#26: Jim Zirbel: Leading The New Wave for FMs

#26- Jim Zirbel- Leading The New Wave for FMs

Introduction:

Welcome to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast brought to you by Stratum. I'm your host, Griffin Hamilton. This is the show where I interview industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights into modern day facilities management, from hospitality, to commercial real estate, and everything in between. We'll learn what it really takes to succeed as a facilities manager

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Welcome to another episode of the modern facilities management podcast. Today, I've got Jim Zirbel with me, Jim, how are you?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

I'm doing fine. Thanks for having me on, Griffin.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

It has been a pleasure talking with you here over the last few weeks and getting to know you. But I'm a little bit ahead of the audience so why don't you provide them with a little context on who you are and what you do?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Sure. My name is Jim Zirbel and I serve as one of the Co-directors along with Carolyn McGarry of the FM pipeline team. The FM pipeline team is an organization we're actually a 501c3 and our motto is engaging, enlightening and energizing the next gen of FM. What do we do by that? Well, we run engagement program for high school students and that answer is a specific problem. We'll talk about that a little bit more today. But our program incorporates both a competition for those high school students, along with a really, really powerful messaging program, that almost opposite operates in a vacuum, I want to tell you about that a little bit more as well. We are a 501c3 scholarship granting entity and our whole purpose is to create a flood of new blood into the FM space. We all know that there is a horrific skills gap and the numbers seem to indicate that actually the number of people going into FM is actually going down. As the number of retirees is actually growing geometrically. That's scary stuff. Now the numbers bounce all over the place but as a whole, we observe that there is a skills gap in FM, that is going to be infinitely more acute than almost every other career out there. For a couple of reasons we can banter around for a while so it's a big deal. We're currently running in seven states, we're picking up DC next year. They've been working hard on that. There are volunteer teams in other states working and we're moving toward a national status with the CTSO, we operate in. Let me define CTSO by the way. We operate currently through SkillsUSA. SkillsUSA has 400,000 High School student members across the country. It's huge, and it's growing like a hockey stick and Mike Rowe from discovery channel is their Rockstar spokesperson. The are career technical student organization that focuses on built environment and technical trades. Here is a large cadre of 400,000 students who are already built environment leaning, who have technical attributes, they might not be pure academics but within the built trades or within facilities management, I think ecosystem would agree now that what we really need are people who have the chops, but also have the attributes to talk about that today.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, and what got you into this? What sparked the idea for FM pipeline?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Yeah. I myself I’m an entrepreneur, in fact, the FM pipeline team was my fifth startup. I had a couple of companies, one particular company was a security company that was doing some quasi national work for some big clients and a number of my clients were facility managers, that's who they were. I thought to myself, I need to be able to serve these people, but I would rather not serve them as I got them a deal on their next big camera and access control system. That doesn't help them so I decided to do so in an executive capacity. Ultimately, I found my way into an IFMA chapter International Facilities Management Association chapter of Madison, Wisconsin. While I was president, we created a college program put together a really great team. College called me six months later and said, Hey, President Jim, love your curriculum, love the stuff, there's nobody in your program and we recognize them. That’s a big deal. And so we created this program to fix this void in our own college program, which is running fine now and we recognized very quickly that this was a universal problem, really universal. We thought, okay, so there's a lot of opportunity for undergrads and people that are already in college but how do you get people into a college program if they're already thinking about something else? What are the inducements that you're going to move there, then there to, it's pretty tough sledding, you can try to convince somebody to change majors or whatever it might be but there are very few bonafide programs along with that, there are a couple of real roadblocks in the high school, in the pre undergrad, the secondary space and those roadblocks include, our voice is just not big enough, you and me, Griffin, we can scream as loud as we want but we will never really elevate above the incumbent den of voices that are already in the high school space, the big employer down the street, the college, there are bigger players that will never be able to eclipse no matter how big our industry gets. The second part of that is that high schools in general, whether they're public or private, they're all run by different independent school boards. So when you look at the landscape across the country, it's crazy. It's like, there's a mountain and then there's a valley, there's another mountain, there's a valley, there's no consistency so there's no way with those particular two problems, we learned no way to scale. It was actually our third strike, we had two liaison programs that this IFMA chapter created derivative of this problem and on the third strike, I thought, I need to find an organization that is A; already successful B; across the country C; ideally growing and not shrinking, of which, a lot of organizations, we've seen a lot of stuff in block movement. And ultimately, I came across SkillsUSA. SkillsUSA used to be called Vocational Industrial Clubs of America VICA. It was mostly shop class kids, I, myself and my shop class kids, so I totally got it. That organization became an absolutely perfect fit Griffin, I can't Gush more about them, we will probably also be able to operate with other career technical student organizations as well. One more thing about CTSO, I think I should make known. Career Technical Student Organizations do something that you and I can't do. You and I, we can go into a college or a high school classroom and say, Hey, this is the Career Exploration class, I want to tell you about facility management, and you have to have this competency and that competency and the other thing. Yeah, it makes you and I feel good but it does nothing for the students sitting on the other side of the desk going, what? you're talking already about stuff I got to know, I'm not so much sure. So that's a problem. We identified that if we could leverage something and so the elixir that the CTSO create Griffin is the long number one, students in a club belong. Something that an association, individual, a group doesn't matter who you are, it can't do unless you're one of the group. So the students belong. Then the students in Career Technical Student Organizations like SkillsUSA, or DECA, or feature Farmers of America, there's others, they get good at a particular job type. The third thing is they compete. Those three things, when I recognize what that organization did, and I myself was a DECA president so I knew what that was way back when those three things the elixir of belonging, honing the skill, and competing, meant that the students that are involved in the Facilithon are on fire and they got it and they belong to it and that's something that all those other things we've tried across many, many years, simply, they don't match up to. That's what we came up with and boy, it's been a great partnership, and it's growing and we're applying for national status this year. I'm looking forward to 50 states across the country, I gulp when I think about the expansion work we got to do. But hey, that's part of the gig and it's part of our gift to the industry. We're interested in sharing this gift with all Industry, Association, Colleges that need students to come in, organizations that do direct hire programs, whether recruiters or companies specifically themselves, we’re offering this particular program as an answer to fill all those other potential programs we always talked about knowing full well, if you build them, or build it, they will not come. Right? So that's why we did. That's a long story about it.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

