Innovative Pathways in Facility Management

[Jim Zirbel] (0:00 - 0:09) You can't grow anything unless you have the next gen of FM ready to come in. A constant, constant pipeline of talent.

[Adrian Danila] (0:10 - 0:55) Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Multifamily X podcast, Masters of Mainance. I want to thank our sponsors from Kairos and Apple for making this broadcast possible. With that being said, we're introducing our special guest for today, which is Jim Zerbel.

Jim, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on, Adrian. Jim is the chairman of FM Pipeline team, creators and administrators of the high school Faciliton program.

Jim, I want to start by introducing you to the audience and I want you to tell us a little bit about your background, a little bit about what you're currently doing and with an emphasis on the Faciliton program.

[Jim Zirbel] (0:55 - 6:15) Thanks so much again for having me on, Adrian. My name once again is Jim Zerbel and I'm what you'd probably call the 80th percentile of serial entrepreneurs. People who have started a lot of different things, most of which didn't work, some of which did.

A number of years ago, I had a couple of firms that were providing built environment technologies. I've been involved in built environment technologies for a long time, whether it be security functionality, building automation, video and other elements like that. I found that in the past, there was a need within a lot of the organizations that are involved in this association, just to share that it would probably be better for me to provide some leadership work and donate some of my time there rather than worrying about getting a deal on the next system or service or whatever it may be.

Out of that, I wound up joining an IFMA organization, that's the International Facility Management Association, one of many really good associations that work to promote the built environment. Out of that, I found a love for this world, the people in the facility management space, including people like yourself who are doing it in various different ecosystems. That facility management as a whole is critical to almost every industry out there because that is where the people are being contained.

We can talk about people being off-site, and certainly that, but people get together. They need to. That particular role is so critical.

Out of that, I was involved in a number of different initiatives, including creating a college program and creating some instructional materials for getting this kind of material into the hands of our next generation, those being young adults. There's a longer story to that, but in summary, during this process over a number of years, I recognized that we were going to see a real problem coming forward. We're already clearly seeing that issue, and it's called the skills gap.

I started jumping up and down about this about 13 years ago saying, this is going to be bad. We got to do something about this now. I would contend that at that time, there was a little bit of apathy about it.

We can talk about that further today. I said, okay, I'm going to take this on as a personal cause, and I'm going to help this industry as a whole solve for what is clearly going to be a big problem. I don't know how big, but it's going to get bigger.

Now, several years later, that problem has really manifested itself, hasn't it? The skills gap is actually a term that people actually know now, and the need for talent is excruciating. There are some things we're going to be talking about further today as well, that we created the FM Pipeline Team, which is a 501c3 that serves to engage, enlighten, and energize our next generation of FM.

The FM Pipeline Team runs a number of programs, but it is centered around something called the Facilathon Program. That is a competitive event for high school students, and it is a function that works really, really well. It is the first date for a high school student who doesn't know anything about this really interesting career.

It allows that student to participate as a competitor, they want to win, and at that point, allow them to start thinking like an FM. When you think about how FMs think, if you're a facility manager, you already know this answer. If you don't, you might not, but facility managers think a particular way because of the dynamics that are within a building, a facility, or an organization that they are responsible for the place where everybody's getting together, where processes and functions are happening.

The FM Pipeline Team has now been a 501c3 for 10 years, and we've got a lot more things to share with you about being specific today, but this represents the nexus of the next gen of FM, an opportunity for your organization, whether you are an industry or your association that's trying to solve for this problem. We represent the first successful scaled program to bring young adult talent into the facility management space en masse. For you, your company, or your association, if you're involved in some professional association in the space, to custom tailor your programming to a cadre, a cohort of these very students from across the country, and we'll talk about that a little bit more today.

I wanted to be certain that everybody understands that we represent a really, really strong hand in creating and developing a new generation of talent in the FM space, making sure that FM is a beautiful, beautiful, wonderful career, and engaging those students such that you, as a volunteer or as an individual of a practitioner, your company or an association can gain from this, basically becoming the seed by which other talent programs can be generated.

