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GA
Tech Corner
 The Georgia Tech Facility
Management graduate program announces the offering
of our Master of Science degree in Distance Learning
format. Students from outside of Atlanta will now have
access to the same learning offered on campus beginning
in fall 2011. Course work is exactly the same, with
Internet access to lectures, lessons, projects and
exams.
If your company has locations outside of
Atlanta, within Georgia, the U.S. or even
internationally, your employees may be interested in
this opportunity. Please contact our Graduate Recruiter,
Brenda Morris at 404-385-7479 or brenda.morris@coa.gatech.edu for
details on how to apply for the distance learning
Integrated Facility Management degree. We hope to bring
the world into our virtual classroom and expand
knowledge of facility management worldwide. The Atlanta
Chapter support for this program enables us to continue
to expand and grow this program, which is one of only
four internationally accredited programs in facility
management at the graduate level. Thanks for supporting
us and sharing this exciting expansion!
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As stated in the
Facility Management Handbook (co-written by our
own Kathy Roper, former Chapter President and
current IFMA chair), facility management is
defined as: "a profession that encompasses
multiple disciplines to ensure functionality of
the built environment by integrating people,
places, process, and technology". When taking all
this into account, it becomes clear how the Core
Competencies of IFMA require facility managers to
continually learn and seek educational
avenues.
IFMA strives to meet these needs
by way of their local Chapters and educational
events. WWP, in October every year, is IFMA's
primary conference. IFMA Atlanta offers many
programs, tours, and other educational events, as
well as the monthly luncheons. Atlanta Workplace,
just held on 9/15, is the main educational event
for the chapter each year. For those who attended,
they received information and training to help
them throughout the year as well as a fun
event.
To support the goals of its members,
the chapter has a board that guides and oversees
administrative and financial components. These
board members, as well as committee chairs. They
contribute their time to assist the chapter. There
is a continual need for more professional members
to join IFMA and become committee chairs and
members as well as board members. As the
organization exists for the professionals, their
involvement and input is most important. If we
could add just a few professional members each
year to contribute their time for the management
of IFMA, we could continue with attaining the
goals and initiatives that professionals are most
interested in directing the chapter
toward.
Being a part of IFMA is rewarding;
ask the board members and committee chairs. It
also offers a chance to grow and learn in ways not
offered by just attending events. It can be an
exciting learning experience. Please think about
becoming more involved in the administration of
the Chapter. You won't be
disappointed! --Karen
Howard, IFMA Atlanta Chapter
President |
IFMA
OCTOBER LUNCHEON PROGRAM
What: IFMA
October Luncheon "Telling the Story: Perkins+Will
Office - 1315 Peachtree Street"
When:
October 19, 2011. 11:30-1:30
Where:
Cherokee Town Club
Register
Here!
Since 1991, Perkins+Will has been
encouraging clients to use the LEED Rating
Systems, meet the 2030 Challenge and push the
boundaries of sustainable design and building
performance. Very simply, their message has been,
"good design is sustainable design." Perkins+Will
started looking past LEED to more ambitious
sustainability goals - looking broadly to the
challenges of incorporating social responsibility,
global perspectives and corporate transparency
into achieving design excellence. Their corporate
mission is built around these ideals. When it was
time to design and build their own building, they
asked themselves, how do we face those challenges
and make sure our design connects with our
corporate mission? How do we "walk the talk?"
In this case-based session, participants
will learn how a multidisciplinary design firm
connects their own corporate mission to the design
work that they produce. The program will explore
the design, evaluation and decision-making
processes required to generate work which
exemplifies design excellence, high-performance,
social responsibility and financial soundness.
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Tour: Behind the
Scenes at Turner Field
November 3, 2011
- 12pm
Cost: $15 for members, $20
for non-members
On November 3 IFMA Atlanta is proud to
host an exciting "Behind-the-Scenes" Turner Field
Tour. The tour will begin promptly at 12:00, will
be approximately 2 hours in duration and will
include a "ballpark-style" lunch & a
question/answer with Facility Manager, Dawn
Gepfer. You can meet us starting at 11:30 in the
Turner Field "courtyard" just outside the stadium
OR in the museum behind the large #3 & #42.
