Hello, my name is Tebatso Mogale and I am calling in from Johannesburg in South Africa. I am the Director of Operations at the American International School of Johannesburg. This is my 6th academic year, so clearly I love being here. I’ve just been asked to talk about what drew me to the CFMP course, which is the Certified Facilities Management Professional course.

I guess to be honest, what drew me to the courses was because it came through ISS, which is the International School Services. So for me, seeing the endorsement and the credibility that I associate ISS with, it was a no brainer. And having said that, I had been looking at different courses. However, those other courses were not school or educational specific, they were all corporate.

They were not tailor made to professionals within the educational setting. So what I liked about this course was the fact that it’s specifically tailored to educational professionals, tailored to students, parents, teachers and within an international setting. So, why is certification important?

Certification. I believe I was specifically looking for a certified course because I wanted to make that commitment to lifelong learning. You know the certified cause. You need to recertify. You need to continuously update your knowledge, continuously submit points and in this industry of FM and operations, there’s so many best practices and standards that one needs to be familiar with and they’re constantly changing. So that is the reason why I was specifically looking for a certification program, not just a degree or any other diploma that is once off and you finish with it.

What this course has done for me is, you know, depending on your school, you are not necessarily getting the entire diverse skills within facilities management, so you get limited exposure, what the course has done, looking at the outline is that it touches into the technical aspects of your operations and your maintenance of your assets, your central heating systems, your HVAC, your electrical, your utilities management environment and and utilities stewardship. So it’s a holistic view. It’s just not concentrating on one aspect and not forgetting the issues of general management and leadership that most of us are expected to have and to possess in this field.

And how will I use my knowledge gained in my current role? That is where this course was a differentiator in that everything is practical knowledge, practical case, that is real life case, that is for schools, for educational facilities like our our facilities and in addition what I liked is the wealth of resources.

So now I’ve got access to those published resources that I can always refer to, that I can always double check and not also forgetting the network. Now I have got this network of other professionals that I can network with because each cohort you have different participants. I had participants from China, South America, Northern America, Africa. So it is a holistic cohort where you participate, you network with other professionals and your peers all over the world. Thank you.