[Adrian Danila] (6:15 - 6:29) Jim, I wanted to stay more on how the program works, and I want to get a little more granular here. Let's start by how the program works for high school students, and I don't want to assume anything. I do want to ask, how do you partner with high schools?

[Jim Zirbel] (6:29 - 12:10) Our program operates typically within career technical student organizations. The primary student organization we operate through is an organization called SkillsUSA. SkillsUSA is fostered by Mike Rowe from Discovery Channel, along with an infinite number of really, really talented educators across the country.

That organization began as an organization called VICA, Vocational Industrial Clubs of America. These students in this organization and other organizations like at Future Farmers of America, POSA, there are a number of them. Those students join this club.

They have a high school advisor, basically some sort of a teacher that serves as the advisor. They are members of this, and they join the organization. They gain part of the organization's ethos, and those students compete in job-oriented competitions.

For example, if you were in FFA, Future Farmers of America, you might be competing in alfalfa raising or plant genetics or livestock herding. There's a number of different competitive events within SkillsUSA. Those competitive events are mostly leaning for the built environment.

It's a really target-rich space. Let's talk about what the students experience. When the students have never seen this before, they have no idea what they're about to go into, a lot of these students experience something called the 1 in 30 program.

The 1 in 30 program is a presentation that engages the student themselves to learn about this particular career and find out that this is a fairly universal role and critical to all organizations out there. They understand that by the time that they've gone through the 1 in 30, most of them are going to be a worthwhile candidate for this career. Most of them, no matter what they've been competing in prior, will rise to the top of their organization because of their experience in SkillsUSA and adopting the ethos that they share.

Those people will ultimately become, one way or another, responsible for the buildings and the properties of that organization as the top one. As a result of that, those students see great opportunities. Of course, we also see that at that point.

Once they've been through the 1 in 30 program, now they've learned about what is called the Facilathon Competition. That Facilathon Competition includes three parts and they're really effective. The first part is a 50-question common sense quiz, Adrienne.

That common sense quiz basically gives them a whole bunch of different options and they get to understand that, hey, wait a minute. There's a question. I'm in charge of the parking lot.

Oh, I'm in charge of the security. Oh, wait a minute. I'm ordering furniture.

That person gets a really good sense of what the career might be about. It actually provides some boundaries and some framework. Then after that, the student gets 15 minutes to read a case study about a property.

Something's going on, something of consequence, and they need to solve for what's happening. They need to figure out what needs to be done. They get the opportunity to have a 10-minute conversation with a real facility management practitioner who serves as a judge.

They get to share with them their ideas about what they think ought to be done. Upon that part being done, the judge hands that student a sheet of paper. That sheet of paper has an emergency on it that is resplendent of that particular building, that particular property that we were talking about prior.

They're already in that space. That student has two minutes to stand up and present about what they think ought to be done. After all, it's an emergency.

As it turns out, students that take the Facilathon, by and large, this is the favorite part because they've had an emergency thrown at them, and they have to figure out what has to be done right away. They need to answer three questions. Those questions are, what will you do first?

Instead of urgency, do something. The next one is, what resources would you use? Well, call the fire department and get security out here so that people are cordoned off from the space or whatever it may be.

Then number three, what every facility manager thinks about all the time. What can I do different? Either it doesn't happen, or if it does happen, I can't prevent it, that I'm better prepared for it, and it's less painful to experience.

The moment that a student gets done with the Facilathon, we watch them and we interview them on their way out. Those students, you can see some of them walking out, and they're starting to look at all the things on the walls and the ceiling that they never would have looked at before. It's really interesting.

Then they also typically will come out and say, wow, that was really cool. They will run to their friends and say, I took the Facilathon. You've got to try this out because they want their friends to compete.

That is actually what has grown our program across the country, is students telling other students, dude, you've got to take this. That is actually validating what we've done. These students understand what facility management might be about, and they like the idea of that as a career, as a practitioner, as a profession, on the maintenance side, on the management side, and a whole host of other types, of course, that fall in that space.

[Voice Over] (12:10 - 12:14) Now a word from Dean Fungawing, founder and CEO, Kairos.