How long have you guys been going about with FM pipeline and Facilithon?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

We started in 2014 so it's been running a while, this is our seventh official year, of course, 2020 2021 is really a weird year to operate but that's okay. We picked up three more states out of that; we picked up California, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. I'm very happy about that as I think you as an entrepreneur would agree that those of us who flex and jump fast enough when we see the environment change, if we jump fast enough, we gain rather than become one of the victims and that happened last year in 2020. I think it was the board meeting of March 12, I think, and I told the board, I said, Hey, guys, we're going to go online, and everybody's jaw just dropped. Just have to laugh about it. And you know what, it was exactly the right thing to do and because we went online, we picked up judges from all over the world. That has been amazing, which has also garnered potential international expansion, that would have never happened without COVID.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, that's a great point there. You mentioned that you had opportunities present themselves that may not have otherwise been there and you have to take advantage of the situation, no matter how bad the circumstances may look, at the surface level, there's got to be something that you could gain from it. If it's just surviving, and just learning that you can survive, you have that and yet to go on through, in this case, a global pandemic, or in this scenario, you had a whole new opportunity pop up and present itself that's wonderful to hear. And so with that, I'm curious, because you said you had seven states, and obviously, the first initiative is going to be expanding throughout the United States and now you have all this other opportunity internationally to expand. How are you going to balance the two? What's the strategy there?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

