Raising the bar

By Emma Peterson. 

Learn how RCAT is filling the licensing gap in Texas and pushing the industry to higher levels of professionalism and expertise. 

In this episode of Roofing Road Trips®, Karen Edwards sat down with Holly Green and Sarah Ramon of the Roofing Contractors Association of Texas (RCAT) to talk about their work to support contractors in Texas. Sarah, who is the executive director of RCAT, explained that being a contractor in Texas poses a very unique challenge, “The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation does not oversee a license for roofing contractors in Texas.” 

The lack of regulation can make it difficult for home and business owners to know which contractors to trust and can make it hard to gauge the quality of the industry on a whole. Sarah explained, “Anybody in Texas can call themselves a roofing contractor. You don't have to have any experience, you don't have to have insurance, you don't have to have a license, you don't have to have anything. And so unfortunately, in Texas, roofing scams are perpetuated at a very high rate.”  

As a response, RCAT has developed their own, voluntary licensing program to fill the gap. This program gives contractors an easy way to show home and building owners that they have insurance, they have gone through a background check and they have the expertise needed to complete a quality job. If you’re a Texas contractor interested, RCAT hosts a bootcamp every year to help contractors learn and train to pass the certification tests online. Sarah shared a bit of what this bootcamp entails, “We go through the material, through the business and safety, the residential and the commercial roofing modules with you. We have a 99% pass rate with the bootcamp. Then, you can take the test online, at any time.” 

Holly, who is RCAT’s current president and the owner of her own company out of Fort Worth, Texas called Brettco Roofing, is one of the contractors that has gone through this certification process. She pointed out that being vetted by an independent third-party really helps her set her business apart from the crowd, “It's helped me help my customers understand that I take pride not only in the work that we do, but the way we do it, we install it per manufacturer specs, we follow all of the specifications when we're vetting projects, from commercial to residential as well.” 

Read the transcript or Listen to the conversation for more about this program and how RCAT is helping the roofing industry in Texas.