[Dean Fungawing] (12:15 - 13:35) Next is this fire protection solution around kitchen fires. Again, we are not by any means saying that this is replacing your fire suppression system. This is replacing your building's fire protection systems, which are all regulated by fire departments and local codes and all that.

You still have to have all that. I'm telling you, there's actually a step before any of those systems go off, and that is just knowing what the temperature in that kitchen above that stove is in real time. You knowing that is the difference between you stopping a fire in an apartment and not.

If you knew that that apartment was 100 degrees, Adrienne, you could get to it with a fire extinguisher. You could wake up the resident, open that door, get in there, solve that problem before it spreads to the whole building. Again, you can also notify the fire department just by the moment that kitchen is over 100 degrees, notify the fire department via text message, email, phone call.

You can notify your local building engineer, your maintenance staff, your property manager. Everybody needs to know the moment that apartment's over 100 degrees. Simple solution to a problem nobody ever wants to think about.

This is a life safety issue and it's no one else's responsibility except for a building owner to make sure that we take care of that building and make sure we protect residents. So we're here to help if that's something that folks are interested in.

[Adrian Danila] (13:36 - 13:46) I'm a student. I'm a high school student. I took this test.

I'm excited about it. What's the next step for me and how can Jim help me or Jim's organization help me?

[Jim Zirbel] (13:47 - 15:40) What leads me to the next step? There are a series of steps in the Facilathon program and the FM Pipeline team offers those to our students and instructors. The student that takes this, if you're a high school student, you just take the Facilathon and you're all jazzed.

This is a great career. This is going to be cool. Then the next thing that's available to you and your instructor is something called the Facilatopic Series.

All these elements are on the fmpipeline.org site. You can see those. And the Facilatopic Series, it has a number, I think there's 20 of those little 10-minute video clips now.

And those 10-minute video clips have some sort of an FM Illuminator talking about one aspect or another of the facility management and the built environment. And so the student and the instructor, who a lot of the time doesn't know a lot about facility management, despite the fact that they're already teaching it, they just have more, that they can watch these 10-minute videos and then enter into a discussion with the class or with the students specifically. But more often, this is a classroom setting and all 30 students that are in the class are going, well, I didn't know about this.

I didn't know about that. At that point, that student has honed their skills. Remember, a student in high school can take the Facilathon up to four years in a row.

So we get some really, really well-honed students coming out of high school. That student then has the opportunity to engage in the FM Pipeline Team's Wellhead Program. And we'll actually talk about the Wellhead Program a bit further, but that is a manner by which that student can engage in a little bit of training about the career, where they can go, but also they'll have the opportunity to do job shadow and internship work.

And we also solve part of that for industry itself. And we're going to talk about that further today as well in depth.

[Adrian Danila] (15:41 - 17:03) I would love to stay on this because, you know, the more you talk about it, the more fascinating I'm getting. As I share with you on your own podcast, as you know, my background is in multifamily. Multifamily as an industry is like a multi-trillion dollar industry.

You know, we're facing the same challenges as commercial facilities are, you know, facing in general. Probably, you know, we're facing with bigger challenges for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that on commercial facilities, most of the stuff is actually being outsourced.

So it goes third party. We're kind of the opposite, on the opposite end of the spectrum. We're still doing the majority of the tasks inside with our own personnel.

So imagine, you know, our teams, our crews are larger than on a commercial side, and we rely less on third party vendors. Therefore, the need for personnel is like more intense than on a commercial facility. So I like to stay on this.

And the main reason why is that your program seems from outside looking in the most compelling program that I ran across. And since my audience is mainly multifamily, I like to stay on and just not like go address any other topics that, you know, we're planning on addressing until we actually get to the bottom of this. And we actually give people that are watching the entire picture of how everything works, because it's sort of exciting.

[Jim Zirbel] (17:04 - 23:00) So yeah, let's delve a little bit further into the Wellhead. And as I shared, the Wellhead serves as a career selection tool for a high school student that's ready to get out of into college. And I also want to make note, we do have a smaller contingent of post-secondary students as well that engage in the Facilathon.

There's other details. But a high school student that has already looked at Facilatopics and enters the Wellhead program, that student is getting information about different opportunities in the space. And then that provides as a firm that's involved in the multifamily or in the facility management space, it allows you as a firm to join and participate, require some sponsorship and some other commitments with us.

