Jawad Altamimi

Two Skills to Future-proof Your Facility Management Career

Staying relevant to the FM job market
 by Integrating Sustainability & Technology in Your Skillset

The current and future job market

The job market is changing rapidly, this change is driven by a global shift towards sustainability, which seems to be the only way for us to make it to the future! 

Another driver for this change is the massive advancement in technology, especially smart technology applications like AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) among other 4th industrial revolution technologies.

So far, so good! But why do you need to watch for this change in the market?

In this article, we will explore how BEI facility management courses can help you stay relevant to the changing FM job market and future proof your career.

The demand for sustainability and technology skills

It gets tricky when employers are seeking to deliver on their ESG pledges, but their employees are not yet ready to take their organizations forward to deliver on those pledges!

Organizations need their employees to understand sustainability concepts first in order for them to lead towards achieving the organization goals! And not only understand; most employers now are seeking advanced sustainability skills in many of the employees at different department in their organizations. 

At the same time, employers are seeking to employ the emerging technologies into their business, to drive business growth and at the same time they hope such technologies will help them deliver on their sustainability and ESG commitments.

While there is increasing demand for sustainability and technology skills by employers, most employees are still seeking upskilling and training in conventional skills and topics, such as project management, leadership or soft skills. It is not that those skills are not important, but now more than ever, those skills are not enough to stay relevant !

How the change is happening in the job market?

Buildings are responsible for around 40% of the global CO2 emissions, and most of those emissions come through the operation stage of a building.

With UAE hosting COP28 at Dubai this year, UAE government, and organizations alike will accelerate their efforts to deliver on their sustainability and ESG commitments.

Not only UAE, but the whole region is gearing their efforts and funds towards sustainability and technology, led by Saudi Arabia, and UAE and followed by the rest of countries in the region.

And we already started noticing an increase in demand for sustainability and technology skills in the built environment sectors. The most trending, is utilizing technology to achieve sustainability such as deployment of emerging technologies to save energy or advance real estate value. let's take two examples on the market trends for both; the sustainability and technology.

The demand for sustainability skills in facility management

Taking Abu Dhabi's biggest real estate developer, ALDAR as an example, the company has set sustainability at the heart of their business, raising the ceiling of ESG commitment for real estate developers by releasing ALDAR Net Zero Plan.
ALDAR has committed NET ZERO SCOPE 1 & 2 EMISSIONS by 2030, and NET ZERO SCOPE 1, 2 & 3 EMISSIONS by 2050!

Among many other real estate developers, all built environment sectors are shifting towards sustainability locally, regionally, and globally.

This shift towards sustainability tells us where our market is going, where smart professionals would position themselves ahead of time to be relevant to the market.

The demand for technology skills in facility management

Similar to the demand for sustainability, the same movement is happening towards technology, technology is the main pillar that all those organizations are counting on to achieve business growth and their sustainability targets.
Taking Dubai's leading real estate developer, EMAAR , the company is seeking to employ emerging technologies to boost business growth. where innovation is set to improve customer experience in real estate and to achieve smarter and healthier buildings.
EMAAR launched a global competition challenging innovators, entrepreneurs and industry experts to come up with solutions to solve real estate biggest challenges; Sustainability.

Not only EMAAR and ALDAR are moving towards technology and sustainability, but most of the real estate developers in UAE and the region, facility management companies in UAE and all built environment sectors as well. 

It becomes evident how technology is integrated in the built environment to solve the biggest problems of our time to come up with the only solution for those problems; the sustainability.

Again, FM professionals should prepare themselves for this market shift.
Not limiting technology literacy to email use, or web applications, but expanding to utilizing such technologies to advance their everyday work, increase productivity and help their organizations achieve their sustainability targets.


How do you stay relevant in this changing job market?

The one million dollar question; What should we do as facility managers?
How do we stay relevant in this changing job market?

As a facility manager, it is no more enough to just grow your career the normal way, you should always seek to integrate the technology, and sustainability into your skillset to stay relevant, achieve higher career growth and secure better jobs.

For sure the traditional FM training courses and FM certificates are important, but it's evident now that those certifications are not enough!
That's why you should seek training and certification in facilities management that integrates those emerging skills, and this is exactly what we have done at the Built Environment Institute!

The Built Environment Institute, BEI is the top training institute for facility management courses and training. The BEI is reinventing the built environment learning, one of the ways the BEI helps facility managers grow their career, is through integrating sustainability and technology into every course offering, especially international certification programs like the the Certified Facility Manager. 

The Certified Facility Manager CFM exam preparation workshop offered by the BEI not only is delivered through 36 hours live and highly interactive training sessions, but also integrates sustainability and technology skills on top of the core course material that is set by IFMA. 

Checkout our CFM course;
The CFM certification course at the BEI is seasoned with those additional topics by embedding them into every lecture and module. delivered by instructors who are leading the change in the FM industry, locally and globally.

The Built Environment Institute is the best training institute in UAE, provides you with an immersive learning experience to advance their career through interactive learning. Not only by helping them pass their CFM certification, but also, offering FMP certification courses, and other courses in facility management courses that integrates new skills essential for facility managers to grow their career.