Engaging, enlightening, and energizing
The Next Gen of FM
The Facilithon program was originally dubbed “the chapter answer” for its ability to energize members by connecting your organization with high school students. Now the Facilithon is running in several states as a national SkillsUSA competition, growing across the country and exploring other countries where the FM need is acute. The FM Pipeline Team partners with professional association chapters like yours with opportunities to judge and share your personalities at Facilithon events, help fund scholarships and program growth while meeting an exceptionally-talented ocean of next generation students. These students are already technically-oriented and most lean toward the built environment, a streamlined funnel that sifts and sorts for technical talent, leaving 29 of the standard 30-student classroom behind.
These Facilithon and Wellhead(c) students will become our decision-makers in as little as 1-5 years, offering employee impact that old models never afforded. The FM Pipeline Team 501c3 created and manages four programs, each of which solves for a next-generational talent hurdle toward successfully engaging, enlightening and energizing our #NextGenOfFM.
Experienced, energized association volunteers from built environment careers who figured out how to turn on the next generation of facility, building, property managers and maintainers at the critical high school age.
FM Pipeline Team, Inc. 501c3 publishes, promotes and administers the Facilithon program, a 3 part competition in facility management along with three other relevant programs that engage, enlighten and energize our #NextGenOfFM.
The Facilithon competition creates the pool of energized students for other programs you foster, whether they’re Scholarships, Job-Shadow, Internships or Direct-Hire.
The Facilithon is a competition designed to introduce high school and technical school students with their advisors to careers in Facility Management. The Facilithon competition tests a student’s ability to thrive in a facility management environment through a 50-question common-sense quiz, a 10-minute FM role play, and the FM Challenge, an emergency scenario that the student has to react to immediately. Students that do well in the Facilithon represent excellent future facility management professionals.
The FM Pipeline Team is a 501©(3) scholarship-granting organization. By sharing your scholarship and foundation grants through the Facilithon program, your gifts to the future generation of FM becomes tangible. Here’s why:
SkillsUSA is the nation’s fastest-growing career technical student association (CTSO). With over 435,000 members (2020) SkillsUSA prepares their student members for careers through personal, workplace and technical skills grounded in academics. SkillsUSA is widely promoted by Discovery Channel’s Mike Rowe, addressing the skills gap in America. SkillsUSA is a member of Worldskills, a global association of similar CTSOs, headquartered in Bern, Switzerland.
Joining the Facilithon movement brings local outcomes to your employers and energizes your “quiet” members through mentorship opportunities through the SkillsUSA Facilithon.
The Facilithon team has been incredibly helpful to the Wichita, Kansas IFMA Chapter. They have provided constant encouragement and useful resources as we have been on the mission to engage in movement of the finding the next generation of “FMers”. We have formed a committee called Emerging Professionals and we had a team act as judges at Kansas Skills USA in April. We are on the road to getting our own Facilithon event. Jim and the team are phenomenal.
The Capital Chapter met with the SkillsUSA Board for Virginia to discuss a variety of strategies to work together to serve students, teachers, parents and the FM community. In addition to presenting a Facilithon at next year’s Virginia SkillsUSA meeting, we will be presenting information about Facility Management to the VA state conference of teachers and administrators affiliated with SkillsUSA in July. We will be hosting a back of the house tour of the Smithsonian for teachers, administrators, parents and students this fall with a presentation about FM and the many career choices it presents to students.
When the Denver Chapter discovered the FM Pipeline, we immediately knew this was a key program to develop in Colorado. The IFMA Foundation has effectively been working on college degree programs, be we realized students need to be engaged at an earlier level. As we develop a Facility Management degree program at Metropolitan State University at Denver, it is important for the college to know there is a “pipeline” of students interested in the Facility Management profession. It takes time to blaze a new trail, and we have seen significant impact and progress in our efforts of the FM Pipeline and its Facilithon.
The Greater Orlando IFMA chapter successfully ran its second Facilithon program at Bay Center in Pensacola, FL, eclipsing its first-year record. The Orlando Facilithon team was championed by Larry Simmons, CFM (past president of the chapter and now retired from the workforce) after Tarzan Frazier fostered the initial Facilithon in 2017.We encourage Orlando chapter members to consider getting involve with next year’s SkillUSA and Facilithon events. You’ll never regret in being a part of prompting how great the facilities management profession can be to some young person.
If your Association is struggling with any of the questions above, it is.
Send a few of your Association members to a Skills USA event near you as VOLUNTEERs. Remember, we have already developed all the presentation and marketing materials for you to use for presentation with your Association and with the Skills USA teams, Advisors, and Participants in addition to all of the Facilithon Event Materials themselves which we update and provide for your use annually.
Ask us! One of our Facilithon Leaders will work with you to find a location and put you in contact with your state’s SkillsUSA event team.
It doesn’t cost anything for your Association members to Volunteer at an events. Every State Skills USA Organization is funded somewhat by that State, but must also raise some of their own funding. When you commit to running a Facilithon event, to be successful you will need an established relationship with your State’s Skills Team. From there the process can vary somewhat with every State. We can help you figure out your plan. Usually, to start building a participant base, you may spend $500 or so to have a presence with a marketing/FM information table and you may or maynot pay a fee to speak in front of gatherings at various Skills events you attend. Then after you have built some interest in the Facilithon event, you will want to budget $2,500-$3,000 or so annually as a contribution to the Skills USA Organization plus whatever scholarship awards you plan for your winners. (You can start small, even gift card awards will do).
In the future our national team may have some funds available to help you get started. Some Chapters do hold fund raiser events specific to this purpose or use proceeds from already established fund raisers, others get sponsors to contribute, and yet others already have funds budgeted for scholarships and youth outreach available to use.