But it also means that you're going to have direct connection with this talent. It is the portal by which direct talent that has gone through the Facilathon program and has honed their skills up to as many as four years in a row, that those students, by the way, most of these students are ready to go the moment they get out of high school. Some of them will go to a one-year, a two-year, a four-year school, thereafter, for which funders and participating companies and associations actually can have a direct relationship with that student as they move through that progression of whatever education, further education they want to take.

So this represents a solution in a couple of different manners. First, for the student, because this is an industry that has struggled unto itself to make itself known. And we're going to spend time talking about that today, too.

Along with that, companies making themselves known to students as well. The only way you're going to be able to do that is within a bonafide program that solves for some of the challenges that you, as an employer, those challenges include some very simple ones here, Adrian, including we've never done a job shadow before. The funny part is those who don't job shadow, don't job shadow because they've never done it and no one knows whether they should do it or they don't know the pitfalls, etc.

Nobody resources it because we're all doing a regular business. Our heron's on fire already. Sounds familiar.

Then there are entities that want to be able to hire an intern. An intern, a lot of the time, that person might be in college, right? They just graduated high school and they're going to go into their one-year, two-year certificate for facility management in some school or something construction-related that may not be a specific facility management program, but you need to have a relationship with that student before they go into it.

You need to have that. And this is a manner by which that also affords them an internship while they are going to school. And that is where an intern becomes an employee and ultimately becomes your greatest ever facility manager.

A person who, at a very young age, went into this industry with dramatic intent. They didn't fall to it. They didn't take a left or a right turned into it.

I've heard a lot of new nomenclature about how people stumble into facility management. These students don't stumble. They fly out of high school like an arrow.

They hit their target. Question is, are you going to be one of the targets that that arrow just shoot them at? That kind of is a little bit of rough explanation of what the Wellhead Program is.

It's meant to connect you as an employer to this incredible, incredible ocean of talent in the Facilathon Program and its related CTSO, Career Technical Student Organizations. I think it's also important that I emphasize something here, Adrian. The Facilathon Program is growing.

Right now, it's in 16 states and DC, and it's going to continue to grow. There are other opportunities going forward we might talk about today. Just recognize that it's going to get bigger.

It's getting bigger geographically, and it's getting bigger demographically. If you don't have students that are intentional, that say, I want to do this before they get out of high school, all bets are off. The only people you're going to talk to are people that came from another entity, etc., for which you need to unlearn any bad traits or anything like that. You need to have the talent when it comes in fresh and clean. That person then can become a really worthwhile part of the organization. You're not untraining things, and that person has a direct relationship with you.

I think that's incredibly important. As this program grows, I need to emphasize this, that out of the 400, about 450,000 students in SkillsUSA, when we run through the 130 Program, we identify one out of three of those students as a perfect Facilathon community. How do we get there from here?

Well, one of the things is supporting this program, the program that actually works in states, and along with that, joining us to become one of the recipients of the Wellhead Program after the Facilathon competition, etc. It is such a target-rich environment. We have found a manner of life by which to bring so many of those students into the facility management, facility maintenance, facility engineering, you name it, space, that we just recognize that the elixir that we're looking for is for you, as an employer, to join this cause and continue to successfully engage, enlighten, and energize our next gen of FM.

[Adrian Danila] (23:00 - 23:12) If I'm a person that might have any type of interest in working in facilities management, but I'm not a high school student, I graduated 15 years ago, am I still allowed to enter this program?

[Jim Zirbel] (23:13 - 24:46) Only specifically if you are a CTSO student, so you are a student within SkillsUSA or one of the other career technical student organizations, and you're operating on the college level. Those are the two levels that our program focuses upon, mostly because we're primarily focused on the next generation of FM. Let's also be fair.

There are a lot of great associations out there revolving around the FM space, whether it be multifamily or commercial, you name it. There are a bunch of them, and let's also be fair to them that they, as a whole, do a fantastic job of helping you, as an adult, become a better FM practitioner on a lot of different levels. One of those organizations, ASHE, Connex FM, IFMA, there's a whole litany of them, BOMA, B-O-M-A, the Building Owners and Managers Association.

