Hello. My name is Derek Schroeder, Program Manager for Training and Technical Assistance within the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program. I'm here today to talk a little bit about Weatherization Assistance Program Memorandum 126, which is the home energy professionals, energy auditor and quality control inspector certification scheme update.
First, we're going to cover some background. The Department of Energy implemented the Quality Work Plan in 2013, resulting in the energy auditor and quality control inspector, retrofit installer technician and crew leader certification and training requirements for the Weatherization Assistance Program. In 2018, there were scheme changes related to the energy auditor certifications and the quality control inspector certifications.
At that time, it was reduced to the energy auditor certifications with the quality control inspector, microcredential and crew leader certifications with retrofit installer badges. This memorandum highlights the changes resulting from the 2022 and 2023 updates to the energy auditor and quality control inspector certification scheme.
Key terms that are going to be used throughout this video are the following. Quality Work Plan. The Quality Work Plan defines what constitutes a quality installation of weatherization materials, outlines how those measures are inspected and validated, and prescribes acceptable training and credentialing of workers.
Guidelines for Home Energy Professionals. A set of DOE sponsored resources developed to provide high quality, nationally recognized credentials to the Weatherization Assistance Program and home performance industry. Quality control inspector. A quality control inspector is a residential energy efficiency expert who reviews, inspects and verifies the appropriateness, quality, and completion of energy retrofit work by conducting site visits, performing diagnostic testing, and evaluating work practices and documentation to improve the indoor environment, safety, durability, comfort and energy efficiency of the building for the client.
Continued key terms are energy auditor. The energy auditor is an experienced professional who evaluates the potential health and safety issues, durability, comfort, and energy use of a residential building. The energy auditor conducts advanced diagnostic tests, gathers and analyzes data, and creates energy models to draw conclusions and make recommendations for improvements. Job task analysis, the foundation for a valid credentialing program. It identifies the core knowledge areas, critical work functions and or skills typically found across a representative sampling of current practitioners. Scheme defines the general requirements of each certification.
Examples are prerequisites, exam structure, recertification requirements and are based on the job task analysis in accordance with industry recognized practices of workforce psychrometrics.
And finally subject matter experts. The group of industry experts that form the scheme committee to develop the job task analysis and certification scheme for adoption. And certifying body, the organization that licensed the scheme for development and delivery of a certificate program the certification development workflow.
It's important that we describe how the certifications start from scratch to the rollout of the actual certification itself. At the core of all certifications that are required in the Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program, DOE is the core funder and maintainer of all of the job task analysis, schemes and everything that goes into the Quality Work Plan that lays out the foundation for this. Within the Quality Work Plan directed by the initial development of the Guidelines for Home Energy Professional resources, DOE continues to fund and maintenance and the enhancements of the Guidelines for Home Energy Professionals such as the Standard Work Specifications, the job task analysis, schemes and et cetera.
As those turn into the Guidelines for Home Energy Professionals, the job task analysis and those schemes are one of the DOE sponsored resources. These are industry validated and accredited.
Next is the licensed certifying body to administer those certifications. Once the scheme has been developed and the exam banks have been developed, the certifying body that will be the organization that administers those certifications is put into play. Currently, the Building Performance Institute is the only certifying body who has licensed those schemes.
Exams. Those exams are also created by the certifying body based on the job task analysis exam blueprint provided with those license. An important note of the exams is that the certifying body themselves is not technically creating those exam bank questions, but they are the ones that convene the group of subject matter committee experts that work on the existing exam questions and update those. And then certifications. A certification is the issuance and the tracking and renewal who is administered by the certifying body.
The core of this program memorandum is to notify the network of the most recent certification scheme updates and what that will result in once these certifications roll out in late 2024, early 2025.
Certification scheme update cycle. Industry best practice is to review and update job task analysis and certification schemes approximately every five to seven years. The home energy professional, energy auditor and quality control Job task analysis and certification schemes were last updated in 2018 and were due for regular maintenance in each scheme update cycle, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory convenes industry practitioners and subject matter experts to develop, review, revise and maintain the certification schemes in accordance with the ISOIEC 17024 standard, which was chosen by the Department of Energy for the quality and rigor of personal certifications that the standard offers to the home performance industry. These schemes define the general requirements of each certification, examples being prerequisites, exam structure, recertification requirements, and are based on the job task analysis in accordance with the industry recognized practices of workforce psychrometrics. This memo provides a summary of the changes to the energy auditor and quality control inspector job task analysis as a result of the 2022 scheme committee work.
