Looking Back: How the CFM Program Began

As part of ASFPM’s year-long 50th anniversary celebration, we’re revisiting an article from the archives that explains how the CFM program was formed. Next month, we’ll share some of the key changes to the program that have occurred in the past 10 years. 

Getting the Certified Floodplain Manager program up and running was nothing short of a labor of love. It took years, tons of research, thousands of volunteer hours and lots of collaboration and comparisons before the first exam was even administered at the 1999 ASFPM conference in Portland, Oregon.

In 1992, Jim Owen, chair of ASFPM’s Professional Development Committee at the time, explored a certification program, and Larry Larson, now ASFPM’s director emeritus, thought the concept had merit, so he formed a Certification Task Force to look into the possibility in 1995. 

“During the same time frame, the Certified Emergency Manager program was being developed with strong support from FEMA,” said John Ivey with the PDC for our Certification Board of Regents. The information gathered from Bonnie Butler, who was with FEMA’s Emergency Management Institute, helped to avoid some of the “pitfalls” identified during development of the CEM program, such as required education and experience to take the certification exam and avoidance of narrative or subjective exam questions. 

Also during this time period, the New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas chapters also saw the importance of a certification program and developed state CFM programs.

Ivey said the group believed then as they do today, that the creation of a national CFM program would improve floodplain management nationwide. “A CFM program would provide the avenue needed to educate community floodplain managers and permit officials in floodplain management. When community floodplain officials are educated (certified) and go on to make sound floodplain management decisions, we should see a major reduction in loss of life and damage from flood events.”

In 1999 after the initial exam was given, this nation had its first 66 CFMs through ASFPM’s program. To date, a total of 13,878 CFMs have been certified nationwide and it’s projected that number could rise to 39,712 by 2020.

Mark Riebau, CBOR’s president, said he sees multiple benefits for floodplain management professionals who get their CFM.

He said people with a CFM can improve their chances of finding employment, citing a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued this month that indicated people who held a certification had a significantly lower rate of unemployment—2.7% vs 6.1%—and had earnings of approximately 1/3 greater than those who were not.  

“Becoming a CFM is the first step in demonstrating a person is qualified to work as a floodplain manager,” Riebau said. “The steps to become a CFM only demonstrate the minimum knowledge of the principles of floodplain management, but experience and the requirement to earn Continuing Education Credits to maintain the CFM credential improves the CFM’s knowledge and qualifications.”

We all know that every community that participates in the National Flood Insurance Program is legally obligated to adopt a floodplain development ordinance to guide new development away from the floodplain, or if unavoidable, be elevated above the base flood elevation. Additionally, every community that participates in the NFIP must designate a floodplain administrator to implement the provisions of the floodplain development ordinance. 

Riebau said, “There is no better way for a community to assure itself that whoever they designate as their floodplain administrator is qualified than to require the person to be a CFM. There is no better way for participating communities to be confident they are retaining engineering firms to review and improve their flood maps than to hire firms that have CFMs on staff. Planners, engineers, land surveyors and other professionals who are CFMs are far more qualified to provide services within communities that have identified flood hazards than those that are not.”

Excerpted from the 2016 article, How the CFM Program Came to Be.  Learn more about the history of the CFM program.