So far, we've counted 113 great associations that those organizations in particular can help you get better as a practitioner if you're coming in brand new, or if you've been in for a while and you want to hone your chops. There are other countries in which the Facilathon will actually serve that role for adults, and that has to do with the cultural dynamics of other countries outside of the United States. But that's sort of a different game in that regard.

In the United States, we operate through the CTSOs, Career Technical Student Organizations, because that is and represents the next gen of FM.

[Adrian Danila] (24:46 - 24:57) If I'm a multifamily operator, I manage a portfolio of 50,000 apartment homes, and I want to plug into your program. How do I partner with you?

[Jim Zirbel] (24:57 - 26:14) Have a conversation with us. You can either go onto the fmpipeline.org website, and if you go there to fmpipeline.org forward slash industry, you can go and use the little web form if you like. We'll always respond.

Or you can call us and say industry on our phone. That's 612-426-7227, and you can have a conversation with us firsthand, talk with you. Remember, we are a charity.

We're 501c3 who created this program. Basically, we created the charity after we recognized our program was going to be successful and could scale. This serves as the apple seed to grow all sorts of other great programs thereafter.

You can't grow anything unless you have the next gen of FM ready to come in, that constant, constant pipeline of talent. Call us 612-426-7227, say industry, or you can go onto our website, fmpipeline.org forward slash industry. Fill out the form.

We'll get back to you, and we'll share with you the next cohort, the next opportunity to get out the wellhead and learn also more about the other program we have that manifests this large pool of talent.

[Adrian Danila] (26:15 - 26:35) Jim, you mentioned scalability. I'm trying to get an idea of the scale of what you could do out there, how many graduates, how many students you could feed into this pipeline, let's say, for the apartment industry alone. If we were to say our deficit is 200,000 ads, how much of that 200,000 you could feed into our pipeline through your program?

[Jim Zirbel] (26:35 - 32:57) The pipeline grows based on a number of participating sponsors and volunteers. As our program scales out, let's talk about scaling. Our program is scaling out based on volunteers and states we're running in, in the United States along with a number of companies that are participating and supporting and sponsoring this program.

Let's begin with the math. The math says that out of 450,000 students in SkillsUSA, one in three can potentially be a prime Facilathon candidate. By going through the one in 30 program, a lot of those candidates, a lot of those students self-identify.

We could the more our program grows, the more of those students we can start putting into industry. That requires, though, that you be part of it. It's not somebody else's job.

It's up to all of us. You're making these inroads. This is something that when we talk massive numbers, we're also talking a large number of companies and associations that are sponsoring and involving themselves, along with yourself firsthand, Adrian, where there are events.

We need judges. We run this event with judges. That means volunteers are going to be there and spending our time and our resources in these environments, particularly in the SkillsUSA environment and other CPSOs for technical student organizations.

By doing so, that number will look less and less insurmountable. Up until now, everything has been a Petri dish. We refer to it as Petri dishes because it's an experiment.

There have been all sorts of them. A lot of the time, what happens with talent programs or attempts at talent programs in the FM space is there's not enough talent to drive the talent program. A lot of the time, that Petri dish eventually gets thrown in the trash and someone says, oh yeah, we tried that because we didn't have a means to scale it.

Maybe we should also be talking about why this is scalable. Of course, we're using these career technical student organizations as target-rich vehicles. We'll talk about the barriers for just a moment because I think that's fair to mention that.

It started with the intent of populating a technical college program. We learned a few things. We had created a couple of liaison programs that failed to allow us to populate this program.

We learned, first off, this industry as a whole, never mind the economics. Remember, our industry is often not referred to as an industry because that is a population of individuals within other industries rather than a vertical like healthcare or aviation or something like that. It's difficult for this industry to have a consistent and worthwhile voice.

As big as we can be, it's collectively very small against the incumbents that are already in that space. If you're a high schooler and you're going to graduate this year, for example, you have a number of guidance counselors, perhaps, but those guidance counselors may or may not ever talk to you. If you're a person with great hands-on skill but you're not a pure academic, those people may never get a chance to chat with you because they are gauged on how many doctors and attorneys they spin out.

