Qualifications key to progress, Workplace Futures delegates told

3 March, 2010

If it is to move forward, the FM industry needs professionals who may be recognised by competency-based qualifications, delegates were told at Workplace Futures in February.

Conference organiser David Emanuel, from i-FM, also told those attending that service providers remained focused too much on spouting ‘waffle, self-congratulations, and thinly veiled marketing’ rather than offering real improvements in service provision.

Workplace Futures 2010 was held at IBM Southbank, London, its focus on ‘People, Service, Profit: A Meeting of Minds’ intended to give delegates from a cross-section of the industry – clients and providers - a clear understanding of how their counterparts think about FM contracts.

Expert speakers to address the audience included InterserveFM MD commercial Tony Sanders, who spoke on what suppliers expect of clients; head of global facilities at the FT, Nick O'Donnell, described what clients expect from suppliers.

Presenting on the current state of training and accreditation in FM in the UK, FM Guru Martin Pickard described how the various qualifications available remained underutilised. This was blamed on the various individual FM industry bodies competing, rather than working together. Pickard added: “Now in an election year, I’d like to contend that there is a great opportunity to be had by working together to build the profile of FM”.

On a more optimistic note, FMA director general Chris Hoar, the other chief event organiser, said the FMA and BIFM had “torn down” many of the barriers that may have stopped those two groups working effectively together in the past.