by Brianna Crandall — October 12, 2018 — The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) announced the winners of the 2018 Awards of Excellence — including the publisher of FMLink — at last week’s World Workplace Conference and Expo in Charlotte, North Carolina. The annual awards honor the stand-out achievements of IFMA members, chapters, councils and communities. IFMA also presented Foundation Trustees Awards.
Graham Tier, CFM, FMP, MRICS, chair of IFMA’s global board of directors, remarked:
Behind each of these awards is the hard work and dedication of FM professionals to achieve results and contribute to something larger [than] themselves. Everything that IFMA accomplishes as a global leader in FM is directly attributable to the effort of our members. We recognize these efforts with awards to demonstrate our appreciation as a community. The Awards of Excellence are our chance to step back and recognize how far we’ve come as an association and an industry, and to thank those colleagues who have set the pace.
Winners were recognized in 16 categories, with judging panels comprised of industry experts scoring nominees individually across a variety of category-specific criteria.
Distinguished Author Award: Article
The winner of the Distinguished Author Award: Article, for his timely article on active shooters, is Peter Kimmel, AIA, IFMA Fellow, publisher of FMLink and a former facilities manager. Notably, this is the fifth time that Kimmel has won the award.
Published less than two weeks after the tragic Parkland, Florida, shooting at Marjory Douglas High School, the article first identifies how active shootings have become a more significant problem in American society each year, providing a list of the Deadliest Mass Shootings in the US as well as a unique graphical representation of the escalation of deaths in the largest recent mass shootings, and concludes that action needs to be taken — sooner rather than later.
The article continues with a comprehensive summary of strategies from existing source material to show facilities managers how they can play a major role in protecting their facilities’ occupants from active shooters. It summarizes the most FM-relevant parts of resources developed by organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), New York Times, Washington Post, Campus Safety Magazine, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and provides links to downloadable brochures and videos — all of special relevance to FMs and their buildings’ occupants.
The article concludes by providing 11 key FM-related steps for facilities managers to include in their facilities’ Emergency Action Plan in order to reduce the likelihood of an active shooter incident taking place, as well as to reduce the potential damage should such an incident occur.
The award-winning “SPECIAL REPORT: Active shooters — Facility preparation and training recommendations for FMs: A special report from FMLink to reduce mass shooting incidents and minimize their tragic losses” is available to read on the FMLink website. It also was published in the July-August issue of IFMA’s FMJ.
The complete list of 2018 IFMA Awards of Excellence recipients is available on the IFMA announcement.
