies. So a lot of things to talk about, but I think that my colleague within brains in Trees first has to introduce himself and then we are ready to go.
Jos Duchamps: Okay. So, i'm Jos, I'm I'm a co-director of brains and Trees as Jean Pierre was was explaining.
I'm also director of Proco Group. I've [00:02:00] been member of IFMA for almost 25 years serving in several positions in the global board in chapter boards, but also in the EMEA board. Today as a member the topic, for today it's about training. As Jean Pierre is saying training in facility management is is becoming more and more key in the career of the facility manager. If we look into the career part of the facility manager you have, on one hand you have people who have a bachelor degree or who have a master degree in facilities management. So these people are trained.
When there were 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. And so they have a degree in facilities management. So that's one group of people. Secondly, you have a group of people who have a, let's say a technical degree. The engineers, the architects who actually also come into facilities [00:03:00] management, and they have a huge technical background and they have technical skills.
And that's the second group, a third group, we have people with more managerial degrees, people who are trained in business finance. And who lack technical competencies, but maybe who are able to manage the department, to make business plans to do good communication and so on.
So, if we look into today, what we see in our profession there is a lack of skills and if we want to close the gap between the needs of the business for the needs of the business in facility management to achieve the goals in organizations. Not only related to technical topics, but also related to topics towards health and wellbeing which are very much connected to the organization and how facility [00:04:00] managers should support their organization.
So if we want to close the gap between the needs and the requests from the organizations and the people from the three groups we have. It's actually, it's fundamental that we focus on training and the learning curve in the career of each of these future or existing facility managers.
That's why I think the program that IFMA has and that we implement with brains and trees is actually fundamental for the existence over of the facilities management profession. Because what I see is that the traditional, the first group of trainings with the bachelor's and the masters, it's decreasing.
So in some countries they're disappearing, but the two other groups with the technical skills, they need additional financial [00:05:00] and managing skills and the managers or the people with with business background, they need more technical skills. So, so there is a huge path and I, again, I frame it like.
Fundamental for the existence and the future of facilities management, that actually we need to close the gap between the needs and the people and the skills of the people of today. Hmm.
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Jean-Pierre Segers: I completely agree with your analysis. You touch on many interesting points and I being an educational training affiliate of IFMA worldwide means that we offer a number of trainings. Where we in fact, are putting ourselves in the place of universities and universities of applied sciences who don't have those programs anymore in their curriculum or in their learning catalog. So, that's very important because we want to provide those trainings. Not only. To industry partners, but also to government partners, government stakeholders, and even to the academic.
The academic environment. And as you said IFMA has a big branch of offerings, regarding those trainings, starting with the essentials of facility management. A program with 10 dedicated modules on aspects of facility [00:07:00] management. The second one is the Facility Management Professional Program, where you dive deep into four modules of two days, the leadership and strategy module, the finance and business mod module, the project management module, and the more technical module called operations. And maintenance. But there again. Stressing the connection between managerial skills, technical skills, and emerging technologies.
Everything coming together right there. In the core of the content always being topical and in context with the company or the industry where the training is given. We had the honor of doing a training for Amazon European headquarters where we.
Provided several regional managers from Amazon worldwide with aspects of FM of the FMP trading and we all know that not only. Sustainability is about climate change and about energy efficiency and [00:08:00] about the net zero goals.
But sustainability is an, is a large umbrella concept. There are so many aspects in there. Also a lot of regulation. We are members of the European Union and we know that. The European union different from the United States and from China, for example. Where there is less regulation, where there is more innovation where there is more creativity.
Creative thinking and inno innovative thinking. In Europe we tend to look at regulation first. And that can be a problem for the industry where you have to abide to a lot of regulation. Think about CSRD, how the the corporate sustainability reporting directive.
Think about the due diligence regulation. Think about, gDPR data management. Think about the AI Act, but all those things come together in the facility management. Industry where you have to abide to all those regulations. So that is stressful for the managers and for the people working in the industry.
And then the final point that I [00:09:00] want to make is that we also have to look at the job market that is really on fire. There is a big span between what is offered on the job market, and what is, and what people want.
As jobs, also the post COVID environment where people are now stressing work life balance, hybrids working in new smart, sustainable buildings, energy efficient buildings. Attention for the climate change. For energy efficiency. And there again, the new generation, the young people, the generation Z, and soon the generation alpha.
They are looking at other things that that used to be important. And they're also, the employers have to connect with those generations and have to look differently at what they call their new employees. Yeah. The workforce and the people that are in the buildings.
Yeah. So the built environment as such is also changing heavily,
Jos Duchamps: but also this generation is looking in a different [00:10:00] way to learning as such. Yeah. Eh, so, so it's, the concept of lifelong learning is becoming much more important and relevant in the future maybe than it's today all. Although I think it's relevant today.
And from my proco business, I see. That our clients suffer from skills of the existing people, and they're not able to have to have open positions filled with skilled people. So, so there is an there is a need of trained and skilled facilities management professionals, so, I think there is a potential of increase the skills and decrease the gap between the needs of the organizations.
And with the people in the facilities management ecosystem.
Jean-Pierre Segers: Yeah. And there again, we align our, we resonate with the core competencies that are in the IFMA [00:11:00] Worldwide model. And also let's stress that all the trainings end up with a credential that is worldwide, lifelong. Yes.
And NC ISO accredited. Yeah. So that stresses a lot of value. The value for the trainees, of course, and for the companies they work for.
Jos Duchamps: Thanks for having this conversation. Yeah. Wonderful. It was fun.
Jean-Pierre Segers: Wonderful.
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