The idea of a locally developed Certified Healthcare Facilities Manager was mooted after discussions with a few Healthcare Facility Management concessionaires regarding requirements for their managers attached to designated hospitals to have a distinct capability in the said area. The commonly benchmarked qualifications are American Hospital Association (AHA) or International Facility Management Association (IFMA).

However, after viewing their contents we feel that with available local academics and industry players, we are not short of resources to come up with equivalent if not better then AHA or IFMA. What makes it more encouraging is that we can incorporate local contents on regularity matters. This idea was later escalated to being unique with the inclusion of a module on Syariah Compliance. The first globally.

Malaysia has an edge for being recognised as a premium branding when Halal and Syariah matters are concerned. We are also fortunate International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is based here and we jumped with sheer excitement when IIUM agreed to be the certifying academic body. Please bear in mind that this is a distinct skills certification and the first with Syariah Compliance. We also ensure that this Distinct Certification envelopes and/or supersedes that of a general facilities manager.

The module was collated by Finalspot team, fine-tuned by IIUM and industry players. It was later presented to Engineering Services Division, Ministry of Health Malaysia. Further tweaking was done before it was accepted as meeting the Ministry of Health (MoH) standards and accepted as fulfilling the requirements stipulated by the concession agreements.

To ensure that Certified Healthcare Facility Manager certification programme is always up-to-date and relevant to the industry, a body was formed to oversee the programme. Finalspot applied the concept of work-based applied-learning in proposing the members in the committee. Thus, industry players including MoH, IIUM and Finalspot make up the body called the Council.

It was later registers with Registrar of Societies Malaysia (ROS) as International Advisory Council for Healthcare Facility Management. By virtue that CHFM covers the general facilities management scope with the addition of tweaking to cover the rigorous requirements to manage the FM in healthcare sector, CHFM is being accepted by CIDB. The Council also played a role in getting it to CIDB’s attention. Please visit CIDB website.