Parking is free in the Green Lot just across the
street.
This tour will be custom-tailored
for our IFMA constituency, but will still include
the most interesting parts of a professional
baseball stadium tour!
There is a small fee of $15 for members
& $20 for non-members.
Register now
(online) to reserve your spot! Deadline is Friday,
October 28th
Click here to
register ! |
Education Event:
Best Practices for Optimizing Building
Performance
November 10, 2011
- 10am - 3:00pm
Cost: $25 for members, $35
for non-members, $10 for
students
In today's environment where new
facility projects are few and far
between for
most of us, what cost effective - i.e. reasonable
Return
on Investment - things might be done to
have a positive impact on the
performance of
your company's existing facility
assets?
This presentation delivered by four
practicing professionals in the field
will
cover the methods utilized to measure and improve
performance
for building energy use, water use
and interior environmental quality
including
re- and retro-commissioning. The discussion by
persons
representing the full spectrum of
skills required for a successful program
will
present suggested best practices in implementing a
re-commissioning
or retro-commissioning program
in a practical and cost effective way.
Join
us on November 10, 2011 to learn about how you can
add value to
your company through these best
practices.
Click here to
register! |
Recap: Atlanta
Workplace
Learning
to Work Smarter, Not Harder!
On
August 15, IFMA Atlanta held its annual "Atlanta
Workplace" event. The agenda featured an
opening note from IFMA First Vice Chair, Marc
Liciardello and a fascinating keynote
about the challenges of building strong
cross-functional (and cross-cultural) teams from
former NASA engineer Jim VanLaak. In
addition to those dynamic speakers, there were a
number of panels on topics including disaster
recovery, sustainability and facility
planning.
Of
course, this being an IFMA event, there was also a
strong showing from our patrons, with a number of
vendors present to give us information about their
services. And networking - there was lots of
networking! The event wrapped up with an
auction to raise money for the IFMA
Foundation.
I
would like to express a personal thank you to
Derek Jayson Rusch, Andrea Noland, Joanne Cole and
the rest of the Atlanta Workplace committee.
Without their efforts, this event would not have
been a success.
Click here to see other
pictures from Atlanta
Workplace
--Joseph Geierman, CFM, FMP
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Recap:
IFMA Advocacy Day in Washington DC
IFMA's
annual advocacy day was on September 21, and 3
members of the Atlanta chapter participated in the
lobbying effort at our nation's Capitol -
including Gean Leyba, Dan Walther & Kathy
Roper (in her role as IFMA chair). Dan and Gean
each wrote a report on the effort (below).
Dan's
Report:
On
Tuesday of last week, September 21, 2011, the IFMA
Advocacy Day was in full swing in our nation's
capitol. The Public Policy Forum in the morning
provided support for many IFMA sponsored efforts
within our industry. This is my second
participation in this event since last year, and I
had the pleasure to attend last week with Gean
Leyba.
As
our very own Kathy Roper kicked off the "Public
Policy Forum-Getting to a Sustainable Portfolio of
Federal Facilities," we then heard from
Congress members, Senators, and knowledge
resources who shared information about the Federal
Buildings Personnel Training Act of 2010, High
Performance Buildings, Predicting Outcomes of
Maintenance and Repair Investments for Federal
Facilities, and more.
And
like last year, the IFMA hosts for the event
scheduled meetings with all participating IFMA
members from various states, and their respective
representatives. The idea to motivate
Congressmen/women and Senators to act at a local
level, will then build from there and assist IFMA
at a Federal level--and expectedly, at local level
in time to come.
As
Kathy, Gean, and I met with our local
representative's assistants, all greeted us and
warmly welcomed through their professional
courtesies and attentiveness to the matters we
shared within our industry, educational needs,
etc.
So
the call to action is in front of us ! Would
you help the country move forward in the FM
Business ?
It's
easy to contact your legislators-- access this link,
type in your zip code and their contact info and
email will appear. There is a generic form letter
for all to use-or feel free to create your
own.
Thanks
Very Much for your efforts to move our initiatives
forward.