Below is a list of the high level planned changes to the energy auditor and quality control inspector certification schemes. An important note is the effective date is still to be determined and will be communicated by the Department of Energy at that time. The certification cycle, which is a very big update to this scheme, has been extended from three to five years for both energy auditor and quality control inspector. This will begin with the new and renewal certifications after the rollout is complete. As earlier mentioned in late 2024 early 2025.
This is not an immediate extension and those current certification holders that are in the process of having their certification updated prior to the rollout of the new exams must still adhere to the current certification expiration date.
Prerequisite requirements for energy auditor the prerequisite requirements for energy auditor were streamlined. Options for required experience in the past five years were expanded to be more inclusive. 25 points are needed through any of the following performing energy audits in the building science trade a maximum of 20 points ten points for each 1000 hours or six months of full time work home performance field technician experience. Examples of those are weatherization, home inspection, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. A maximum of 20 points ten points for each thousand hours or six months full time work building trades experience.
Examples of that are framing, roofing, drywall, siding maximum of ten points five points for each 1000 hours or six months of full time work. Training from an industry specific training center, training content aligns with the content of the job task analysis for the certification work, a maximum of ten points or five points for every 40 hours and other certifications are considered, a maximum of ten points, five points per certification. Related industry certifications such as and please note this is not an all inclusive list, are the Residential Energy Services Network known as Resnet, Building Performance Institute (BPI), North American Technical Excellence (NATE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), and Association of Energy Engineers (AEE). Again, this is not an all inclusive list, but solely examples of related industry certifications.
Prerequisites for energy modeling. Clarification was provided that the ten energy models must comply with a nationally recognized energy standard for energy audit reports. This is not specifically just ANSI BPI 1100.
It is now opened up to be inclusive of more energy auditing standards. Alternative compliance pathways to energy modeling now lists the number of energy training modeling hours as 8 hours. Alternative compliance pathways to energy modeling now allow desk review or file reviews of energy models. A minimum of 20 desk reviews or file reviews of energy models are specified.
Continuing education units or known as CEUs. CEUs were streamlined into four major categories, technical conference, synchronous training, asynchronous training, and trainer instructor. The number of CEUs for energy auditor was raised from 24 over a three year period to 30 for completion in the new five year cycle. The number of CEUs for quality control inspector remains the same at six over the five year cycle. CEUs earned for each category were streamlined for clarity rather than having different ratios. Now, 1 hour of qualifying continuing education activity or is known as CEUs, equals this one CEU that is both for energy auditor and quality control inspector.
Gated items. The gated items were revised tasks that must be completely successful to pass the field exam. Missing any one of these results in failing the exam.
Four of the five existing gated items from the current energy auditor field guide will remain part of the certification field exam. Candidates tested indoor ambient air and verbally confirmed combustible gasses are below 10% of the lower explosive limit known as LEL on each floor level. Still a testable item, but this is no longer gated. Minor revisions were made to the wording of the remaining gated items.
Minor revisions that were made can be found in this table. Candidates prepared combustible gas and carbon monoxide measurement instruments per manufacturer's instructions.
Candidates tested indoor ambient carbon monoxide levels and took appropriate action according to the current standards of reference. Candidates tested indoor air levels for carbon monoxide throughout the combustion safety testing and took appropriate action according to the current standard or reference and candidate ensured that combustion appliances cannot fire during the blower door testing.
Field exam changes field exam simulation during a proctored exam is now allowed should a qualified certification body choose to offer this option. Minor changes to the characteristics of the field testing environment. Attic ventilation requirement has now been removed. Domestic hot water heater changed to water heating appliance. An added clarification that all appliances and equipment must be functional. Clarification was provided on manufactured housing, previously, inclusion was implied but not clearly outlined. Manufactured housing is now explicitly included in the energy auditor job task analysis in several locations and rather than having two separate codes of conduct between energy auditor and quality control inspector, a single code of conduct will be used for the home energy professional, energy auditor, and quality control inspector certifications.
So what are those next steps? There are no immediate changes to certification exams or training requirements are prompted by the job task analysis or certification scheme updates at this time. Exams will be updated to align with the new job task analysis as part of the national rollout of the updated schemes, stakeholders and individual certification holders can expect updated exams from late 2024 to early 2025. The energy auditor and quality control inspector JTAs are available to view at NREL.gov.
Key takeaways. This memorandum is informational at the time. There is no additional requirements for Grantees needed. And as a final reminder, these certification schemes updates will roll out in late 2024 or early 2025, and DOE will provide the Weatherization Assistance Program network with updates as necessary during this time.
Questions or clarifications on this video and this memorandum should be sent to workforce.guidelines@NREL.gov. And WAP Grantees, please carbon copy copy your Technical Project Officer on that email so that we're able to provide a sufficient level of oversight and technical assistance on all of your questions and inquiries.
Thank you for your time and have a good day.
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