You are part of an organization that is almost a century old, with a decentralized workforce that spans the entire United States (and employs staff in both its most remote regions and its busiest cities) and a mission that includes responsibility for the countrys most important built and natural treasures. Your challenges and flaws include an impending loss of significant institutional knowledge and a reactive work culture that cannot serve your organizations long-term interests. You are committed to an extended workforce training program that addresses your succession planning needs, and you have attempted a massive workplace culture shift. You

have succeeded beyond anyones expectations. Now, you plan to expand the reach of your program.

If you have done all that, you are probably part of the National Park Services (NPS) Park Facility Management Division. In 2006, the division jump-started an aggressive, competency-based training programthe Facility Manager Leaders Program (FMLP)designed to develop the next generation of leaders in the maintenance field. By applying industry standards and using expertise from within and outside NPS, training managers designed a program that met the agencys succession requirements while implementing a major change in park management culture.

The programs exceptional record of success earned it the 2010 winner of the W. Edwards Deming Outstanding Training Award.

The Graduate Schools Deming Award

Presented annually since 1998 by the Graduate School, the Deming Award is given to a federal government organization or civilian branch of the military to honor a training program that has made a significant impact within an agency or a particular effort that has benefited an organization.

Deming Award nominees are judged on the basis of innovative employee development and training initiatives that achieve not only measurable results, but positive outcomes. The most successful training initiatives documented in the award archives share certain characteristics: Each was developed with a thoughtful, clear vision for an organizations future and potential, as well as an equally clear understanding of the potential pitfalls and negative realities it faced.

Those who develop successful initiatives tend to be those who are willing to dig in for the long haul, demonstrating a commitment to new learning. Award-winning programs also generate a high level of employee buy-in. In both areas, NPSs FMLP excels.

The Challenge

FMLP came about as the result of an increasing federal-sector focus on facility management. By the beginning of this decade, NPS faced a significant skills gap in institutional knowledge, thanks to the anticipated retirement bubble. Increased reporting, accountability, and transparency requirements on the part of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Congress also posed challenges.

With facility management in the federal sector a focus issue for major federal organizations, NPS subjected itself to intense scrutiny. According to the nomination form submitted to the Deming panel, Executive orders, human capital strategic plans, congressional watchers, and in-depth studies by the National Academy of Sciences Federal Facilities Council [all showed] a need to improve the effectiveness of park facility management.

The FMLP course of study describes an aging infrastructure of facilities, lack of specific competencies in facility management, and a need for greater public accountability, which led to significant oversight review by federal agencies. During the 1980s, a successful series of courses were developed and delivered to the facility maintenance workforce, only to be discontinued as other issues took budget priority.

Maintenance of national parks was a patchwork process: When something broke, it was fixed. This approach was increasingly less practical as park infrastructures and portfolios grew more complex. NPS was locked into a reactive cycle. Issues that werefrom a scientific management or data-driven management perspectivemore important in the long run were largely ignored because the division was able to effectively handle typical maintenance and operations. Restrooms, roads, trails, and the like were impeccably cared for by committed staff as need arose, but without preventive maintenance to extend the life of major critical systems, such as HVAC systems or bridges, the parks were headed for disaster.

Any program that addressed these issues was going to have to initiate and support a massive organization culture shift, taking it from reactive to proactive. While it is often easy for an organization to think about structure and facility maintenance in the short term, NPS is charged, essentially, with maintaining its sites in perpetuity.

Stephen Wolter, director of the Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands at Indiana University (which teamed with NPS to develop FMLP), thinks this is a vital part of the whole picture. When youre maintaining these same assets in perpetuity, then you end up saying, Well, we cant really defer that maintenance and have it break in 50 yearswe have to find a way to fix it now, he says.

It was critical that facility management staff understood the extent to which their jobs were driven by data and systems and critical maintenance so that they could be proactive about extending the life of park assets.

The Solution

The NPS Servicewide Maintenance Advisory Committee (SMAC), consisting of representatives of its maintenance and facility discipline from around the United States, was asked to craft a vision for the future of facility management in the national parks.

Adopted in 2002, Facility Management for the 21st Century was a foundational document that expressed the need for creation of a new cohort of facility managers and for continual development of the facility management workforce in order to improve the stewardship of built resources and, through those built resources, the natural and cultural resources of the nation. NPS began to study federal directives related to facility management, as well as the training needs of its facility managers and the industry standards related to that training.