Pre-meds, their dynamics are different. They're overwhelmed. They can't do anything specifically about it.

Every high school out there is pretty much run by a different school board. Have you ever thought about that in the high school space that unless you're in a big city, every high school, every K-12 school system is run by an entirely different school board of locals who all have their own agenda so that if we, with our Petri dish, if you or I were to create a program and it was really successful in high school A, you could go five miles down the road to high school B and would never be successful because their belief system is wildly different. Scalability is tough in that regard. Then, ultimately, basically, those issues combined together is why we've had so many Petri dishes, so many people that have been excited for a week, a month, half a year, maybe a year, their program or what they had hoped to be a program fizzled out because it simply couldn't scale.

Our program utilizes the CTSO, the Predictable Student Organization, as the vehicle with big knobby tires, great shocks and springs so we can travel across this wildly undulating landscape in a unified manner without throwing the goods out of the back of the truck, out of that entire contingent of 450,000 students in SkillsUSA. We're looking at a massive amount of influx provided that you and I and your company and your association join this cause and provide the funding, that sponsoring support, and the volunteers. If you, as a multifamily owner or manager, attend one of these Facilathon events, you will come away tired, hopeful, and smiling because these students are really bright and SkillsUSA believes in a full day's work.

That's part of their ethos. So, these aren't just kids that are just sitting looking at their phone. These kids are hands-on.

They have great technical chops, and they know generally what they want to do. The moment they've taken the Facilathon, like I said before, they're looking around the room. They're starting to see stuff, and they are seeing this career in a whole new light that has never been seen before.

You're looking for a couple hundred thousand people to come into this space. This is where you start, and other programs can spin off of a program like this, but without the C, you've got nothing. Let's plant that seed, and let's keep that body moving so that number keeps getting bigger and bigger in the thousands and the thousands.

Right now, it's in the hundreds. We need to move it into the thousands and make it bigger and larger than life. Sound like a good idea?

[Adrian Danila] (32:57 - 33:02) Sounds like a wonderful idea. You already got me super excited. There's a lot going through my head right now.

[Voice Over] (33:02 - 33:06) And now a word from Sean Landsberg, co-founder and CEO, Appwork.

[Adrian Danila] (33:06 - 33:18) What you can measure, you can improve. You did mention an average completion time or tracking completion time for maintenance technicians. What other very important KPIs is Appwork capable of tracking?

[Sean Landsberg] (33:18 - 33:56) All the data can also be broken down. All those KPIs can be broken down, like we said, on a property level, technician level, or back up to a portfolio level. But even within a technician, you could break that down based off of the categories.

You can see, how is this technician doing with HVAC work orders, with plumbing work orders? We also took the concept of KPIs. A lot of companies use a KPI to say, well, how is somebody doing?

Let's look at his KPIs. But another thing that we actually did is we took that a step further, where we actually translated those KPIs into sentence-based comment. The system would actually automatically spit out an actual actionable sentence, whether it's positive or negative, based on the technician's performance.

[Adrian Danila] (33:58 - 34:29) Next question. How can a large association, I'm thinking National Apartment Association, and they also have affiliates in each state, Georgia Apartment Association, Florida Apartment Association, each state has at least one affiliate. I learned not too long ago, two weeks ago, that North Carolina actually has seven different apartment associations.

There's a lot of action, a lot of opportunity. How can associations like that reach out to you and associate themselves with your programs?

[Jim Zirbel] (34:30 - 37:00) We are a partnering organization, and we want to partner with your association, whatever that might be in a built environment. Why? Because we figured something out.

We have a Petri dish that didn't grow mold. It's important that you as an association, let's just be fair for you as association specifically, you as an association are focused on your members, as you should be. When you're focused on your members, you've been focused on educating your members and advocating for your members and things like that, the things that associations do.

About 20 years ago, something called the skills gap started growing, and nobody really initially saw it. Now, you as an association are experiencing things that industry has been experiencing as well, where you might put out an initiative for some program, whatever it might be, and yet the people that are members of the association say, yeah, that'd be great, but I don't have time because we lost Henry or we lost Caitlin, and I don't know what we're going to find her next. Well, that dysfunction has kind of found its way into the association space as well.

