Contractor Training Expands to (Triad) Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point and Asheville, NC

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Robert

Contractor Training, LLC of Raleigh Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accredited training provider in North Carolina Expands Lead Based Paint Safety Course for Certified Renovators into Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem and Asheville

Contractor Training company of Raleigh specializes in EPA Certification for contractors, remodelers, renovators, property managers, painters and repairmen to meet new Environmental Legislation on lead paint

RALEIGH, NC, March  28, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ — Contractor Training LLC, announced today that it has expanded its EPA and NC Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) training statewide.

“Since the first of the year we have received more and more requests for this required EPA lead paint training from the western part of the state so we are expanding into the Triad Area and Asheville”, said Robert Attaway, President, Contractor Training.   “Because we are a small business, we understand the need to keep travel time and expenses for this EPA Lead Training to a minimum,” said Attaway.  “Contractor Training is working hard to be the training provider of choice for small businesses in North Carolina and this expansion now extends these RRP Lead classes from Wilmington to Asheville making this EPA Certified Renovator training accessible to most contractors, remodelers, renovators, painters, property managers, and repairmen in the state.”

As a licensed general contractor and real estate broker,  Robert Attaway understands the remodeling and renovation business and uses his experience when teaching these EPA rules for working on residential housing and child occupied facilities built before 1978.  The EPA regulations are far reaching and changes how repair work is done on all houses built before 1978, including the requirement for a Certified Renovator on each of these jobs to help prevent lead poisoning.  EPA fines under these environmental laws can go as high as $37,500 per day. In addition to the EPA rules, the North Carolina Health Hazards Control Unit (NCHHCU) has their own rules that apply to work done in NC.

Contractor Training is there to help your employees learn how to comply with these new environmental protection act regulations to give you a competitive advantage.  EPA Certification classes are currently scheduled in Raleigh/Durham, Greensboro/Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Asheville, Fayetteville and  Wilmington. If these sites are not convenient we can schedule a class anywhere in North or South Carolina at your location with a minimum of four students.  Learn more about Contractor Training, the hazards of lead paint and about these new rules by visiting our website at www.contractortraining.com

Contractor Training also offers On-Demand OSHA Safety Courses:

About Contractor Training, LLC

Contractor Training is an EPA and NC accredited training provider for the EPA Lead Safety for Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Initial (eight hour) training course.  Contractor Training is also an EPA accredited E-Learning training provider for the RRP Initial course.   We have over 25 years of experience in teaching construction safety to adults and strive to make our training both interesting and informative.  If you are interested in an OSHA ten hour course or an OSHA 30 hour class or want to know more about lead based paint training visit Contractor Training at  www.contractortraining.com

 

 

Posted in Renovation Repair and Painting rule (RRP) | Leave a comment

Contractor Training, Accredited by EPA

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Robert

Contractor Training, LLC of Raleigh, North Carolina has been accredited by the Environment Protection Agency, (EPA) to teach new Lead Based Paint Safety Course for Certified Renovators.

Local training company specializes in EPA Certification for contractors, remodelers, renovators, property managers, painters and repairmen to meet new Environmental Legislation on lead based paint.

RALEIGH/CHARLOTTE/WILMINGTON, NC, February 24, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ — Contractor Training, announced today that they are offering the new EPA Lead Safety Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) courses throughout NorthApproved training Carolina including; Raleigh, Charlotte, Wilmington, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Cary, and Fayetteville.   This training will meet the EPA training requirements for working on residential housing or child occupied facilities built before 1978, including procedures for testing for lead.  Completion of this training will qualify you for an EPA certificate as a Certified Renovator.

“As a licensed general contractor and remodeler myself, I understand how difficult it is to stay current with new rules and regulations in the construction business,” said Robert Attaway, President, Contractor Training.  “It seems like our industry is often singled out for burdensome rules and regulations because of the actions of a few unscrupulous characters” said Attaway.   Normally these new rules come from local governments, but this time it is coming from the Federal Government, more specifically the EPA.  This is a far reaching rule and will change how repair work is done on all houses built before 1978, including the requirement for a Certified Renovator on each of these jobs to help prevent lead poisoning.   EPA’s fines under these environmental laws are also big and can go as high as $37,500 per day.

