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New framework aids in compliance by mapping out key skills

The Health Care Facilities Core Competency Framework aids in compliance by ensuring a path to skills development
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Health care facilities professionals never know what their day is going to look like in the morning, with the job requiring quick pivoting to surprise issues that one day take expertise in compliance to solve while the next day require expertise in health care project management. Understanding which areas of expertise are needed in health care facilities management and gaining the skills to be proficient in each area can be difficult given the shifting landscape of day-to-day work.

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To help, the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) has developed the Health Care Facilities Core Competency Framework, a roadmap that charts out key duties and skills of facilities management professionals and offers education, resources and tools to help get up to speed in each area. Becoming an expert in each of the eight core competencies — administration, compliance, energy management, finance, health care project management, maintenance and operations, risk management and sustainability — will ensure facilities professionals are current in their professional knowledge and marketable to any facility regardless of their structure.

Central to the Core Competency Framework is the Health Care Facilities Management Handbook and Education Series (ashe.org/hcfmseries), which serves as a body of knowledge on each competency and offers the first consistent, authoritative resource on health care facilities management. The series, currently in development, is due to release its first education course in project management, “Building Success in Health Care Project Management,” this summer and is due to release its third handbook, Understanding Health Care Compliance: The Facilities Manager’s Handbook, in August.

“These are the eight areas of health care facilities management that you must do well in order to get the job done,” says Chad Beebe, AIA, CHFM, CFPS, CBO, FASHE, deputy executive director of regulatory affairs at ASHE.

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