With the new Washington State home inspector licensing laws, there are three types of education that are being submitted to the state for approval. The most basic class, and the longest, is "Fundamentals of Home Inspection" this is a 120 hour class. Those people who were not able to be grandfathered in, based on experience and passing all state tests, are taking this training as are those who are just getting into the field. Bellingham Technical College is presently teaching such a course. The next major form of education is the "supplemental" course. This is a course designed for those students who took a significant amount of home inspector education previously, yet did not take official state approved classes because there were so such classes at the time. The people who are taking this training tend to be newer inspectors, who were not grandfathered in, but they did have the professional training. At BTC, we are presently working on putting together such a course to go with the fundamentals training. This course, however, is short-lived. Once full licensing kicks into effect on July 1, 2010, the supplemental course will be out of business. Our initial intent was, simply, to offer a supplemental course to our own past students. However, we are getting requests to make it available to others so we are looking at that. Of course, prior to doing anything of the sort, we have to get all of our ducks in a row so it is accepted by the Department of Licensing home inspector division. And, the third form of education, and people keep asking if BTC will be putting any such courses together, is continuing education. Inspectors need that, everyone does, for license renewal. As to the answer to that question -- I really do not know if we will do anything in that arena or not. Maybe not. All of us who teach with the inspection program are adjunct faculty and tend to keep pretty busy in the real world of inspection. As a result of that, there is only so much time in any given day. Anyone who wishes information on the BTC fundamentals program, or the progress we are making on the supplemental program, should give me a call at 360-676-6908. Thanks for stopping by, Steven L. Smith
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