Gap Analysis

The Performance, Training, and Competency Gap Analysis (2005), completed in partnership with the Eppley Institute, supported the need for further performance and training improvements. Significant gaps in the fundamental software system used to manage facilities were identified.

Additionally, analysis uncovered a gap between the training programs being offered and the skills actually needed for a facility manager to function at full capacity. To confront these challenges, as well the results of further gap studies, NPS partnered with Eppley to create a course of study: FMLP.

Proven Results

FMLP, now in its fifth iteration, has proven to be a positive step for NPS. Since its inception, nearly 60 percent of graduates have gone on to take positions as facility managers or chiefs of maintenance. In addition, there has been a nearly 40 percent increase in the number of preventive maintenance work orders, and indicators show an ever-increasing emphasis on managing park units for total cost of facility ownership. Additionally, graduates overwhelmingly indicate that they have experienced improvements in defined job competencies both during and after the training, and their supervisors confirm this.

Finally, parks or units where FMLP graduates work have seen estimated benefits in the millions of dollars. The effects on our national parks have gone beyond the monetary, as facility management principles taught in the program have been brought home to the students parksto the parks they visit for field experience and to the parks of program mentors.

Program Expansion

The success of FMLP has led to a new strategic phase. A current NPS goal is to make this robust program available to a larger group of employees and not just those selected for the one-year curriculum. With the course of study spread out over a longer period, perhaps several years, employees can participate as their schedules allow. In addition, FMLP is said to have tremendous implications for the entire park and recreation and public land management sector.

How NPS Did It

Because NPS is required to use the U.S. Office of Personnel Managements (OPM) competency approach, the curriculum development team relied on subject matter experts to validate the OPM competencies, which in turn served as a baseline for the creation of FMLP.

Intense study identified the parent competencies for facility managers in the public and private sectors, and the team reviewed requirements, goals, and recommendations from government and industry. Developed jointly by its training team and outside subject matter experts, the FMLP curriculum design uses the full range of delivery techniques in use by government, universities, and the private sector.

A year-long, assessment-based certificate program, FMLP comprises five courses ranging from traditional classroom studies to e-courses, webinars, and directed field experiences. Fifteen to 18 students representing different types of parks and various geographic areas are chosen each year from a pool of applicants. Applicants are regionally and nationally scored, with final decisions made by seven regional chiefs of maintenance.

As described in the course of study, FMLP embraces deep learning that promotes critical analysis of ideas so that students can combine them with their existing skills, knowledge, and information for greater understanding. This endorses concept retention, leading to a greater capacity to analyze new and changing situations or scenarios and to improved problem-solving skills. Program designers define deep learning as the [fundamental] difference between education (which is focused on uncertainty and application of knowledge, analysis, and logic) and training (which is more focused on certainty and routine).

When they enter FMLP, students are paired with mentors from the management field who have extensive management experience with NPS. Not only do these mentors provide guidance and informal training, including hosting mentees at their home parks, they also attend the classroom courses. Wolter describes the mentors as adjunct professors, a critical part of the success of the experiential learning model.

The FMLPs 2006 pilot program was evaluated while in progress and upon conclusion. The consensus was that it should be continued in order to reach the goal of developing succession facility managers for the NPS. In May 2010, the fifth class began its course of studies.

Positive Outcomes

According to the FMLPs course of study, At the core of FMLP is the creation of proficient facility managers for the NPS and meeting succession management goals for the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, it also strategically improves the NPSs ability to achieve its central mission of preservation and enjoyment through enhancing organization capacity.

To date, the goals of succession management, the creation of proficient managers, and the preservation and enjoyment have all been furthered. The exceptionally positive results of the program are being documented by an ongoing evaluation process.

With an overarching goal of succession management for facility managers, one of the most positive outcomes the program would be for FMLP students to take positions as chiefs of maintenance, facility managers, or the equivalent. Evaluations indicate definite success in this regard.

Facility Manager Mobility

While numbers have peaked overall since the program was implemented, Figure 1 (covering the class years 20062008) suggests that recently, fewer FMLP students are becoming facility managers. This trend is believed to result from the fact that some facility manager positions are not yet open.