I should also make know that have the luxury of having two distinct seasons, you know what those seasons are? They are facili-crazy, tactical hair on fire. There's no hair left, tactical hair on fire, run, like hell, get the judges there, get the students there, those sorts of things. What has just begun this week, our strategic season, which we also refer to as summer. So with our strategy, last year, we began enlarging the team and we expect that we will [inaudible 13:34] a larger team a great deal more this summer as well. We have liaison outreach teams, the fact is a small core group always is the ethos by which the organization surrounds itself but it is those that reach out that are connecting that make the whole network actually function and so we have now new liaison teams. They've come on in the last three or four months and in fact, I should mention the people that are on them JB Benjamin from EBSI, Patti Mason from Switch Automation, Dave Mason from Marriott, Linda Forest, formerly a marine and PhD, Alicia McDonald out of Cushman and Wakefield, Denise [inaudible 14:21] from UW Stout University of Wisconsin stouts FM program, Christine Gidney out of Catholic University you may have interviewed her in the past along with Sara Sims who was one of our 40 under 40 for IFMA this year or the DC IFMA chapter. That group is designed to liaise and connect out to all these organizations, all the individuals. There is the Student Liaison Group which has specific tasks in front of them this summer. There is the Association Liaison Group which also has specific tasks, after all, associations like IFMA like Conax, like EFP, these organizations, they are all where they serve as to agree hubs, much like stratum serves as a hub,  and so these communities revolve around them and we recognize that if we can liaise to industry associations, students, colleges, colleges have something in it, they don't know exactly where to find themselves it's an interesting experience and along with those high school instructors and advisors, and in post-secondary as well liaising with these folks makes all the difference in the world. Jamie Benjamin, who heads up the industry Liaison Team is actually one that is fostering the international stuff. Canada is number one, Egypt is number two, they want to run something in 2022. We're going to see how that works. We have the support of an organization called Enova by Veolia and if you know about Veolia, it is a $28 billion company that has great interest around the world in a great many different built environment, trades and services.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Very cool. You mentioned earlier that the season just ended with Facilithon. You guys just had the gala here, was it last week, two weeks ago?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Thanks for coming on that Griffin, I really appreciate that. Those galas are always fun, this is our second and they're fun, partly because of how fast we have to run and suddenly shift all of our energy and our efforts towards celebrating what everybody did a scant week after doing exactly all of that so that's a real treat.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Yeah, it was certainly a blast to see that and the folks recognized for what they were doing. Like you said, it's interesting to see the work that's been put into it, and I'm sure it's an odd feeling for you, of months and months and months of preparation and then it's all built up for this gala celebrating it.

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

This has been the 16 month year so that was really, really great and it was great to hang out in the green room thereafter and have some chats although I admit, that is one of those occasions where I take a technical role as well so, I had my cocktail after whistles.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Going on to the competition I don't think we've touched on that too much. Give us a little insight into what the competition has been up to this point and what you view or where you see that going?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Sure! So the Facilithon itself as a competition is a three part competition for a high school student to get a first introduction to the whole ethos, the whole world of Facilities Management in short a event, a very easy event for SkillsUSA organizations to run. It incorporates three parts; the first part is a 50 Question common sense quiz. It's common sense. It includes questions like, hey, if all the lights go off in the gymnasium, and none of the switches work, where do you go next? The answer is the breaker box, not the principal's office so it has common sense questions. But it also helps the student go, oh, oh, now I kind of get it. This is what it's about. It's about these things in this building. Second part is a roleplay. The student gets 15 minutes to read a case study, and then write some notes and then come in and talk to a couple judges for 10 minutes and say, Okay, these are my ideas, this is what I think we ought to do with this roleplay with this airport, or this hospital, or this high school, or whatever it is they're talking about. Then after that is the part that the students are really on fire about and that is the FM challenge. How interesting that these particular students, lots of students get scared about this, but these students really bite hard on it. It is the FM challenge. It is a basically an emergency scenario, that they don't know what it's going to be if we hand them a piece of paper and it says the roof is on fire or something is going horribly wrong and we'd like to know what you do about first don't just stand there do something, what resources would you use? Call the fire department call the bomb squad. Then number three, what would you do next time to either keep it happening or eliminate the pain of whatever it might be if you can't stop it. Hey, those three things, those three events and the three parts of that catastrophe that is what FM's do all the time. It really captures it. The students love it. They overwhelmingly come back to their interviews and say that was awesome. Where do I sign up? That says, it's working baby. It's good.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

And what's been the trend. I guess, before I get into that, how many Facilithons have there been?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

This is the seventh year so if I were to count up, I don't know. 30 40, I don't know a lot. A lot of them. Each state has a particular potential number of outcomes of students that will in time come out of those states and the states vary, etc. But it represents a body of out of the states we have currently, we can see a couple 100, a few 100 but as this grows, and remember, it’s growing in the States, as well. There's content and stuff for our students that simply doesn't exist in any of the other competitions they have so that continues to grow, along with our footprint and as those two things happen we're racing to get some really, really big numbers, we're going to see big stuff come out of this.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That was where I was going with that. What's been the transition or the evolution of it from an involvement standpoint, what are the numbers looking like this past year, as opposed to years one and two?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

