Masonry Magazine February 2007 Page. 20
Masonry Certif
Why Become Certified?
By demonstrating your commitment to quality, reliability and the highest professional standards that come from being certified, you will place your firm in a league all its own and it is evidence of your proven level of education, knowledge and experience in the masonry industry. As architects, specifiers and owners begin to require a certified contractor, your firm will stand out.
Certification is available to both members of the Mason Contractors Association of America and non-members alike. You do not have to be a member to go through the certification process.
Achieving Certification
The principal will earn credits through various activities. Once a level of 200 earned credits is achieved, the principal will be eligible to sit for a certification exam that will demonstrate the principal's command of running a quality masonry firm.
In addition, in order to be eligible to sit for the certification exam, one hundred (100) percent of the firm's supervisory employees must be actively engaged in ongoing continuing education and must have completed fifteen (15) credits in approved educational events.
Nothing can hurt our industry faster than to have unqualified mason contractors hired by construction customers simply because they are the lowest bidder. The result invariably can be a poorly constructed masonry building, poor service and an unhappy customer who will not select masonry on their next project. As an industry and as an association, we have dealt with this problem for decades. Quality contractors have always had to deal with low bidding, less than stellar contractors that compete against them for good jobs. The question was how to deal with the way things have been. Some in our industry felt that we should just leave the situation alone and let the economy deal with a sub-par contractor who will eventually not be able to find work and disappear. Some chose to try and out-low bid the unqualified contractor to try a buy the work.
These methods of dealing with sub-par contractors have always resulted in either good contractors losing good jobs or good contractors having to walk away from a reasonable profit.
The Mason Contractors Association of America, as the only national association representing the industry's contractors, has studied this national problem for several years and has concluded that the only realistic way to stop low bidding sub-par contractors from lowering our industry's standards "I would absolutely recommend MCAA's Masonry Certification Program to any and all mason contractors." - David Hill, Pettit Construction Co. Inc. and weakening our future is to raise the level of professionalism and convince our customers that buying quality will benefit them. Thus idea of certifying the industry's 20,000 contractors was proposed for the benefit of the masonry industry.
Without certification, construction customers do not have objective measurable method for determining a contract quality. Currently, the only basis is through comparing the bids and chosing the lowest. Certification gives good customers an objective basis to select a contractor and in most cases specify a quality contractor. Certification gives our industry an opportunity to promote and provide a tool to measure quality.
We have heard some complain that we will now make the industry's contractors go through the steps and the expense of gaining certification with no guarantee of gaining any more work or any greater profit. Still some complain that their ability