Your thoughts on Workforce Share w/ us
Efficiency First is working on a national study to define the workforce needs of the home performance industry. Your responses will be kept confidential, but will be critical in defining the residential energy efficiency industry’s perspective on workforce development and training priorities.
Please help make this study reflect your company’s workforce needs by completing the Efficiency First Workforce Survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/efficiencyfirstworkforce. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes and should be completed by April 26, 2010.
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Please develop and coordinate initiatives with the large HVAC Contractor Organizations throughout the country. Many of the key players are highlighted weekly in the publication, THE NEWS – The HVACR Contractor’s Weekly Newsmagize published by BNP Media; for MORE go to http://www.achrnews.com
We need training for workers, insulation, air sealing, duct sealing.
BPI Technicians are not what everyone has to be.
We need the worker bees.
Incentives for new hires that we train would also work.
I would anticipate hiring an additional two to six employees. We are a residential , commercial new construction contractor. I have the equipment and employees , if I bring back some folks we previously laid off…My big concern is the wage rate and how that plays out…
The issue I have is that the rebates should extend to independent third party energy audits. After all they would be the most objective and provide the consumer with a roadmap that would clearly lay out the projects that they could do themselves and projects that they would need to higher qualified BPI/RESNET certified contractors. I think Lowes, Home Depot, RESNET, BPI and the Federal Government are missing the boat on the amount of work that will be done if consumers had a choice to hire a non-contractor Independent Auditor. The program can stay as it is just add a provision that auditors can receive $500-$1000 rebate for providing a comprehensive audit (CAZ, Blower door, Duct blaster, Thermal imaging, Improvement Analysis, action plan, referral list of approved contractors and test out after work has been completed)
The argument against has been that people will get the audits and not do the work… That is a load of B.S. the past programs that had bad numbers never went back and asked if homeowners did the work themselves… they also didn’t have the financial incentives in place that we are talking about through the Home Star and various revolving loan funds being established.
The truth is that people who have a company like mine come in to their house for several hours for a free or subsidized audit and receive an unbiased improvement analysis showing them how they can dramatically save energy and improve their comfort do pursue getting the work done.
Again, an independent third party audit is the best advertising and promotion for a program like this. Let companies like mine promote good contractors and handle all the headaches of the audit and quality assurance.
We use subsidized labor pools such as at-risk teens, formerly incarcerated individuals, and people from other disadvantaged backgrounds to perform the “warm-forehead” work like sealing ducts, fixing insulation, and weather-stripping jobs. Doing so makes the labor price affordable.
The major hurdle with getting those labor pools up and running though is acquiring the proper licensing with the state. Here in New Mexico, the applicable licenses are GB-01 and GB-14. But to get those licenses, the group needs to have a qualifying party with two years of applicable experience… in CAULKING! This is the hurdle we encounter. Two years experience caulking is a ridiculous amount to demand and therefore our biggest roadblock in providing inexpensive labor to make the retrofit process feasible. This is a major roadblock if and when Home Star goes through because it will essentially prohibit all but General Contractors from receiving that money. Something has to give with the requirement of having two years experience with caulking in order to get a license to caulk.
The other hurdle we encounter is follow through. I would say that of all the audits I perform, after preparing a really comprehensive report of findings and recommendations, MAYBE 25% of the folks actually act on the recommendations. And of those 25%, MAYBE 10% of those folks actually spend over $800. So that right there is the forehead hitting the brick wall, over and over again. If the retrofit process is not affordable, what point is there to an audit? I’m in this business to shut down the coal and nuclear plants. Without the states, cities, and counties lightening up a bit on the restrictions for small subsidized labor organizations to get their licensing, we’re really at a dead end as far as reducing GHGs in a timely manner. And what it then does is put the money once again into the pockets of the big contractors and not the little guy. I represent the little guy…