Bringing ProCertification to Contractors

By Cass Jacoby. 

This NRCA ProCertification® event at IB Roof Systems Headquarters was all about getting as many contractors certified as possible.  

Last July at the IB Roof Systems plant, the National Roofing Contractors Association’s (NRCA) presented on their national certification initiative, ProCertification®. The presentation gave a variety of perspectives on the certification, from contractor to manufacturer to specifier, ultimately working to inspire attendees to certify their experience and skills as professionals in order to elevate the industry. 

“We decided to put in together a kickoff event and it was wonderfully attended thanks to a lot of really great contractors here in the metroplex. I can't name them all, but we had many, many contractors representing,” says Jason in a Roofing Road Trips podcast episode. “They all came in as a panel to speak about how certification has impacted them personally and impacted their company, and then spoke on the vision of what they think certification can do to the industry.” 

The event was an astute demonstration of the industry-wide push to create a standard for certifying skills and experience for roofing professionals. Ultimately, the event was created to inspire the contractors to come back to IB HQ in late September to take the hands-on exam to get Pro-Certified. 

“We're setting up 16 roof decks. And we will have four qualified assessors, four of our technical folks that are here, that can then observe this,” says Jason. “So that you can do 16 people before lunch, 16 people after lunch, and then repeat it the next day to where hopefully you can put 64 people through pro certification in two days.” The goal is to try and make it as easy and convenient as possible for contractors to earn their ProCertification. The goal of this event was to help speed up the process of people getting certified and boost the program by making it easier than ever to get nationally certified.  

ProCertification is leading the industry towards a more competent and sustainable workforce, built of experienced workers who regularly demonstrate substantial roofing knowledge and skills. This certification is designed to create clear career paths for roofing professionals, address the current workforce shortage, increase customer confidence in workers and elevate the roofing industry with other trade professions that currently offer national certifications. 

With events like these, the industry inches towards transforming into something better than before.  “Could you imagine if we put on an event like this every quarter? We're a small manufacturer, what could other manufacturers do that are much larger than us?” says Jason. “If we, as an industry can really get behind this and start shouldering the load or sharing the load of this, we can start rolling many, many contractors through this program and see those numbers come up where they need to be.” 

Learn more about NRCA in their RoofersCoffeeShop® Directory or visit www.nrca.net. 

About Cass  

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop, AskARoofer and MetalCoffeeShop. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is putting her Master degree to work writing about movies and dancing with her plants.