Contractor Training is here to help you learn how to comply with these new environmental protection act rules and hopefully give you a competitive advantage.  We have scheduled classes every month in Raleigh, Charlotte or Wilmington and are willing to hold classes at your site anywhere in North or South Carolina if you have a minimum of four students.   Learn more about Contractor Training, the hazards of lead paint and about these new rules by visiting our website at www.contractortraining.com

 

Contractor Training also offers On-Demand OSHA Safety Courses:
OSHA 10 hour course Construction
OSHA 30 hour course Construction

About Contractor Training, LLC
Contractor Training is an EPA and NC accredited training provider for the EPA Lead Safety for Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Initial (eight hour) training course.  Contractor Training is also an EPA accredited E-Learning training provider for the RRP Initial course.   We have over 25 years of experience in teaching construction safety to adults and strive to make our training both interesting and informative.  If you are interested in an OSHA ten hour course or an OSHA 30 hour class or want to know more about lead based paint training visit Contractor Training at  www.contractortraining.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Renovation Repair and Painting rule (RRP) | Leave a comment

EPA has a Gun to the Head of Small Businesses and it’s Loaded with 37,500 Bullets ($37,500 in fines, that is)

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Robert

Why would EPA hold a gun to the head of small contractors, renovators, painters, handymen, and landlords in the United States? I am not really sure but it is a pretty scary thought.  Do you know what the nine most terrifying words in the English language are?  “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronald Regan The EPA isn’t even going to sugar coat it that much, they’re going to say “I’m from the government and I’m here to fine you.”

The EPA Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) program isn’t designed to help the small contractor learn about the rule and win him over.  It’s intended to scare andintimidate him into compliance.  Almost everything published by the EPA directed at contractors talks about fines.

Why are they trying to intimidate the contractor rather than help him to understand the rule?   I think it’s because they don’t have a choice.  The sheer scope of the RRP rule is so large and far reaching that it’s hard to grasp.  It’s just not possible to effectively regulate the hundreds of thousands of activities and people that this rule is attempting to regulate.  Plus many, if not most, of these activities and people have never been regulated before.

If you talk to any local building inspector in small town USA, (and if he is honest) he will tell you that there are hundreds of  plumbing, electrical, HVAC, and renovation projects that get done each year without a permit that technically probably should have one.  It’s not possible for that local building inspector to know about every job going on in his little town and if he did start looking into people’s houses and backyards he would probably get fired when the Mayor started getting complaints.

He will also likely tell you that when he does run across someone doing something wrong he will normally stop and talk to them about the job and tell them what the rules are and explain why it is important to get a permit for certain jobs.  This approach of encouragement and education is what makes local government effective and why all Americans would rather deal with local people that they know and trust rather than an authoritarian bureaucrat in Washington, DC.   However, if education and encouragement don’t work, the inspector always has enforcement as an option.

The magnitude of the RRP rule makes this “common sense” approach to implementation of the RRP rule impossible.   When you look at the local building inspector he is generally dealing with professional trades that have traditionally been regulated to some degree with state licenses which have licensing boards with their own rules, regulations, and oversight.  But with the RRP you are not only covering all of these existing trades but also adding in all the painters, handymen, landlords, and multitude of other minor repairmen, most of whom have never been licensed or regulated. The building inspector is going to tell you that if he is responsible for “all” these new activities he is going to need more staff.

Now I do not know how many local building inspectors there are in the US today, there must be at least 50,000 and may be as many as 100,000.  Whatever the number is, it is large and it would have to increase if your local inspector has to also regulate painters, handymen, landlords, repairmen, etc…

Do you see the scope of what this RRP rule mandates?  On any given day how many potential RRP projects are underway in houses built before 1978 in the United States?  If you use EPA’s own numbers, they say this rule will govern 34 million houses in the US.  So let’s say that 1% of these 34 million have some kind of work going on at any given time.  That would mean 340,000 RRP projects every day in the US.    How many inspectors do the EPA and the 12 states that are regulating this program have assigned to these projects?  I don’t know but I would guess it would be in the low hundreds rather than thousands.

So how can the EPA hope to manage so many projects with so little manpower?  The answer is simple, they can’t.  They just don’t have the resources.  This makes the common sense approach of contractor education and encouragement impractical for EPA.  This means all they have are fines and intimidation to get contractors to comply.

If EPA does show up at your doorstep or you get that certified letter asking for your records, don’t expect them to say “I’m here to help you” it will be more like “stick ‘em up and pay up”.  I just hope they don’t unload all $37,500 bullets on you.

In closing let me say I am not blaming the EPA inspectors for this rule, they are just doing their job.  In my opinion the fault lies with the administrators of a Federal Bureaucracy (EPA) that have implemented a new rule that is so far reaching in scope that it can not possibly be managed.  One has to wonder if it will not ultimately just collapse under its own weight.  Until then my advice is follow the rules and get trained.

Welcome to Paint Chips.  Our objective is to shed a little light on the new EPA Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rules.  Our motto is “let the chips fall where they may“.  We welcome your comments.

Posted in Enforcement, Fines, Renovation Repair and Painting rule (RRP), Renovators | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“EPA says children living in HUD housing are more valuable than your children.”

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Robert

I know this sounds unbelievable.  But is it true?  This statement was made by a mother in one of our Certified Renovator (RRP) courses.  She was shocked and appalled to learn that the United States Government had two separate standards (EPA and HUD) to protect the health of children based on where they live.

