Constructor Certification Commission Presentation

I’ve known Roger Liska for many years now. When he asked me to be today’s speaker, I took the easy way out and asked him “What do you want me to say?” He said, “Talk about Certification. Tell them how it can help them.”

Well, I’ve talked to enough of you to know that a presentation entitled something like “How Certification Can Help You” just wasn’t going to fly. Certification at best gets mixed support among schools. Lots of you know that, through our Certification examination process, you can get information on how your students stack up against other students on our National Exam. But even Roger Liska and Clemson University, who have taken a position of leadership on Constructor Certification, sometimes wish our examination process were different or a little more tailored to their particular interest.

I thought about this presentation for a while and then a series of incidents and changes occurred. In the process, I realized that the state of construction education is at an important turning point, a crucial turning point, if you will. Constructor Certification evolved from a “Big Plan” that was spawned more than thirty years ago by the Construction Education Committee of the Associated General Contractors of America. In order to understand Certification and its impact, we have to go back thirty years and really understand that history.

I’ll start by making a very broad statement that I’ll explain as I go along. Here it is: “Constructor Certification is the final step in the plan to provide public recognition for the work that you do”. It is the “end” that we’ve been pursuing in the construction industry for more than thirty years.

I realized this months after the National Association of State Contractor Licensing Agencies (NASCLA) released their guidelines for state contractor license equivalency examinations. They did a tremendous job. They developed the most comprehensive set of standards that I’ve ever seen for a construction industry examination. The state licensing executives for more than half the states in the Union were involved in the process. And they missed one important feature.

They missed the fact that we now educate constructors. They missed the fact that there are probably more than 100 schools in the United States that now offer baccalaureate degrees in construction. Call it construction management, construction science, construction technology, construction engineering, or anything else.

Under NASCLA’s vision, a constructor can successfully complete a NASCLA endorsed examination and then be eligible for licensure in any state that accepts their recommendation. Florida. California. Louisiana.

But the NASCLA vision doesn’t require any standards for education as a prerequisite to sit for these endorsed examinations.

Now I don’t know what the requirements for many forms of licensure are where you live, but I live in Chicago. And in the State of Illinois, there are minimum educational standards required for licensure as a real estate agent, an insurance agent, and even a “nail technician”, which in another place and time, we used to call “manicurists”.

How did this happen? I know that the educators sitting in this room are working too hard to have your work discounted. I know that the construction industry places a real value on what you do. How did the people responsible for state licensure miss this? And how do we fix it?

This is where it’s helpful to look back into the past and see where we were thirty years ago.

BACK TO NASHERT

In front of you are copies of a Viewpoint article that Engineering News-Record asked me to write and they published it almost exactly a year ago. The beginning of that article tells you about Walter Nashert, a constructor from Oklahoma City who was called as an expert witness in a trial. When the judge handed down his decision, he admitted that he discounted Nashert’s testimony, claiming that the Architect and the Engineer were the only professionals who testified.

Now there’s the possibility that many of you in this room may agree with that judge in his analysis that architects and engineers are the only professionals in the built environment. And in that case, I will submit to you that you are a big part of the problem.

The professional arrogance that denies professional standing to Constructors cannot continue. Otherwise, there’s no real purpose in attempting to argue the need for teaching a construction curriculum. If formal education in architecture and engineering are all that a constructor needs to function in the built environment, then these construction programs surely must be madness!

Of course, no one who is informed and experienced in the construction industry really believes that a construction education is worthless.

The industry wants your graduates. The industry wants people who have a more generalist background that includes not only training in architecture and engineering, but also in materials, business, accounting, human resources, and a variety of other disciplines. The industry is hiring thousands of your graduates every year.

So how do we fix the problem? First, we face the facts. We have a problem when the senior ranking licensing executives of half the states in the Union missed the results of your work.

I’ll stick my neck out and suggest that even your programs may have a problem when compared to others in your schools. How many times do you feel your program is treated like it’s a second class citizen when compared to those sacrosanct programs that may have defined the academic culture some two or three decades ago? Or maybe even longer than that!

Nothing other than a wholesale shift in public perception will change this problem. And no one is more capable of leading this shift than you, the men and women who are educating our future constructors. We need to educate these young constructors so they know that they are entering a profession. We need to educate them on the elements of a profession.

Nashert was active in the AGC’s Construction Education Committee in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. After his humiliating experience in court, he took the matter back to his colleagues at AGC. Together they formulated a plan and I’m thrilled to be standing hear, some thirty years later, with the full manifestation of that plan easily within our grasp.

They identified the key elements of a profession, which included an identified body of knowledge with formal education in that body of knowledge, a technical or professional society that provides colleague control and aids in the public’s recognition of the profession, and the verification of an individual’s skills and knowledge through a credentialing process that, under the most rigorous standards, includes examination.

The need to identify the body of knowledge led to the formation of the American Council for Construction Education, which was completed in partnership with the Associated Schools of Construction. The American Institute of Constructors was formed as the professional society and this, too, was done with the full support of ASC. And the Constructor Certification Commission was formed in 1993.

When there is widespread understanding and acceptance of our Associate Constructor and Certified Professional Constructor, AC and CPC, designations, there will be a widespread understanding and acceptance of the very important work that you accomplish in our schools of construction.

HOW DO WE GET THERE?

And how do we get there? Just like any other major change in society, we’ll do it through education. We must educate our young constructors to the fact that construction is a profession, just as architecture and engineering are. We must instill in these young constructors a sense of professional pride and recognition of their responsibility to the industry and to the profession.

You, as their teachers, will provide your students’ most significant introduction to the construction industry, and you have just as great an obligation to model high professional standards as I do in my role as a practicing Constructor and as the Chairman of the Constructor Certification Commission. This is an ongoing process. We’re always “on stage”.

Together, we must encourage them to demonstrate their commitment to their profession by pursuing their professional credentials. And please, DO NOT, talk about it as "taking the test” or “taking the AIC exam” or in any other manner that makes it sound like their professional examination is just like any other test. Or just like a final exam.

You’d know what I mean if your first frame of reference were the CPC exam, where a senior constructor must first document between seven and eleven years of experience. It’s hard to do. Unfortunately, someone who’s been in this industry that long often cannot find the person to verify his experience of eleven years ago. That person died, or moved onto another jobsite, or the company went bankrupt, or you name it…

Your graduates from accredited construction programs are eligible to sit for the AC exam within six months of graduation. Because they don’t have that hurdle of documenting years of experience, they might lose sight of the significant accomplishment of their baccalaureate degree. It’s significant. It’s important. It’s the primary requirement toward achieving their professional standing. And it’s the focus of much of your work.

Today, we have the leading voices of the construction industry firmly behind Constructor Certification. These include the AGC and the ABC, the American Subcontractors Association, the American Council for Construction Education, the National Association of Women in Construction, Great Britain’s Chartered Institute of Building, together with many others, and of course, the Associated Schools of Construction.

We need the academic community carrying this message to our students – our future constructors. Because we’re all in this together. Because we’re all working toward the same end: A well educated, well prepared workforce that is equipped to handle construction projects that are becoming increasingly more complicated.

And so, there you have it, I’ve come back to Roger’s original advice. That’s how Constructor Certification can help those of you who are active in the Associated Schools of Construction.