We think it's really worthwhile for us to partner because all we want to do is provide part of our solution and partner with you so that you can add this as a plank to your organization. Why? Because now this particular issue has overwhelmed all other planks in your platform for all associations in the built environment, which is for any of us in leadership in associations, it's troubling.

We want to get so many things done. We want to provide so much value to our members, and we are at a place where that thing has loomed so large now that it eclipses all the other things we want to be able to do because people are experiencing the skills gap in such a dramatic fashion. Partnering with us, pretty easy.

Go on to the FM Pipeline website, and once again, it's very simple in the very same manner. You can fill out a form if you want, or if you'd like to, you can also call us at 612-426-7227 and say associations, and that will ring one of our cell phones, and we'll have a conversation about that. And we're more than happy to partner with you because you have the people that need this talent.

You have the people that would like to volunteer and meet this talent. That seems like a pretty partnership to me.

[Adrian Danila] (37:01 - 37:09) Jim, how can listeners support programs aid at closing a skill gap in facilities management?

[Jim Zirbel] (37:09 - 39:18) So there are a lot of different ways you can do this. Of course, we always want to start with our program. We would love you to be a judge for the Facilathon program.

And as I said before, if you volunteer for us at one of our Facilathon competitions around the various states at the different times of the year, we generally follow the This is a way for you to meet these students and say, Oh, what do you know? There is hope. There actually are the very talented people I want to know.

And you can go on to our site. Once again, it's very similar to the other methods, fmpipeline.org forward slash volunteer, fill out the volunteer form. We will reach out to you.

We'll find out where you're at, what you're doing, what you're interested in. And then there are a lot of different places you can volunteer on an organization, right? We're 501c3.

You can be just a standardized judge that judges students that compete through this. You might be working at the booth if you're, if maybe you're a vendor to these great organizations. The vendors, you have a little bit more latitude.

And so maybe you're going to be at our booth and telling the students the 1 in 30 program, telling them about this opportunity. You have that opportunity. You can also potentially be on our national team or a state team as our states line up.

Remember, we're growing. We're in 16 states. We're growing.

There'll be more states. And every time we add a state, we need you as a volunteer to be there to help judge it. And by the way, judging this, Adrian, is like going to a golf out, except you're actually good at it.

It is a really enjoyable experience to be a judge for these students. We help you out. We set you up.

You'll be all set and ready when we go in. And as I've shared before, when you leave, you will be tired, enthused, and you're really happy about what you do. As an individual, that's what you got to do.

And if you have the latitude, you also potentially can join our national team, which helps foster this across the country and works out the details as an administrator of the Facilathon, the Wellhead, the Facilotopics program, and the beginning of all of it, the One in 30 program.

[Adrian Danila] (39:18 - 39:26) Give us your pitch for the young generation. Why should they join your programs? Why should they join Facilities Management?

[Jim Zirbel] (39:26 - 42:55) You as a student, I want you to know a couple of things. We have to talk about some difficulties in the past. This is an industry for a long time didn't have a very good narrative.

The narrative was one of two primary narratives. It was the tough guy. Yeah, I never got trained.

I had to learn all this by myself. I know everything. Nobody else knows everything.

And by the way, there was a bathroom overflow on second floor last night. Sound familiar? We don't allow that.

You start saying something like that, you're out. Never, ever say anything like that. And then there is also the ivory tower.

Industries like ours that spend a lot of time defining what we do, and it's valuable as an adult. You need to know. But when we define those, that becomes another one of the narratives that we share with high school students.

When somebody goes into a career exploration class, this is a no-no. You must know this. You must know that.

You must know the other thing. You'll never make it if you don't do this. The ivory tower is a huge turnoff to a high school student.

So don't do that. But those have been the primary narratives. We work with a four basic questions, and those questions include the following.

Question number one, do you like people in buildings? Those students will be looking around for a second going, I don't know. I guess I do.

I guess I do. We might add something like, yeah, it's 11 degrees outside. I think you probably like buildings, unless you like camping.

