Photo: Three NC-ASHI® members celebrate passing the chapter’s Inspector by Review (IBR) exercise.
The chapter had its years of shrinking membership … even as licensing attracted many into the profession, but the core of our chapter stayed together and got ever-sharper in responding to threats from outside our profession. In the past several years, we have overcome real estate industry attempts to mandate a standard report form, then an attempt to criminalize us for mentioning safety issues in our summary of problems. Keeping good inspectors on the licensing board has been a perennial problem. Two chapter members currently hold board positions (two of the four home inspector seats on the eight-person board). We have retained an excellent legislative lobbyist since about 1993.
Our faithful chapter members now number 54, and we continue to grow. We publish a bimonthly newsletter, and provide our members with useful reference tools, including a quick-reference guide titled Product and Design Failures, 2009. Several chapter members have helped establish an inspector-Realtor committee in the Winston-Salem Regional Realtors® Association. This is the first time such a group has survived, and now the idea is spreading to other groups. We have lots of lively discussions and growing respect among our colleagues.
In 2009, we plan to have a special training course for improving expertise in the state Building Codes, and we plan to require all chapter members to submit their reports on a regular basis for SOP compliance review by a chapter committee. In yet another program now in its second year, more than one-third of our members have participated in our Peer Review exercise, an extraordinarily tough and humbling educational experience that was shared with us by the Great Lakes Chapter.
Iowa Hosts Fall Seminar and Executive Director
Jeff Arnold, ASHI executive director (center, in the photo above), was the honored guest at the September 2008 Iowa Chapter Annual Fall Seminar, held in Des Monies.
Submitted by Tony Smith.