Tag: <span>Roofing</span>

Tag: Roofing

NRCA’s New and Exciting Training Program

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By Cotney Construction Law.

At Cotney Construction Law, we are dedicated to bridging the skills gap. Along with the right guidance from construction organizations, professionals, and a roofing attorney, we can meet the labor demand for the future. The National Roofing Contractors Association (NRCA) will be fundamental in this process with a new training program that will aim to educate and certify skilled workers. In fact, as one NRCA board member declared, this could be a “gamechanger” for the entire industry.

As we will discuss in this article, the NRCA’s new program will look to accomplish two feats. First, provide prospective roofing professionals with the education and training they need to succeed. Second, certify existing roofing professionals across the nation.

NRCA’s ProCertification Program Requirements

Certification courses and training classes will feature all of the most popular topics within the roofing industry including courses focused on roofing systems, solar, repair, and maintenance services. Students will be provided with educational online courses and training programs.

To become certified, roofers will need to successfully complete a written test and also a skills test. All courses and certifications will be developed off of current industry standards. Experienced and professional foremen will assess the certified skills test and provide training courses as well. Although the program has not launched yet, it should be open for enrollment later this year.

The Purpose of the Program

The primary motivation for this new educational and training course is to bridge the skills gap. NRCA believes that by investing over $10 million into this program that both current and prospective roofers can combat the labor shortage problem. However, another purpose of the program is to add legitimacy to a profession that has never required certifications or a formal training program before. NRCA members hope that this new institution of training and certifying professionals will also garner more respect from industry professionals and prospective clients as well.

Creating Long-Term Professionals in Roofing

The program should also add a certain sustainability to young roofing professionals opting to make roofing their career path. Young workers that join roofing companies on the entry level can enroll in roofing courses to further their education and training. This will help these young workers become long-term, certified professionals. Similarly, active roofers that desire to become certified may receive benefits of an improved salary within their roofing companies.

With NRCA’s vision, one day these certifications may be mandatory by insurance companies. Perhaps even construction companies will require their roofers to be certified in order to propose bids on projects as well.

Source: Cotney Construction Law

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is for general educational information only. This information does not constitute legal advice, is not intended to constitute legal advice, nor should it be relied upon as legal advice for your specific factual pattern or situation.

How Predictive Analytic Technology Can Grow Your Roofing Business

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By Tony Agresta, Vice President of Marketing, Nearmap

 

Predictive analytics is not new, it’s been used by marketers for many years. It is simply using historical data on response or performance to determine who is most likely to buy a product or respond to a promotion. For example, cataloguers would take a sampling of data, send out a mailing and track who responds. The more data they had about the people such as income, age, interests, prior buying history, the better they could predict future buying behavior since the responders and non-responders could be modeled.

By scoring and modeling the data, a company could focus their dollars and marketing efforts on the people who scored highest and were determined to be the most likely to buy. Rich, accurate models leverage robust data sets.   That same concept can be applied to roofing, using modern technology, to determine the properties most likely to need roofing services.

Many roofing contractors today already understand the value that high-resolution aerial maps bring to their business. The images provide a lot of data about a property that satellite imagery cannot. For instance, using freely available satellite imagery, it’s not easy to tell the difference between a solar panel or a skylight on a roof, and it can be hard to tell what type of roofing material is on the property.

With higher-resolution aerial maps, contractors can review properties, see the type of roof, whether there are skylights, solar panels, outbuildings, the presence or absence of trees, and can even look back over time to see how the roofs may have changed.   High-resolution aerial maps provide the detail needed to classify features of the property and the grounds.  Just the way the cataloguers could use sample data to differentiate responders from non-responders or multi-product buyers from single product buyers, aerial maps can be used to create data sets that classify type of roof and other features.

When machine learning algorithms are applied to this new source of data, users can automatically detect which properties have skylights, or solar panels or missing shingles. It could detect the pitch and potentially the type of roof material. Then the algorithm could store all those attributes in a database. The database is important because now you have data about all the properties in an area that can be queried.

Querying the database would allow a contractor to ask for only properties that meet certain criteria to be returned. Perhaps you want roofs of a certain size, or ones that appear to have damage, or only want to look at roofs with asphalt shingles. You no longer must spend the time manually scanning through images of properties, the algorithm does it for you.

By assigning scores to certain characteristics and using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the database can deliver a list of leads that are prime candidates for a new roof. This allows you to strategically deploy your sales team to the homes that score the highest, rather than walking a neighborhood knocking on every door.  Companies providing aerial maps are applying machine learning to vivid imagery. They are refining the algorithms, building accuracy into the models and making the resulting data available to roofers to help drive their business faster.