John Hellein, FRSA Educational & Research Foundation Director
The 2020 Florida Building Code (FBC) took effect at the end of December (Happy New Year!). I recently did not hear anyone say, “I finished reading all seven volumes of the code. I know it now.” I hope I never hear anyone say that. If I do I’ll be thinking of any excuse I can to leave the room – or airplane – I’m stuck in with that person. After all, who would think, let alone say, something like that? Even if someone memorized the code, how it is actually interpreted and applied to each building project makes it a virtually limitless document. Exhaustive (and exhausting) collections of code like the Florida Building Code are not something you say, “I know it!” about. With years of experience in the field, however, and steady exposure to the code they encounter along the way, some roofing professionals can cautiously say, “I am familiar with it.” FRSA is blessed as an association to have a strong number of individuals as members who are, indeed, familiar with the FBC.
On the other hand, even people relatively new to the roofing industry may be able to confidently say that they know how to install a roof on a home or building using any number of materials and installation methods. Maybe they know several methods of completing the same installation and have to choose the best one for a particular project. And here lies the essential difference between “training” and “education” (as I am using the words at least): training, like a cooking recipe, is a limited set of procedures along with a list of tools and materials that allow us to complete a specific task. Put a bunch of those tasks together and, presto, a roofing project (if there are no complications that “the recipe” doesn’t account for) can be completed. Education, on the other hand, helps us to see the bigger picture: how to overcome those unscripted challenges; how to choose the best installation among several options; how to better understand a world in which we live, in this case, the world of roofing, with Florida at its center of course.
Training provides us with ready answers about how to complete a specific task. With education, we learn to ask open-ended questions. Questions like:
What codes apply to this project that didn’t to my last project, maybe in a different county or region of the state?
Or maybe:
How does the fact that this house is looking down the intercoastal waterway affect the installation instructions?
We have a sense – from something we read, someone we spoke to or from a seminar we attended – that the open mile between the house and the further shoreline affects wind pressures that the roof will need to be able to resist; but what, more-or-less exactly, does that tell us about how many fasteners we will need to use for the install?
Asking questions like this, we have moved beyond following a set of training procedures to asking questions; and, we possess an industry perspective broad enough to at least know where to start looking for the answers, whether that means digging into the Code or calling a colleague.
The codes seminars being offered by FRSA and instructed by Mike Silvers, CPRC of Silver Systems Inc. and Manny Oyola of Eagle Roofing Products are intended to get us asking questions. Spending three hours starting to read the code – even just the roofing-related sections – would likely only succeed in overwhelming us. Instead, Silvers says that he aims to help seminar participants get an overall understanding of how the code is laid out and, more importantly,
to provide them with an understanding of how to use the code books when faced with questions about how it applies to specific projects. If the instructors are successful, design and roofing professionals should come out of the seminars with a broader sense of how the 2020 Code changes affect a new project, as well as where in the Code to find what they need in order to complete code-compliant projects.
As an association, FRSA is active in both training and education. On the training side, for instance, the Worker Training Subcommittee is actively developing a roofing training manual aimed at people first entering the roofing field. We are also heavily involved in the Roofing Apprentice Training Program.
Every year at the FRSA Convention, the FRSA Educational & Research Foundation offers a slate of continuing education seminars presented by industry professionals in legal, safety, workers’ comp and business practices as well as advanced code courses such as the 2020 FBC Roofing Related Code Changes mentioned above. Faced with the first-(and hopefully last)-ever cancellation of the annual Convention in 2020, the Foundation converted all of the live seminars to online, on-demand video format that are available at www.floridaroof.com.
For the novice starting on his or her “One Roof,” the demands of completing a project may necessarily put the early emphasis on training. After that initial phase of training – or even at the same time – beginning to develop a broader picture of the roofing industry is vital to long term success. And for the person who has set his or her sights on becoming a roofing contractor or other industry professional, FRSA provides an invaluable opportunity to gain an education.
Perhaps the most significant benefit we received from FRSA, and perhaps the easiest to miss when you’re not actively involved, is the free exchange of ideas among professionals – each of whom brings his or her own unique experiences and perspective
– that occurs at FRSA functions such as the quarterly Board and Committee Meetings. In addition to Codes, there are committees for Governmental Affairs, Convention, Membership and other committees in which industry professionals share
their ideas as well as the opportunity to interact with other professionals.
When we are asking questions and sharing ideas – whether about a particular project or the overall effectiveness of a section of code in protecting lives and property; or, how to make the Convention and Expo the best it can be or how to
reach the roofing professionals who have yet to hear about the many benefits of FRSA membership — being able to ask those questions or to bounce ideas off another professional or group of professionals is invaluable. FRSA is a medium for that exchange of ideas.
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