Certified Master Inspector meeting.
November 14, 2005.
A group of inspection industry leaders recently met for several days in New York
to develop a Certified Master Inspector (CMI) curriculum to be offered to and adopted by home inspection schools that
wish to offer advanced education opportunities to inspectors.
Meeting Participants:
-
Joe Ferry, InterNACHI's legal counsel (PA).
-
Tom Lahoun, InterNACHI member, InterNACHI trainer and President of the Midwest Inspectors
Institute (KS).
-
Dr. Bill Merrell, InterNACHI member, InterNACHI trainer and President of the Merrell Institute
(NY).
-
Len Ungar, InterNACHI member and InterNACHI Chapter President (NY).
-
George Wells, InterNACHI member, InterNACHI trainer and President of the Best Inspectors
Network (OH).
-
Deanna Willis of InterNACHI's Corporate Relations Director (CO).
The informal meeting lead by Dr. Merrell lasted several days (Nov 3-7, 2005)
and resulted in the development of a CMI curriculum for the home inspection industry.
2006 will be the year of education for the home inspection industry due to many factors:
-
A changing industry requiring more education.
-
Initial education being a requirement to obtain a home inspection license in
many states.
-
Continuing education being a requirement to maintain existing home inspection
licenses.
-
Repeat courses not being accepted for continuing education purposes by many licensing
boards.
-
InterNACHI increasing its continuing education requirements to 24 hours per year.
-
Error and Omissions insurance requirements and discounts.
-
InterNACHI's launching of ancillary inspection marketing campaigns.
-
Desire by many inspectors for advanced education.
Because of these factors and several others, home inspectors are going to be
taking more and more home inspection courses anyway. The purpose of this meeting
was to develop an advanced education curriculum to be adopted by home inspection
education providers (schools) that would allow attendees to hit several birds
with one stone; learn of changes in our industry, acquire initial and continuing
educational requirements for state licensing purposes, fulfill InterNACHI's increased
continuing education requirements, obtain insurance discounts, gain some competence
in related fields, feed their hunger for advanced education and allow them attain
a possible step toward earning a CMI professional designation (should one become
formalized). These combined benefits create a strong incentive for attending
only those schools that adopt the CMI Curriculum.
InterNACHI previously developed a
CMI Formula, a
CMI Exam and now has a CMI Curriculum available to schools that wish to offer it.
In the near future, the group will be making recommendations to InterNACHI with regard
to creating a formal CMI Board to oversee continuing education provider's adoption
and use of the CMI Curriculum. It is the intention of the group to offer the
CMI Curriculum to all home inspection schools.
Certified Master Inspector and CMI are Federal Trademarks.