The Institute for Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) Asia Pacific instructors converged on Sydney mid-November to attend the 2014 IICRC Certification Council Meeting. It covered a number of subjects including an IICRC review; an update on standards; and proposed developments for The Journal.
The meeting commenced with a presentation from one of the new IICRC board members, Dr Steven Spivak, on ‘A new paradigm [model] and recent trends in national and international standards and certification’.
Dr Spivak discussed the challenges with the ‘business’ of standards and how the trend has moved from products and processes to strategy and management-based standards. Developers of standards need to operate and function in a wider environment – they now need to look more regionally and internationally. This presentation prompted some valuable discussions that were carried throughout the day.
IICRC president Patrick Winters reviewed the IICRC’s 2014 achievements and discussed future the strategies. He advised the group that the Instructor Symposium for 2015 will held in conjunction with ISSA in Las Vegas in October 2015.
Continuing with the standards theme, IICRC standards director Mili Washington described the stringent development process IICRC undertakes for all its standards and talked about expected launch dates for the standards currently being developed and reviewed.
One of the IICRC’s key 2014 achievements was its launch of ‘The Journal’, the IICRC technical journal. This bi-monthly resource is a project that had been years in development and has been very well received since its launch last February.
The Journal’s editor John Downey was interviewed for the meeting and he talked about further developments to be expected for the journal during 2015. The Journal – currently available at no cost – may be downloaded from www.iicrc.org/thejournal