Facilities Management Integration into Construction Management Curriculum: Core Competencies

The construction industry has long been known for issues in stakeholder collaboration due to the fragmentation in its realm. Facilities Management (FM) received increasing attention with the shifted trends of the construction industry from a siloed discipline to a holistic approach where educational efforts need to align with this transformation. FM and building operations related topics need to be infused into the construction management (CM) curriculum to improve the analytical reasoning and critical thinking of the future workforce. With that, this study aims to identify the core competencies in CM and FM areas as a first step to determining the opportunities and challenges of integrating FM and building operations related topics into CM education. To do so, the research team reviewed the resources of globally recognized professional associations in CM and FM areas. The results revealed that there is a major symmetry in the competencies of both areas, which presents a great opportunity to incorporate FM topics related to these competencies in the CM curriculum. The FM competencies that are not part of the CM area: (i) operations and maintenance, (ii) occupancy and human factors, and (iii) real estate need further investigation to better understand the opportunities and challenges of blending these into the CM curriculum. This study supports increasing the awareness of integrating a holistic approach in the built environment industry starting from the educational level by providing identification of core competencies, a fundamental step for the integration of FM into the CM curriculum.