We bring on state by state by state and each one of those is no different than your organization flow path, making a sale to a school district or something of that nature. Each state starts and the point starts small, and then they start to grow. Wisconsin is the first state that we ran our program in and it's also the first state that we used our marketing model, which includes an action figure, by the way, it's called wiggly guy, wiggly girl and they have questions they say, Do you like people in buildings? Do you like action and variety? Do you like problem solving and can you think on your feet? And most of the students will say, yes, it's one in four within SkillsUSA, as we put those in front of those people in Wisconsin, we were told we're going to have one or two students as a sacrificial lambs. We had 25 signup, we weren't expecting that. In Wisconsin, in the manner that's been running thus far, we're having about 50 students come out of that particular program each year, and those students are doing it over and over again. As we pick up freshmen students, for example, or as we pick up middle school students, there are now middle school students that are doing this, and that they're on fire about it and it's great validation for the team. So think about that for a while, when you start turning 50 60 or 100 students out of particular states, we start seeing a real dent. 300 People are talking to high schools at Career Day and those people will feel good about it, and I urge them to do so and the outcome will be something less than what we're doing. The whole purpose was that we could bring this great passionate career path to a lot of students on a scale level, where each one is an individual, not a number but they are growing and we need it wherever this is about the planet and if we don't have FM's coming in now that are in the Eco ecosystems and an environmental science much like yourself, Griffin. If we don't have green leaning, tactically savvy individuals, we are never going to meet the benchmarks that lessen global warming. Did you ever think about how an FM has more control over the usage of energy than almost anyone in the world except the controllers of the gas pipelines themselves? When you think about the big buildings in the world use 40% something of that nature of all of the world's energy consumption and then you think, okay, so one Griffin Hamilton being an FM for example, and you run, let's say, a million square feet of buildings, you want to take a ballpark at how many cars you just pulled off the road, it's insane. But without that, those buildings are going to continue to use that 40% of the world's energy consumption and never save the energy that we need. This is about the planet, I just want to at least share that. It's about our program, but it's about the planet and without a program like ours, all we're going to do is keep throwing little stones at Goliath. We need a big stone and a big slingshot to slay it and we think that the Facilithon has done just that.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That is incredible and is there a way that you guys are tracking beyond Facilithon and beyond them being students in high school? If they're enrolling in different programs, you're actually getting into the industry?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Yeah, that is just beginning and then within the high school space, one of the key challenges that we'll be working on this year through our strategic season is the Child Protection aspects. There is something called FERPA. It's a federal act that says we need to protect student data just like we need to protect people's credit card data or whatever it might be. When a student competes with us, initially, they have typically an email or some contact information that is associated with the high school, the moment that student leaves High School, that's gone. So we're using new methods of tracking through our website through direct engagement with those students. Once they become an adult, we need to make them make the manifest change over, they're already on fire. They're already looking for schools that teach this stuff. We have schools, for example, in Wisconsin, we have UW Stout, I mentioned that Denise [inaudible 26:56] actually teaches there, and maybe you've met Denise. We've got UW Milwaukee, actually, the chapter champion, the state champion for Wisconsin is actually one of the instructors at UW Milwaukee. We also have, of course, Madison College, that's where we started our program, the inception for this program and then there are also a couple of great programs in Minnesota next to us. So as an example, these students have immediate access to programs nearby that they could go to and in tracking them, this is another manner we're going to be able to do so with our college Liaison Team, getting tracking from those colleges, because we know who's participating, we have to be able to find their tracking data without violating FERPA.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Make sense and as you guys grow, talk about that process, what that looks like because if I'm listening to this, and I'm involved in the education system as a facilities manager, and I see the problem, big picture with the industry, and I want to see what I could do that would eventually begin with getting my state involved. So what does that look like? What does that process look like for you guys to sign on in the state?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