The class of 2006 had three years in which to find new positions, whereas at the time this chart was created, recent graduates had less than a year. More important, 89 percent of FMLP graduates have received promotions in facility management or have sought and been offered promotion after completing the course.

Preventive Maintenance

An expected outcome was for graduating students to demonstrate a grasp of the core concepts of proper facility management, not the least of which was that important shift from reactive maintenance to proactive and preventive maintenance. The 2005 gap analysis indicated that facility managers were not using the facility management software system (FMSS) to plan work. An indicator of success would be the existence of more preventive maintenance work orders in the system.

Between FY05 and FY09, the annual number of preventive maintenance work orders in FMSS increased by many thousands. The relative stability of FY06 to FY08 reflects the FMLP curriculums heavy focus on taking inventory of park assets and creating park asset management plans. The FMLP class of 2009, on the other hand, shifted its focus from creating plans to executing plans, creating a rewarding jump in the number of preventive work orders created.

Because preventive maintenance extends the life cycle of an asset and reduces costly, inconvenient emergency maintenance, this indicator illustrates a very positive impact for NPS. With the number of parks touched by FMLP students, mentors, and visits continuing to grow, this upward trend is expected to continue.

Job Competencies

As part of the evaluation process, a competency-based survey is administered to students and their supervisors 180 days after graduation. Training impact is assessed at five levels, with each level depending on and linked to measurements of the previous levels. Only two years of data are currently available, but NPS has found the impact striking. Data was collected from all graduates and at least one supervisor per graduate.

Also, graduates overwhelmingly indicated that they experienced improvements in defined job competencies both during and after the training. Thirty-six tasks were listed, ranging from developing a park asset management plan to evaluating equipment and corrective maintenance to creativity, innovation, strategic thinking, and technical credibility.

The students self-ratings on a list of competency tasks showed that more than 70 percent indicated they had improved to some degree in all the competencies, and more than 90 percent indicated that they had improved to some degree in an overwhelming majority of those competency tasks.

At least 50 percent of those students attributed these improvements to FMLP. Their supervisors observed similar improvements, but rated them even more highly than did the students, with a greater frequency of significant or above average improvement.

Financial Benefits

Responding to open-ended survey questions, both graduates and their supervisors identified the benefits to their respective park sites as increased efficiencies and additional money generated for park, savings, and special program development. Financial benefits are a standout here, with parks or units where graduates work seeing estimated benefits in the millions of dollars.

Other Benefits

But, it is not just the students and their parks that benefit from this process. The mentor-student experience has proved valuable for FMLP in ways it had not fully anticipated. Putting mentors through the courseskeeping them informed on the same topics and approach to doing businessmade them more committed to meeting the gap that existed between proactive and reactive.

The principles and lessons of the program spread to the parks of the mentors and to the parks visited by students for field experience. Inclusion of the mentors extended the impact of the program and added formal supervision, management, and leadership competencies to their personal capabilities. The results of this relationship have been so profound that NPS realized in 2009 that FMLPs ROI analysis would also need to include the programs effect on mentors.

This workforce training initiative stands out because of the impressive nature of both management commitment and workforce cooperation. The attitude of leaders in the NPS Park Facility Management Division in approaching program design has been described as rare. Leaders studied benchmark surveys to uncover the hallmark characteristics of successful leadership programs and made a deep commitment to implementing and following through on changes. They committed to giving new efforts a chance to take root and show results.

The involvement and commitment of the NPS facility maintenance workforce is also exceptional. The division bears responsibility for upwards of 50 percent of the operational funds and services provided by NPSrunning the larger parks has been likened to taking responsibility for a small city. As a result, employees have a strong belief that they have to develop their discipline and do their best to protect the assets under their care.

NPS is tasked with the care of built and natural resources that include wilderness areas, habitat for endangered and threatened species, and cultural heritage sites that date from prehistoric times through the 20th century. This is not an insignificant responsibility, and it is an area in which failures in upkeep will be quickly seen and deeply felt at many levels. The motivation to maintain and steward these treasures is tremendously powerful for employees at all levels of this organization, as is the desire to develop succeeding generations of employees to continue their work and to do it even better.

As of 2009, more than half of the national parks in the United States (more than 200) have been directlyand positivelyaffected by FMLP, its students, and its mentors. The result is better management of built resources, which in turn means that the cultural, historic, and natural resources protected by these built resources are better preserved for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.