Distinguished Guests, BATU EXCO, Branch Officials and members, Brothers and Sisters, Ladies and Gentlemen
A very good morning to you.
Today marks a very special day in the calendar of the Building Construction and Timber Industries’ Employees Union, affectionately known as BATU.
The Union represents workers from various industries. These industries are namely construction, building related, paper industries, cleaning etc.
The facilities management (FM) sector is one of the sectors that is under the scope of BATU. This sector, in particular has a very large pool of Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs). This pool of PMETs adds up to about 7,000 persons.
BATU is always looking for ways to strengthen our PMET's capabilities so that they can adapt to the ever changing business environment and we found out through our regular conversations with the FM professionals that there are professional development needs from this sector. So we conducted informal sessions with members, and conducted a survey in August this year. We sent out surveys to our General Branch members to get their feedback on the sector.
We also held a World Café Dialogue session in August this year to identify the gaps in this sector. During this dialogue session, we invited management partners, PMETs, industry partners and union leaders to share with us on what they think are the Professional Development needs in the sector. It was a lively session and we gathered much information. In summary, through various channels, we seek to understand you and your needs.
We acted promptly after we gathered feedback. We talked to various industry partners and key stakeholders along the way. In three months, we are happy to share with you that the Union has decided to form a community for the PMETs in the FM industry. This community will be known as the Community for Building Professionals in short CBP.
This community will be opened to all PMETs in the FM industry. We will be working on benefits that suit the profile of the PMETs in the FM industry. One of the benefits is based on your feedback. This benefit is that of training subsidies for related courses. Thus, the community will be rolling out Professional Development benefits just for you!
Today, we are happy to have with us training providers – BCA and SCDF to share with us the Green Mark courses and the Fire Safety Managers course respectively. These were the two courses that you identified were relevant to your career development needs and for the FSM course we sought support from the Employment and Employability Institute, or e2i, to subsidize these courses. E2i will also be sharing on the Union Training Assistance Programme or UTAP and how you can utilize this programme for your training needs. RECC has made a request to join us today too to take this opportunity to share with you their professional areas in training.
Moving ahead, I see the community as a very useful platform for professionals to interact with one another and to provide feedback to us on not just your training and professional development needs, but also any other work related issues.
We are currently working on social media platforms for you.
One is the website. The community has started a website specially catered to the Community for Building Professionals. This website will update all of you on Professional Development opportunities, training subsidies and more. You can also go into the website and send us your feedback on what other upgrading courses are applicable to your sector and how we can better plug the gaps in the FM industry.
Very importantly, through this website, you can apply for the exciting training subsidies that we will be sharing with you later. For a start there will be generous funding on the FSM course and the UTAP for both the FSM and the Green Mark courses.
Through this website, we aim to provide to you an easy access to your professional development needs and the benefits that you will enjoy as a community member.
Secondly, we will continue to work with the various industry partners and yourselves to understand the training gaps professional development needs and work with e2i to bring to you more attractive training grants!
Thirdly, we have also engaged social media – Facebook to give you timely updates on the latest happenings in the industry as well as training opportunities. So log on to your Facebook account later and ‘like’ our page!
This community aims to be an interactive one, through the website, through Facebook and through you and me. We will also be organizing more dialogues, seminars and activities for you! Do use the various channels to feedback to us your thoughts, views and needs. We need you to let us know what you want.
At this juncture, please join me to express our thanks to our partners, the Employment and Employability Institute or e2i, the NTUC Membership Department, the Building Construction Academy, or BCA, and last but not least SCDF, who have rendered us support for this event to happen.
I wish you a great weekend ahead.