So we have a really established process driven and maybe you've heard of this before. We enlist chapter champions they made that note before you might remember that Mary Mills from Massachusetts won the national champion chapter champion of the year, those chapter champions represent the focal point of that new state or that area, that region that's opening up. We pair them with someone known as a chapter buddy and Sharon Harrington and Peggy McCarthy are our first primary chapter buddies along with David Reynolds, they're all board members, they've all run this stuff for a long time. They know what like the back of their hands. We give those people Gold Card service. We also help work with the folks at SkillsUSA because that is another ecosystem of its own, that we know really, really well and we don't want a chapter champion to have to bite too much. We want to be sure we're carrying them along, giving them great gold card service and then after a year or so, as we start spooling up, we do a lot of things for SkillsUSA in that state prior to ever running our program, we need to earn street credit as part of the deal. We want to earn street credit with associations and with our other liaison partners stakeholders out there as well. That's how that works and first and foremost, if one has interest in actually working in acting on this particular part, what we refer to as basically the seed of this pipeline nothing else outside of this beyond this works if we don't have a bunch of applicants, you can build it all day long, but it's going to be vacant until that happens. If you have interest in that, my suggestion is, you go to our site, you can communicate with me or with Carolyn McGarry directly. We're the CO directors of the program, of course. But then otherwise, you can simply go to the website to whatever stakeholder group you're part of, and come in and volunteer there’s a volunteer page, feel free and we would love that to enjoin with you and have a discussion. And from that direction, we can figure out, hey, where would you like to head with us? Because it is, by the way, a lot of fun. This is a great thing to do and every judge that has been out there on this on this particular journey, comes back and says, Oh, man, I had no idea. We say That's right. We knew you didn't have an idea. We're glad you're coming back. We've had lots of lots of repeat judges, because it's so much fun, it's addictive and if you quit your day job, this is a good one to pick up, there off.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

That’s great and I can certainly vouch for that where the gala alone was just you could see everyone's passion for it and the excitement there. And just as a bystander watching it, it was very entertaining. I'm excited to see what the remainder of this year looks like, and the future of Facilithon, and an FM pipeline looks like. But before I let you go, any parting words or need any lasting notes here, Jim?

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Well, let's see. You had mentioned a couple of things you had said “Is there a quote that comes across that you find interesting, over and over again?” Here it is, the bigger the boy, the bigger the toy. Never let the sum of the toys eclipse the whole of the man. 

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

I've never heard that. I love it. I absolutely love that. Well, Jim, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a pleasure hear sort of what you guys are doing is tremendous. It is something that is a necessity for the industry to move forward and I'm glad that I hate to say that kids these days, but they got lucky with these programs. People aren't falling backwards into it anymore. They could be intentional, and thanks to large parts of what you guys are doing.

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

These are amazing kids these days. Let's put amazing in front of that and all of a sudden, their vernacular is totally changed. Hey, before I go, I want to acknowledge a few people; Sharon Harrison and Peggy McCarthy. Peggy McCarthy, by the way, was my co-founder of that. She's the former chair of the IFMA Foundation and IFMA fellow Brett Wedekind, David Reynolds, Diana Buns, Ken Stevenson out of the Atlanta IFEMA chapter. Anthony Corcoran, who was our national newcomer of the year you saw that award being given out at the awards gala, and honor advisory board. I think it's also important that those of you who want to enter yet might not be able to judge or something of that notion our advisory board is another place we're looking to grow. That includes Lindsey Brackett, Lindsey and Josh Brackett were our CO hosts for that award gala, it was awesome. They are fantastic. Laurie Dahmer who is actually a National SkillsUSA individual, Mark Joseph from TD industries out of Texas, Jacob D'Albora out of McVeigh and Mangum, Beth Fasching out of pro FM who won the Industry Partner of the Year award and also let's not forget our newest member, Craig Robinson out of Hays recruiting great, great individuals, and all committed to making the FM pipeline team continue to grow and we'll see what damage we do. Next four or five years is going to be really exciting to watch for FM.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Absolutely. And I'm going to put all of this information here in the show notes and if anyone wants to reach out to you I’ll have those avenues listed as well. Make sure to check that out and follow FM pipeline. Like you've heard they're doing amazing things and Jim once again, thank you for coming on and sharing your story.

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

FMpipeline.org, engaging, enlightening and energizing the next gen of FM.

Speaker: Griffin Hamilton  

Alright, Jim have a good one. You too.

Speaker: Jim Zirbel  

Thanks so much, Griffin.

Outro:

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