Meet the 2009 Committee Chairs
Welcome to the members who have volunteered to work on your behalf under the direction of the Board of Directors, supported by their committee members and Board and staff liaisons.
Your president would like you to know a little more about these important people, therefore, we’ve requested that the chairs introduce themselves. Meet two more 2009 committee chairs.
When I look back on my life, I think home inspections and a long membership in ASHI came naturally to me. After high school, while struggling to get through college, I worked my way up through the construction trades, starting as a frame carpenter and later as a millwright and cabinetmaker. I joined the Carpenters and Joiners Union and even took up plumbing and became a licensed plumber. Majoring in construction technology prepared me for my first construction management job, and while working for HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and the DOD (Department of Defense), I supervised the remodeling of more than 10,000 housing units. I also took a civil service position with the United States facility engineers in Frankfurt, Germany, where I managed the maintenance of all military facilities in the area.
For more than a decade, my work with HUD and the DOD kept me on the road, managing construction jobs in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Dakota and Louisiana. When it came time to settle down, the home inspection industry was the only place for someone with my varied talents. I researched home inspections, and in every case, ASHI came up. In preparation for a major career change, I joined ASHI as a candidate in 1988 and was granted full membership status in 1990. Each year at convention, listening to the passion-filled speeches about our industry further fueled my interests in advancing this profession. To further my knowledge on home inspections, I joined the International Code Council and the International Association of Electrical Inspectors. Over the next 20 years, my business grew from a single-owner/operator company to a firm with multiple inspectors and a team of report writers in the office. My small home inspection company has inspected more than 30,000 houses and commercial properties since 1988.
While maintaining my membership in ASHI, I endeavor to keep abreast of this ever-changing industry and attend most educational opportunities available. I have been proud to serve on ASHI’s Technical Committee, the Membership Committee and the Committee on Ethical and Professional Practices. This is my second year chairing the Committee on Ethical and Professional Practices, and it has been enlightening to witness how few REAL complaints come in against fellow ASHI members. ASHI really is the “cream of the crop.”
Steve Hartnett, Complaints – Logo Use Committee chair
I was a full-time firefighter for 30 years, 10 of those years as a paramedic and 18 as a lieutenant in a suburban department just outside of Chicago. Like most firemen, I had a part-time job on my days off, first as a handyman/carpenter, then progressing to a licensed general contractor doing residential and light commercial construction and remodeling. I sold the construction business in 1991 and started doing home inspections part-time because I figured it was better to use my head instead of my back. Soon after I started inspecting, I joined ASHI.
When I retired from the fire department in 2003, I moved to Nokomis, Florida, between Sarasota and Venice, where I currently live with my wife and 8-year-old daughter. I re-established my inspection business here. I figured if I was going to do home inspections for the rest of my working life, I wanted to do them somewhere where I wanted to spend my life.
I do not miss the cold and snow. It brings a smile to my face doing an inspection in mid-January in short sleeves and sunglasses, making sure I have on my SPF-50 lotion.
I was licensed as a home inspector by the State of Illinois when I lived there. We are still waiting for Florida to develop its license program.
In addition to being an ASHI Certified Inspector, I’m a
Florida Association of Building Inspectors (FABI) Registered Professional Inspector, a Florida Certified Wind Mitigation Inspector, and I am certified to do mold testing. I have served as both vice president and president of our local ASHI chapter here in southwest Florida, and nationally as a member of the Membership Committee for three years. I wanted to stay involved, so I volunteered for this position. I believe ASHI is a quality organization and we need to promote the
professionalism ASHI brings to the industry.
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