Gean's
Report:
Attending
this years IFMA Advocacy Day for the first time
opened my eyes to the fantastic work that IFMA is
doing. We met with our representative from Georgia
as well as other states representatives throughout
the two day event. We had Jeff Johnson, Director
of Government Affairs, IFMA and Jim Wise with Pace
LLP educate, train and help the FM's that attended
this event to feel comfortable about the purpose
of IFMA Advocacy Day and about the key initiative
that we are working on with congress.
Some
of the highlights that we shared with our state
representatives were the Federal Buildings
Personnel Training Act of 2010, asked for
their support on the Civilian Property Realignment
Act, the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption
Survey, requested for them to join the High
Performance Building Congress Caucus and
continuing the funding for the GSA Office of High
Performance Federal Green Buildings. We covered a
lot of topics in two days and IFMA Advocacy Day
next year is looking to get bigger in attendance
from this year as we are making a difference by
being involved with IFMA Advocacy Day and the
response that are getting is supportive to our
agenda.
Having Dan
Walther attending this year again helped me to
learn the ropes which helped me to work my way
through the halls of congress literally. Dan and I
had an amazing time going around to the Georgia
representatives with Kathy Roper on the second day
to share with them what IFMA Advocacy is all about
and to ask for there support. We heard about hall
way chats and possible cancelled appointments due
to the tight schedules that each office has but we
did not experience any of this. We sat with
representatives from the offices of Congressman
Tom Price, Senator Johnny Isakson and Senator
Saxby Chambliss. The five minute chats ended up
being 15 minutes to a half where the
representatives asked what we wanted to share
about our initiative and to get to know us as IFMA
members and constituents.
This was a great
opportunity and an honor to represent the Atlanta
IFMA Chapter and it is something that we should
all experience in our lifetime. But since the time
is limited I could only suggest that you all get
involved by visiting the Action Center on the IFMA
website. We may be Atlanta but we are all a part
of a bigger picture and a few minutes of your time
on the IFMA site to learn about the work that we
are doing as IFMA members is leaps beyond tomorrow
or just Georgia. See more pictures from
Advocacy Day
here!
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Recap:
IFMA Community Services Lunch &
Learn
The
topic of the summer quarterly IFMA Atlanta Lunch
and Learn for Nonprofits, held on August 11 at
Hendrick, was Emergency Disaster Planning. Larry
Fried with SERVPRO of Chamblee/Dunwoody, a
Council-Certified Microbial Remediation
Supervisor, instructed participants on how to
prepare an Emergency Ready Profile (ERP) to
expedite recovery from an emergency - fire, flood,
or other natural or man-made disaster. The ERP
contains all the information a facility manager
needs to respond quickly to a disaster.
SERVPRO provides the service of working with a
facility manager to prepare the ERP at no charge.
Anyone interested, nonprofit or commercial, may
contact Larry Fried for information: larryfried@ideaplace.com,
770-396-3883.
The
Nonprofit Lunch and Learn program is held
quarterly by the Community Services Committee,
Rick Yarbrough (T.L. Gowin & Co., Inc.) and
Emily Perry (Harris Perry), Chairs, and is open to
all nonprofit organizations. Our thanks to Jim
Ferguson of Hendrick for providing our venue and
to Coordinators Renee Bonnell (Chosen Enterprises)
and Debbie Wiggins
(RooterPLUS)
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Call
for Volunteers - Subject Matter
Experts
IFMA
launched a major education initiative to define
the practice of facility management from a truly
global perspective by conducting the most
comprehensive Job Task Analysis (JTA) survey in
IFMA's history. Based on the JTA, updated
competency statements were written and efforts
have been underway to fully integrate the results
into IFMA's education programs.
With
the successful completion of the revised FMP
credential and the creation of the SFP specialty
credential, the IFMA Education Department is now
preparing for the next cycle of content
development. This next phase will focus on
developing a summary level Body of Knowledge for
the additional six competency areas which will in
turn be used in a variety of ways, including new
preparatory materials for those who plan to sit
for the revised CFM Exam anticipated to be
released in mid- 2013.
Subject
Matter Experts (SMEs) will play an important part
in this process, sharing their facility management
knowledge and expertise by working with
instructional design professionals to ensure
content quality. If you would be interested in
volunteering to serve as a SME for this project or
any future project IFMA may be developing, please
read the information and complete the application
located
here. | |
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