Home Inspector Continual Education

As publisher of The BC Inspector industry newsletter, I like to practise what I preach and try to attend most of the continuing education opportunities in my geographical area. I am also currently taking a 12 week Building Envelope Science course at BCIT.

What strikes me as unfortunate, is that I seldom see any volume of other inspectors at these events. In fact, I usually see the same 2-3 inspectors who like me, feel that remaining current in your training is crucial to performing our jobs properly. (Province probably has in the region of 350-500 licenced inspectors)

Many inspectors make all kinds of claims of earned education credits, but why are they never seen at building industry seminars and events. BC Building Envelope Council puts on excellent seminars on a regular basis, that are completely relevant for a home and property inspector. The Building Enclosure Science industry hosts regular conferences providing a full day of learning on just one topic - building envelope, which is the most important building component today in light of the number of leaking multi-family units on the market. Yet at all of the recent events I attended there were the same 2-3 of us from the home inspection industry.

Many inspectors do attend the meeting seminars provided by their certification associations and these events are a useful addition to a inspectors training. However, they are often limited in scope or too brief to be of any meaningful educational when attended in isolation. There main purpose seems to be to allow the inspector to check off that they have met their associations continual training requirements.

There should be some requirement within the certification programs or even licencing that ensures an inspector receives continual training on ALL of the buildings components and systems in a home. In addition to earning a certain number of arbitrary credits per year, an inspector should have to provide proof that they have covered a list of required topics on a cycle of X years. This would force the inspectors to break out and seek out a wider variety of training and would encourage the certification associations to look further afield, than the usual fair, for seminar providers.

In fact, it is now easy than ever, for a home inspector to find out what is being offered in their areas by becoming a subscriber to http://www.thebcinspector.ca/, where they will be able to view a CPD calendar that lists hundreds of seminar opportunities across the Province.

SO, when hiring an inspector, ask what courses are seminars they have taken lately and see if they truly are maintaining their professional development in this field.