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News: NC Inspection Issues
Posted on Monday, March 22 @ 02:51:13 PDT
Topic: Legislative Issues
|
 Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am attaching a letter from the North Carolina
State Board of Examiners of Plumbing, Heating & Fire Sprinkler
Contractors.
If you do any
Inspection contracts in North Carolin
you must read and understand
this letter!!!
Earlier in 2009 I uncovered a
problem where the North Carolina contracting regulations prohibited a
Licensed Sprinkler Inspection Contractor from taking a contract from any
party other than the Owner of a property.
After significant research
and discussion with roughly 20 Contractors I determined that this was
an Industry issue that needed to be addressed as Sprinkler Contractors
were starting to get citations from the State Board in regards to this
issue.
I contacted Jeffery Dunn, the President of the North
Carolina AFSA Chapter and reviewed the issue with him and we decided to
ask for a meeting with the State Board to review and seek clarification.
On
October 1, 2009 Jeffery Dunn, Joe Collins and John Turnage of the North
Carolina AFSA Chapter and I met with Dale Dawson, the Executive
Director of the State Board, to discuss this issue.
After a review of the regulations with this group it was clear that the
State Board interpretation to the current regulations was that it
required that an Inspection Sprinkler Contractor must do the following
directly with the owner only in regards to an inspection contract;
1)
Contract directly with the owner only.
2) Develop the
inspection paperwork directly with the Owner to be addressed to the
owner and signed by the owner
3) Bill directly to the owner
4)
Be paid directly by the owner
My discussion with over 20
Sprinkler Contractors led me to the belief that as many as 50% of the
Inspection Contracts in place were illegal per the North Carolina
regulations.
It was our belief that the North Carolina regulations
were not as clear as they need to be and we asked Dale Dawson to provide
clarity.
We also asked Dale Dawson to consider allowing other
entities to stand in the place of the Owner in contracting for
inspections.
The letter
attached is the response received and this is a serious issue!!!
Please
do not disregard this letter if you do inspections in North Carolina as
if you breach this regulation you could lose your Inspection
Contracting License and your Inspector could lose his personal license.
Please
note in this letter that the State Board will allow inspection
contracts with Licensed Property Managers which is a change from the
initial position at our meeting.
We all understand that this
smack in the face of what your customers may want but the law is the
law!!!
The State Board has made it clear that it will not
tolerate illegal contracting.
The State Board has made it clear that
they will take action through the North Carolina Attorney Generals
office against non regulants who ignore this law.
I suggest
strongly that if you have North Carolina inspection contracts you take
action to correct the problem today.
Many of you have many inspection
contracts and while the State Board would not agree to any grace period
I do believe that if you follow the following procedure that you will
be granted liencany although I can not guarantee this.
1)
Evaluate all contracts to determine each one that is not directly with
an Owner or a Licensed Property Manager
2) Establish a program
to bring all of you inspection contracts into compliance
3)
Discuss the law with the entity who you are currently contracting with
and work with them to correct the problem.
4) Develop a
communication to the end customer about the law and attach the PDF from
the State Board for their reference
5) Determine a quantity of
inspection contracts to correct each week and try to get this cleaned up
in three months
6) Keep detailed records of your actions each
week to clean up your inspection contracts and come into compliance with
the law
If you receive a complaint you will need to be able to
prove you are actively working to correct this problem.
As you
will see in the text of the State Board letter they have advised that
ignorance and confusion will not be an excuse that they accept in the
future.
I do plan on posting this on the Virginia Chapter Web
site and I am available for your questions if I can help you in regards
to this issue.
I am sorry that I am the bearer of bad news but
it is going to be far better to hear it from me than to lose your
licenses.
George Wagner
George Wagner
Executive
Director
American Fire Sprinkler Association
Virginia Chapter
To
download an Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf) file of this letter, please
follow this link.
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