Badge of Profes­sionalism

Installers find NEHA’s national onsite credential helps them command respect from customers and stand apart from competitors

Terri Jakoubek knows the installation business she owns with husband Lloyd has an edge on competitors. That’s not just because they have the knowledge that goes with nine years of running a company. It’s also because they have something few other local installers can claim: a national credential.

Jakoubeks, owners of Raymond Contracting in Raymond, Neb., are among nearly 300 professionals who as of May 1 held the Certified Installer of Onsite Wastewater Treat-ment Systems credential, offered by the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA). The credential is starting to take off as it gains exposure at onsite industry events and as state and local regulators begin to embrace it as a voluntary or mandatory standard of professional excellence.

NEHA began work on the credential in 2004 and made it official in June 2006. As of May, 290 onsite practitioners were credentialed: 171 at the basic level and 119 at the advanced level, according to Heidi Shaw, NEHA credentialing coordinator.

Those with the credential represented 33 states — Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin — along with Ontario and Puerto Rico.

No easy road

Alaska’s credentialed installers include Dean Foxworthy, owner of Cornerstone Excavating on Kodiak Island. He earned his basic credential in 2007 and passed the advanced exam in 2009, in both cases at the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International. The quality of the tests impressed him.

“They were tough — much, much harder than the state credentialing exam,” he reports. “I wasn’t expecting them to be that hard. There was a lot of math, and even though math is one of my strong points, I had to do a lot of thinking to solve the problems and reach the right conclusions.”

Foxworthy is now the only nationally credentialed installer among half a dozen competitors on the island. He installs up to a dozen conventional systems per year in addition to his general excavating work, which includes digging for foundations, moving earth, and making sewer and water connections for home construction.

His commitment to quality installations includes regular attendance at the Pumper & Cleaner Expo and the Installer Academy, sponsored by the National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association (NOWRA) in Las Vegas, Nev.

“If I’m going to work in this business, I want to stand out,” he says. “I want to learn everything there is to know about systems and the proper ways of installing them. I want to be ahead of everybody else and do it correctly. I believe the NEHA credential is going to become one of the leading criteria for the nation. I think the states would benefit from recognizing it. It’s something they should look at seriously.”

Serious about the business

The Jakoubeks took the credentialing exam in December 2006 at the Installer Academy. The test was offered there at no charge after a training program given by the Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment (CIDWT).

“We thought that while all that information was still fresh in our heads, we would go ahead and take the test and become credentialed nationally,” Terri Jakoubek says.

The Jakoubeks have held the credential for two years and nine months. To renew it after two years, they had to complete 12 hours of continuing education, which they earned at the Installer Academy in 2007 and 2008.

“A part of our motivation was to put another feather in our hat for our marketing program — letting customers know that we’re serious about the business and that we have a great desire for education,” Jakoubek says. “We believe we have more knowledge than the competition in our area, and we have proof of that with the credential.”

While Nebraska installers must be state-certified, Jakoubeks feel they gained an edge by adding the national credential. “We mention it in all the literature that we provide to customers,” Jakoubek says. “When we meet with customers, we often talk about it. Typically, the people are kind of excited. It lets them know that we are pretty serious and pretty passionate about what we do.

“A lot of homeowners are knowledgeable because of all the information they can get on the Internet,” she says. “We talk and they can relate. It just makes for a really good match. There are a lot of good installers in our area, but then there are those who are first and foremost excavators. Homeowners choose us nine times out of ten when they compare us with someone whose main job is excavating.”

Toward advanced treatment

The Jakoubeks hold the basic installer credential and aspire to earning the advanced level to prepare for growth in advanced treatment systems. “In Nebraska today, there aren’t a lot of non-conventional systems,” Jakoubek says. “But once the state becomes more involved with advanced systems, we will have a leg up, because of the knowledge we will have gained. That’s pretty exciting.

“Development outside the city limits is growing. I can’t say the economy is great here, but we have been just as busy with new construction as in years past. As we see more development, we’re going to run into situations where a gravity-flow, conventional system or a lagoon is not going to work.

“Right now, we have to get a professional engineer involved to do advanced system design,” Jakoubek says. “But the Nebraska On-site Wastewater Association is working with the state to allow individual certified installers to do more advanced installations.”

Advanced systems are by no means the exception in Brian Scheffe’s world. As a technical representative with Front Range Precast Concrete in Boulder, Colo., Scheffe oversees installation of numerous systems that include aerobic treatment units, many with concrete tanks made by his company.

Scheffe earned the advanced onsite credential in April 2008 at the annual NOWRA conference. As acting president of Colorado Professionals in Onsite Wastewater, he promotes the credential to the state’s installers. The association offers the exam at its annual con-ference, as does the Colorado Environmental Health Association.

Scheffe is impressed with the training curriculum developed by the CIDWT. “In my opinion, they are the most knowledgeable body of individuals in the onsite industry,” he says. “So you not only have a good exam. You have a curriculum to effectively train people to take that exam and do well.”

Conferring credibility

Scheffe sees the credential as a tool for third-party credibility. “When I give opinions to an engineer or designer, or when I give advice to a homeowner or excavator or any onsite professional, it lets them know that those opinions are not necessarily just mine — that they represent experts throughout the country who agree that those are the best management practices available today,” he says. “In line with that, the credential demonstrates that you have a good understanding of those practices.

“The two levels of credentialing allow some flexibility for different levels of risk on a site. For less risky sites, it may be fully acceptable to have someone install systems with the basic credential, but when you get into more challenging sites and more complex systems, you can set a threshold for when it becomes necessary to have that advanced level.

“It’s also a peer-reviewed credential in that NEHA brought experts in from various regions throughout the country to piece that exam together,” Scheffe notes. “And it has continuing education requirements built in. That makes it a good candidate for easy adoption by state and local regulatory agencies. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel — there’s a good credential already developed and available for them to put in place.

“CPOW is promoting it for now as a voluntary credential, but we hope to make its official adoption a part of our effort to revamp the onsite regulatory scheme in our state.”

To the next level

That’s exactly the direction envisioned by Doug Bird, environmental health sanitarian for Bremer County in north central Iowa. He says his state could be on track toward making the credential mandatory for onsite installers.

Although he is not an installer, Bird took and passed the basic level credential exam on behalf of the Iowa Onsite Waste Water Associa-tion (IOWWA). “We were looking for something to offer installers as a means of certification,” says Bird, an IOWWA board member. “I took the exam to see if it looked like something that could be workable for us. I took my experience back to the board, and we decided to proceed with encouraging installers to take the NEHA credentialing exams.

“Our association’s long-term goal is to make the credential a requirement statewide. It’s purely voluntary at this point. There are 99 counties in Iowa, and five already require it, Bremer County being one of them.

“From there, it’s spreading,” Bird says. “Several other counties are looking at it. Our goal would be to generate enough interest to approach the state legislature and ask them to make it a state law that all installers need to be credentialed in this manner.”

As of May, 114 Iowa professionals held the credential. IOWWA helps its members by offering the exam locally and providing preparatory classes taught by David Gustafson and Sara Christopherson of the University of Minnesota onsite program. “We offer a day and a half of instruction before the exams, and I think that has really helped,” Bird observes. “Our success rate on the exams given here in Iowa is about 95 percent.

“It has been well-received, even by contractors who work in counties that do not require credentialing. We have a lot of people just coming forward and getting it, and I think that’s because it helps them show a level of professionalism in the industry. It’s an indication that an installer has a certain degree of competency and is keeping up with continuing education and the latest technology.”



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