The International Facility Management Association Foundation (IFMA Foundation) has launched a new Facility Management Training and Development Framework.

In a press release, the foundation said it has released the framework in order to address the challenge of insufficient wholistic guidelines for training, particularly in the technical fields.

The framework will feature training and professional development options from a syndicate of associations, working together for the first time to provide seamless support of the entire built environment landscape. It will also advocate making FM a career of choice by charting specific career paths into FM and providing progressive training solutions in the field. As individual professionals progress through the framework, new training achievements will unlock new opportunities.

“FM professionals are increasingly likely to oversee a team of employees, contractors and outsourced labour to fill a matrix of skills necessary to manage a facility portfolio,” said the chair of IFMA’s global board of directors, Graham Tier. “You need specialists for any number of building systems, and one of the greatest challenges for FM professionals in management is ensuring that the people on their teams have the training and skills needed to fulfil their roles.”

Last year, IFMA and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) released a framework to help companies develop a more strategic approach to FM and this training and development framework enhances the process by cataloguing specific roles that fall under the umbrella of FM responsibility and mapping the skills necessary to effectively perform those roles.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for organizations across the built environment community to share and cross-promote their training resources,” Tier continued. “Practicing FM professionals can use the framework to bolster their own skills, train their teams or hire qualified team members. Aspiring FM professionals can identify a career path that gets them the training they need to take the next step. Working together, we’re all going to be better off.”