Jay Klingel manages business services at University of Virginia Facilities Management and is an Institute dean and faculty member. He is also a member of the Trades Staffing Guidelines Task Force. Betty Wooding is University of Virginia Facilities Management's publications manager.

Over the last 20 years, the face of the facilities management profession, especially in higher education, has changed to reflect the progressive and sophisticated arena it serves. Facilities management is no longer the basic "physical plant" operation of the 1980s. Our staffs have become much more diverse, more competitive, and more educated. This increased emphasis on education has come in several forms.

Brigham Young University was one of the first higher education institutions to offer a degree in facilities management. Both an associate's and bachelor's degree are offered by Utah Valley State College, and the University of Canberra in Australia offers a Master of Facilities Management. Several other institutions offer degree and non-degree programs.

Graduate degrees and professional certification are now the norm for senior management positions in today's complex facilities organizations. Key positions in the design and construction departments are typically filled by professional engineers or licensed architects. Among our facilities planning and construction staff at the University of Virginia (UVa), 11 are licensed Professional Architects, 12 are licensed Professional Engineers, and five are licensed Virginia Contracting Officers.

The credential bar is being raised for the trades and crafts as well. Certification and licensing, or both, are required for many building and maintenance tradespeople working on our campuses. At UVa, we have a certification program that requires journeyman mechanics to be certified in their trade. Emphasis on professional development doesn't stop there either. In recent years, UVa Facilities Management developed and is offering all classified employees in-house computer training and six new in-house employee health and safety-training programs. Two levels of supervisory training are encouraged for front-line supervisors. To address basic adult education needs, we developed a pilot training program entitled Work Skills for the New Millennium.

Dialogues with our peers in other facilities management organizations indicate that this emphasis on training and education is occurring throughout the country. As our work culture changes, APPA is responding by offering many avenues of training and education for facilities professionals. One such resource, the Institute for Facilities Management, illustrates APPA's pledge to provide training and educational programs tailored to the emerging needs of its members. For the past 20 years, the Institute has been an integral part of the training portfolio for the University of Virginia's Facilities Management organization. UVa has sent at least one participant, usually several, to each Institute held since 1980.

How is the Institute Changing?

"Most obvious is today's audience," according to Jay Klingel, dean of the Institute's Operations and Maintenance Track. "When I attended my first Institute in 1980, I was probably the youngest of the 40 or so people there, and one of the few who wasn't head of a physical plant. Now we have a large, diverse audience that is more representative of our workplace." This past January at the Institute in Newport Beach, the 550 participants included grounds foremen, electricians, engineers, custodial supervisors, and accountants, in addition to facilities management directors. It is a challenge to tailor presentations to such a diverse group-sessions such as Utilities Distribution Systems have to keep the interest of an engineer with technical training while presented in terms understood by the horticulturist without that technical background-but it is a challenge the Institute faculty welcomes. "I believe the strength of the program is the diversity of experience and knowledge of the participants. The Institute instructors present information based on their own experience and knowledge, but I've found the dialogues in the sessions are often a source of the most valuable information. I'm fortunate as an instructor to be able to learn from participants and bring back many of their good ideas to the university," Klingel summarized.

"Equally important is the applied value of the training content," he continued. "Participants tell us repeatedly that they see immediate uses for this training. They go back to their jobs and put the new information into action."

The broad range of information is evident to participants, too. "I was glad to learn the overall operation of facilities management by attending sessions in all four areas," said Ralph Himelrick, electrical maintenance supervisor. "I've done electrical work for 50 years so my experience was fairly restricted to the shop perspective. Talking to people at the Institute, I quickly realized that UVa is very progressive in our facilities operation and I'm proud to be part of that. I learned new supervisory skills, techniques on managing people, good basic advice."

University of Virginia's APPA Institute Participation

As an active participant in the Institute over the last 20 years, we've speculated that our attendance statistics must reveal some interesting and important trends in staff retention and upward mobility. Since 1980, the University of Virginia has sent 81 different people to the twice-yearly Institutes. Of those 81 people UVa has sent, 47-more than half-still work at UVa Facilities Management. Even more impressive, of the 37 who have graduated from the Institute, 28-that's more than 75 percent-still work with us. In addition, 20 of our APPA Institute graduates now hold key management positions. We think we've gotten a good return on our investment.

