I want to remind you that the 3rd IFMA training course on Planning and Project Management will be held on the 14th and 15th November and the Leadership and Management course will be held on 28th & 29th November. Places are still available for both these courses. Review the course details on the web site and download the enrolement form.

The other weekend (25th October) we finished the second of the 4 courses being conducted by the Chapter to complete the FMP credential. This was the Operations and Maintenance course – two days of intensive coverage of the subject.

This course, as with the remaining two courses, was a contrast to the Business of FM (BoFM) course as it covered the subject in considerable depth.

The O&M Course gets underway

The BoFM course covers the full range of subjects under the FM banner, and to do so must restrict the depth of offering somewhat. The course is designed to provide the overview of FM and does so impressively. If you intend to study to CFM standard then the course provides a framework for the full range of study.

If, on the other hand, you only wish to gain an insight in to FM – say you work in a related field such as finance or as a vendor selling to the FM industry and want to understand the subject – this course provides a great way to do this in just 4 days.

The Operations & Maintenance course is broken down into eight modules. Four of the modules cover what we recognize as the hard services – roads and grounds maintenance, building structures and exterior systems and building services, including HVAC, electrical, lift, plumbing, fire and life safety and security. For Hong Kong there is probably more than enough on roads and grounds. Some FMs will deal with these subjects but for most their domain ends at the exterior wall – probably on the 25th floor!

One of the modules deals with the soft services – covered by interior finishes, furniture and fittings, cleaning services, waste management and move management.

The remaining three modules cover the topic introduction and definitions associated with O&M, such as corrective, planned predictive maintenance. They discusses operational verses capital expenditure and life cycle costing. Later modules cover work management and the management and use of data, and finally the preparation of the O&M plan.

For each of the courses there is a full course manual holding all the material covered in the presentation and more. This forms an excellent workbook for continual reference during your work as an FM. The material has been developed by IFMA using key FM professionals in the industry, so you are getting the combined wisdom of FM professionals in a concise and easy to read format.

One of the major benefit of taking the course in a physical training environment, as opposed to the on-line course which has been available for some time, is the interaction between students. With the attendees coming from different backgrounds, the wealth of experience within the classroom is considerable. Lively debate within the group and at breaks adds considerably to the knowledge transfer that takes place during these sessions.

Is there any downside to the course? Well despite being designed for a global market, there is still some US centricity with the course, but this does not distract from the overall benefit. Also there are probably too many slides to go through, some of which are less relevant to Hong Kong. However, as an international Facility Manager you’re not sure where you will be practicing your profession in the future! Some of the participants for this course also felt that group exercises would have been useful, but they were not included.

Clearly you will not walk away from this course able to design, install and operate building services, although a fair amount of the time is spent looking at these services. Building services engineers can spend a lifetime becoming expert in this engineering disciplne. However, the FM’s role is not to be the designer, but to be able to talk efectively to the deigner from a position of knowledge – and this the course does provide.

The O&M course evaluation reviews the overall rating and shows that, out of 14 attendees, 5 rated the course as ‘excellent’, 8 rated the course as ‘very good’ and one rated it as ‘good’.