Buildings is pretty good. Those students in general in SkillsUSA, they will answer yes to that. In a regular classroom, maybe one or two students will go, yeah, I guess I do.

We ask another question. We say, okay, well, do you like problem solving? In a regular classroom, English class or science class or something like that, we might get one student that raises their hand and says, yeah, that's me.

In SkillsUSA and CTOs like it, those students almost all universally raise their hands and say, that's me. Wait a minute, that's me. I can do that.

The third one is, do you like action and variety? That student self-selects. They say, yeah, I do like action and variety.

There are students that just want to do the same thing over and over, and that's okay, but that's not for a facility management student. So those students all are raising their hand saying, that's me. I like that.

The final one is the one that facility managers identify with all the time, and that is, can you think on your feet? Stand up. Can you think on your feet?

Those students at that point, they've answered these four questions saying, yeah, that's me. And then we start telling them about this career, the ability to advance, the ability to be responsible, the ability to be somebody's hero just about every week, to get paid pretty well, and to have the stake and the success of the organization being central to it. That is really, really hard to argue with.

Let me emphasize those particular messages are what induced these students to take the Facility-Found Competition itself. Without those messages, without self-identifying that they just did ask those four questions, the student goes, yeah, it's just another competition. I don't know what that is.

But once they learn about this career and what it offers you and the flexibility that you have in your job role, that you're doing something different every day, they're pretty much bought in at that point, and they can't wait to try this thing out and find out what this facility management, facility maintenance, facility engineering thing is all about.

[Adrian Danila] (42:55 - 43:02) Jim, amazing conversations. I actually learned that the future is bright. We don't have to struggle.

We don't have to be worried about the future.

[Jim Zirbel] (43:02 - 43:27) There is hope. Yeah, there is hope. And hope will continue as long as you and firms and associations continue to join us as the nexus of the next gen of FM.

Worthwhile, and it's no longer a petri dish. This program is scaling, and it's making it to some other countries as well. And that's going to be, that's pretty exciting that we found something that actually works.

[Adrian Danila] (43:27 - 43:38) Jim, thank you so much for being here with me. And thank you for sharing this with our audience today. I'd like to give the opportunity to share some final thoughts in closing of our conversation.

[Jim Zirbel] (43:38 - 45:05) Let me share something about your firm, my firm, everyone's firm, their association. Without a reliable pipeline of talent in this space, your organization isn't going to function in the way that you dreamed it to. You're never going to be able to get there because you're always going to be backpedaling to fill the talent.

Second part of it is this. This fell on me sort of like a death sentence about a decade ago. Buildings, commercial buildings use something like 40%, something like 40% of all the world's energy.

The Department of Energy says that those buildings waste 35 to 40% of all their energy every day. For every building that's being built or that's being upgraded with high efficiency, HVAC, for example, and other programs, for every building that's undergoing that, there's probably a hundred buildings that are just sitting there, unmanaged, untreated, unchanging. They represent the largest boat anchor for global warming.

It won't matter how many solar panels we put up, how many Priuses we drive. We're not going to fix global warming unless we do something about the skills gap and wise decision-making in the built environment. These are the next gen of wise decision-makers.

You got to have them. This is where they're going to come from. They're coming with intention.

Let's engage. Let's enlighten. Let's energize our next gen of FM.

[Adrian Danila] (45:05 - 45:08) How can the audience reach out to you?

[Jim Zirbel] (45:08 - 45:42) What are some ways to contact you? Please come to our website. Come take a peek at our website.

It's fmpipeline.org. And then if you have something specific you'd like to ask us about, we're a charity. We're doing this on behalf of everybody.

You can call us at 612-426-7227. And then either say your subject or say a particular name of an individual and we'll have a chat. We're honored to be able to serve in this regard, serving as the next gen of FM.

Jim Zerbel, thank you so much for being with us today. Honored to be with you, Adrian.

[Adrian Danila] (45:42 - 45:59) Best of success to you and all of your listeners. Thank you so much. Everybody, thank you for watching us today.

I'm Adrian Danilo, your host. I want to thank our sponsors for making this broadcast possible. They are Kairos and Appwork.

And I hope to see you back here soon on the next episode. Have an amazing day.