Our managers appreciate the applied training they get at the Institute. Retention, we believe, is related to the investment, which is actually a double investment; the sponsoring institution has a financial investment, and the Institute student commits time and effort. The weeklong session of classes, running 8 a.m.-5 p.m., is probably more demanding than a normal week at work, yet people do this because they know the investment pays off.

What's the Correlation Between Professional Development and Retention?

James O. Roberts, director of plant operations at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina and APPA Vice President for Educational Programs, responded to this development: "Studies do seem to indicate that employers who show interest in their employees have a better retention rate."

"I know of no data to indicate any tendency of Institute attendees to stay with their sponsoring institutions," commented Emily C. Wren, assistant vice chancellor for facilities at Indiana University/Purdue at Indianapolis and APPA Institute subcommittee chair. "One would assume, however, that the peer connections and the connection with professionalization in our field through the coursework offered at the Institute would 'connect' folks with the profession and with their institution."

This value of 'professionalization' is evident among UVa attendees. "Two facilities planning and construction colleagues attended housekeeping guru Ed Feldman's seminar with me," Robert H. Carman, building services superintendent, recalled, "and when it was over, they said, 'Wow! I had no idea there was so much to housekeeping!' and 'Yeah, it isn't just mopping floors and cleaning toilets!'"

What Do Institute Graduates Find in the Program that Influences Their Decision to Stay with their Sponsoring Organization?

Discussions with UVa Facilities Management employees attending or completing the Institute revealed a solid and uniform response. Most people sincerely appreciated being selected to attend, and they recognized the investment the organization wanted to make in them, and the investment they could return to the organization. Some comments from UVa's delegation:

"I was fairly committed to finishing out my career at the university before I completed the Institute, but the opportunity to rub elbows with colleagues from other institutions provided me with a broader insight into what facilities management is all about," said Kenneth G. Smith, P.E., director of facilities planning and construction. "One discovers in these types of exchanges that others have and do solve the same kinds of issues with which we deal."

"When I first attended an APPA Institute, I'd already worked at UVa for over 20 years," David Miller, elevator maintenance supervisor, said. "I considered it a great opportunity to attend, plus it was a pleasure to meet people from many universities who were just as eager as I to learn and work together to try to solve similar problems in a trade."

"The experience was valuable to me professionally because I didn't want to be pigeon-holed as useful only to building services," Carman added. "I wanted the broader understanding of other areas within facilities management and how the pieces fit together."

Other likely reasons are the satisfaction of participating in the track for five days with colleagues from across the country, and the wish to apply what they learned for the benefit of the organization sending the attendees to the Institute.

"In general, I think directors are careful about those they recommend for the Institute, concentrating on staff that have demonstrated dedication to the organization," Mark Webb, associate director of work management. "The high retention rate reflects that long term dedication and is Facilities Management's sign of an ongoing commitment to the individual.

"From my personal perspective," Webb added, "I love to learn, so attending the Institute provided well thought-out exposure to a lot of topics in a concentrated format…. The class notes are very good and I still use them today.

"It was also great to be with hundreds of other people who are fighting the same battles…. It's easy to feel we are alone in this business, but we are not. There are others working in parallel environments across the country and the world…it's a wealth of information," Webb concluded. "A chance to spend a few days with them is well worth the effort."

Who Needs Statistics?

We appreciate what the Institute offers us, both for our individual employees, and as an organization. It offers us an opportunity to reward folks in our organization for their efforts and dedication, and at the same time, to develop their potential. While we realize we have not developed a valid statistical model to support our theory about the Institute and a relationship to staff retention, we don't believe we need statistics to realize how valuable the Institute has been to us. Talking to our staff and reflecting on their Institute experiences has sufficiently validated our original thoughts. We've decided we will be sending participants for the next 20 years.

Ed. Note: Registration for the January 2002 Institute in Tampa, Florida will be available online at www.appa.org, beginning November 1.