She was not questioning the need to protect children from the potential harmful effects of disturbing lead based paint during home renovations, but she did object to the government establishing two classes of children.  One class that lives in HUD subsidized housing and everyone else. As a small business owner and general contractor she also questioned how these rules were developed and what they were going to cost her business.

Her questions were fast and furious: “Why have two separate standards?   What is the federal government’s logic here?  Children are children regardless of where they live, why not protect them all equally?”; “Where did these numbers come from?”; “Is there scientific research to show that renovation work is where kids are getting lead poisoned?  If there is such research why not use those results to set the same standard for all housing?  Why have a separate standard for subsidized housing?”; “If you can’t prove what standards are safe then are the numbers being used just arbitrarily?; and finally “How is the federal government going to measure the health benefit versus the cost to small businesses to comply with these rules?”.

When she finally stopped, everyone in the room was in a quiet state of shock.  All I could say was, “Wow!”  She had raised more questions and issues about this topic in three minutes than the rest of us had every thought about.  Needless to say I could not answer most of her questions and I am not sure the EPA has good answers either.  But they are good questions and they should be answered.  We will try to address many of them here over the coming weeks and months.

As for the statement “so the EPA is saying children living in HUD housing are more valuable than your children” certainly the EPA has not said that.  But the fact that the HUD standards for federally subsidized housing are so much more restrictive than the EPA standards indicates that someone must think it is true.  It certainly raises some questions.

Are the HUD rules set too high?  If they are too high, aren’t we wasting a lot of federal tax dollars to pay for protective measures that are not really warranted?  Maybe the EPA rules are too low.  If that’s the case isn’t the EPA putting children at risk who do not live in subsidized housing?  Or maybe the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule is just a blanket attempt to solve a problem based on limited research, using arbitrary numbers to try and meet some theoretical government objectives.  Who knows?

Of course we might just have two huge federal bureaucracies that were suppose to work together to come up with one set of rules, but since they could not agree they decided that each would have their own rules and guard their turf.  Does this sound familiar (i.e. the Debt Ceiling and Budget Negotiations)?

Maybe there is something in the water in Washington, D.C. (I wonder what the lead levels are in the drinking water in the Capital City?)  You know that might explain a lot of things!

Welcome to Paint Chips.  Our objective is to shed a little light on the new EPA Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rules.  Our motto is “let the chips fall where they may“.  We welcome your comments.

 

Posted in Lead Paint, Renovation Repair and Painting rule (RRP) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is the EPA trying to put you out of business?

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Robert

Well I am not sure they are trying to put you out of business, but these new rules are certainly going to put a lot of small contractors, painters, handymen, landlords, college students, and even some hard working kids out of business.

One of my lasting memories of growing up was a summer painting job my brother and I did for our Dad.  We actually volunteered for the job to make some extra cash. (Yes we were young and dumb!)  I was 13 years old at the time and my brother was 16.

We were to paint the outside of a 1920s fixer upper whose paint was peeling like rubber at the Rockingham Drag Strip.  It all needed scraping and my Dad was not going to let a drop of paint hit it until our scraping passed inspection.  Did I mention that my Dad was an old Army drill sergeant?

And scrape we did.  It was the middle of July and temperatures were pushing 100o every afternoon in the NC Sandhills.  After nearly two weeks of sweat and hard work we eventually finished and got paid.  Yep, compensated, not a lot mind you, but enough to be in violation of these new EPA rules, since I am sure we would not have been an EPA Lead Certified Firm or Certified Renovator.

Of course we were minors working on our Dad’s house so maybe we would not have gotten fined.  But what about our Dad? Since he was doing this work himself (using us) on his own house he would be exempt right?   WRONG! He would be in violation of the EPA rules since this work was on a rental house and rent is considered compensation according to the EPA Lead Safety Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule.

Oh well that was then and this is now so we are all just going to have to get in line and comply with the EPA right?  All I can say is my Dad is still kicking at 86 and that rental house is still standing and IF (now mind you it is a big IF) he could talk his grandson into scraping and painting it today I would not want to be the EPA inspector that tried to fine him for working on his own property.  Did I mention that he was also 82nd Airborne and a Ranger!  Good luck EPA, you are going to need it.

Speaking of soldiers I want all of you to know how proud we are of you and your service.  We know you have sacrificed a lot to keep our country free and we truly appreciate it.  Thank you, especially you Dad.   Happy 4th of July!

Welcome to Paint Chips.  Our objective is to shed a little light on the new EPA Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rules.  Our motto is “let the chips fall where they may“.  We welcome your comments.

 

 

Posted in Certified Firms, Compensation, Fines, Renovation Repair and Painting rule (RRP), Renovators, Unintended Consequences | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment