Making sure your contractor is licensed and certified - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Henry Staggs, a roofing expert. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to the AskARoofer Podcast where all your roofing questions find their answers. Your hosts, Megan Ellsworth and Lauren White peel back the layers of the roofing world to reveal the knowledge, tips and FAQs you've been curious about. From shingles to skylights, metal to asphalt, we are here to demystify the system above your head. So get ready to ask, learn and explore the fascinating world of roofing one question at a time on the AskARoofer podcast.

Hello everyone. My name's Megan Ellsworth here at AskARoofer.com, and you are listening to the AskARoofer podcast. I'm so excited because today I'm chatting with Henry Staggs on the importance of training and certification. So hello friend, how are you?

Henry Staggs: I'm well. How are you, Megan?

Megan Ellsworth: I'm doing so good. I'm excited to hear everything you have to say. So let's just have you get started and introduce yourself.

Henry Staggs: Well, my name's Henry Staggs. I've been involved in the roofing industry all of my life since I was a little kid. I'd say a small guy, but I'm kind of still a small guy. So all my life. And gosh, I'm 55 now, started hammering nails at 12 with grandpa. So for me, for talking to somebody who doesn't know how to swing a hammer or just do kind of things like that, basic things, it doesn't make sense to me. It's like, "Wait, you're supposed to just know that," and I forget that I had to learn all of that along the way.

And when I was young, we had, there probably were official training programs, but not as many as there are now and more that are coming. So I learned everything I learned right out there in the dirt in the thick of it. So I learned how to swing a hammer by swinging a hammer and getting yelled at when I did it wrong, which was quite often to start with as I recall now.

One time, and this may be a little sidebar, I remember my great granddad, he said he was tired of me bending the nails. So we're trying to just hit framing nails and I bend them, bend them, bend them. So he gathered up all those nails I had and put them in a coffee can, and then wouldn't let me go back to work, make a load of money for myself until I banged all those nails back straight again. And he wanted me to use those. Those nails are going in one way or another, and either he's going to pay me to do it or not. 

But I remember being a little bitter that day. I was sitting at his workbench pounding those nails straight thinking this is completely pointless. But it was a training for me, and I learned how to set that nail and sink that nail after that. I didn't want to have another coffee can. He waited a long time too. This coffee can was full of nails. It was ridiculous or I was just that bad, either way. 

But I've been a contractor. I've owned several companies myself. I did handyman work, I've done interior remodeling, I've done all of that stuff, but primarily my passion's been the roof because maybe I'm a little crazy and I like climbing on top of things. I was a tree climber when I was a kid. I was a roof climber and I used to get in trouble for being up on the road because my dad's, "You're going to damage the tile up there." It wasn't tile, it was shingle. People do that here in Arizona too. They'll say they have a tile roof or a shingle roof, but really it's the opposite of what they think it is. That's a whole other thing. But that's kind of where I'm at. 

Eventually, I became a roof consultant by accident and there's a whole big story behind all that. I didn't even know you could get paid to do inspections on roofs. I thought that was just a thing you did to get the job as a contractor because I did it so often. And when I found out you could get paid to do that, I dove in with both feet because that sounded really awesome to me. 

And so I've been pretty much doing that now for almost 15 years. I took two years and stepped back into contracting world and remembered what that was like, and came back over here to the consulting world. And matter of fact, before this podcast this morning, I was out early walking a new construction TPO installation using my trusty little probe chucking all the seams, which is always a lot of fun for me.

I got the probe with the chuck on one end so I can mark off the spots and fix that, fix that, fix that. Then I get to go home. So to me, it's all fun and I really enjoy it because we're doing something that's helpful to people. It's helpful to the owners, it's helpful to the contractors. And it falls right in line with the topic of training because the better trained they are, the installer is. And using heat welder, for example, on a TPO or a PVC roof membrane, the better the seams are going to be and the fewer things guys like me are going to find.

So I can kind of tell, without even seeing the guy. I don't have to see him do the work. I can just see the finished product, and I get a pretty good idea how well-trained this person is long before I even get the probe out and start poking at it and yanking on seams and pulling up patches and things like that when they come back and say, "Oh my God, you marked my roof all up."

But today, I mean huge rep. I found three or four things. So whoever the guy is doing that work is doing a really great job. And I know it's training because I know the company and the company, this particular company is huge on training. And they're implementing even more training, probably more than a lot of contractors that I do work with. And when I say more, I mean the more formality of it. They're creating training programs, and they're investigating their own company and they're looking at their own quality control reports and things like that to find where their weak spots are and to start honing those weak spots, which I think is part of... [inaudible 00:06:01] make it up. So a company, in my opinion, I know I'm kind of sidebar in here, if they use a quality assurance or quality control, if they have that anyways, they got a guy already poking around, why not take that information and identify areas of need for training for their crew and then develop a program around the need for that company? And then reach out into the world with NRCA or NCCER, got some really great programs out there as well as the manufacturers and then start matching programs to what their company's specific needs are.

And then if you use NCCER, NRCA or the manufacturers, the guys that get the training get a nice certification, they get maybe a card to put into their wallet. They'll get something that they can show off when they go home to their family. And it recognizes them for the professionals that they are, rather than just a pat on the back, maybe a pizza party and then that's it.

I like those service. I got a stack of them too. And they feel good when you get them in the mail and you pop a little paper. And it's nice, if we could slip the card in your wallet. It used to be about five or six years ago, every time I showed up on a job, the guys would line up. I didn't even know what, I have no idea, they never asked, but they would line up and start showing me all their OSHA cards, right away, OSHA, OSHA, OSHA. And at that time there was a big push for more OSHA 10 training in industry. 

So ARCA, our Arizona Roofing Contractors Association, they offered that course for free to members and to their crews. And so the guys are running through that program. And so I show up the quality control guy or the quality assurance guy. All I'm there to do is take pictures and see what's going on. I don't have the authority to look at those. I can look at those cards, but I have no authority over that. That's for their safety control officer.

But they would show those things, and I think they did it because they were very proud of their achievement, right? It is an achievement. You got to sit through that course. If you've sat through an OSHA 10 course, getting through it's already an achievement because there's some zone out moments in those courses, if you make it through the course.
But if you retain the knowledge and then the contractor continues on with the training program where they're doing the lunchbox talks, or the tailgate talks, whatever you want to call them or they're having the monthly safety meetings and they're implementing and reinforcing the training they learned in the classroom, then it sticks. So that training in the classroom is one part. Implementation is another part. 

And that's where when I mentioned before those quality assurance reports, if you've got guys already coming out or consultants are popping out and doing this stuff anyways, a contractor can really take good advantage of those reports and continue to tailor their own program. So I'm sorry, that was a really long introduction and I really didn't say a whole lot about me.

Megan Ellsworth: No, that's totally fine. I completely agree. And that actually really takes us into the next question, which is, why is proper training and certification so crucial? And I think you just totally hit that home on it really brings the person on the roof into the building almost. They're proud to show off that they've gone through all these different certifications, and they have these cards and the pamphlets and all the different things showing that they are certified and they have done the work and they know their stuff. And so anything else to add on why it's so important to the roofing industry, these proper training and certification programs?

Henry Staggs: Well for the contractor, it's better workmanship. Fewer callbacks. Callbacks are expensive. And to that same point, when the installer is proud of their work, when they look at their work products... So you've ridden in cars with roofers, and you can't drive by a building they have ever even looked at without them pointing at it and going, "I did that." Even if all they did was show up one time, one day and do one little thing, they own that building in their mind.

And to take that same pride of craftsmanship and put it on a piece of paper or stick it in their wallet and then recognize them for it, when you say recognize them also pay them better. They get paid better. They're treated better. They're treated like a professional. They have documentation that shows their professional. That's going to naturally increase their workmanship. It's going to naturally make their craft better. They're going to be more interested in teaching other guys how to do this properly and bringing guys behind them and apprenticing younger people who are coming into the trades.

And for the contractor, that means a better work product and fewer callbacks, which callbacks are nothing but expense. You don't get paid for warranty callbacks and they cost you money. And sometimes, it could cost a contractor their reputation. So that's from the contractor's point of view.

From the guy who does the work, which is me. I did that for so many years. It's just nice to know because it's hard work. It can be dirty work, and sometimes it's completely thankless work. And you're on top of that building, risking your life and limb to install something that's going to protect everything and everyone that ever goes through the doors in that building. Without that roof, the whole entire building is completely pointless.

And yet often those guys, they're just kind of shoved to the side and they're treated... I'm going to say this properly and this is me, how I felt in the industry in years past. Things are changing, thank goodness for that. But almost like we're second-class citizens on the construction site. We're not as glamorous as the interior guys, or the painters or the finished carpenters, the ones who are making everything look really pretty. 

But the point is, or the fact is I should say, is that without us doing the roof, none of that matters. That crown molding can be the most beautiful crown molding you can have. I seen a house once where they flew this guy in from Italy and he carved intricate patterns into their drywall in their ceiling. Well, it was all lattice and plaster, not drywall. And it was just amazingly beautiful.

But the roof on that house was shot and they did not want to pay believe this, this multi-million dollar home. They didn't want to pay anybody to do any decent roof work on there. And they kept turning down contractors, because the prices were too high they kept saying. And I said, "You paid this guy all this money to come from Italy to do this work on your ceiling. So it would be beautiful in there." And it really was. He did a great job. It was amazing to me. But that's lattice and plaster. It's going to be easily destroyed with a few reflects, and that roof was about to leak. 

And I remember thinking then, this is so many years ago, not only do we need more training in our industry, but the consumer needs to be more educated on how important it is to have trained crafts person.

So that would be the other point I would bring up. A good marketing person should use the fact that they have well-trained professional craftsmen in this company rather than just some guy up the street who may or may not know what he's doing. Does he know? He says he does, but can he show he does? We don't know. But if he's got that certificate or the one that the NRCA or NCCER working on just to even get into the industry, those show right away. You have the credential and you've gone through the test, you've gone through the process. Somebody has watched you, you've been judged and rated on your work and judged to have passed it. 

Now that homeowner or the building owner, whomever, it could be any building, doesn't matter. They know that just like the guy from Italy who was obviously very an artisan in his craft, so are the roofers. They're also artisan in their crafts, and they're doing a job based on their own personal investment in that craft. The guys drives by, and you're in the roofing industry. I know you're riding with the guy. And he's like, "I did that. I did that. I did that. I did that. And I think I was on that building. That one looks familiar too. I'm going to do that one pretty soon. Oh, we're bidding on this one."" You can't drive around your town with a roofer without hearing that constantly. My daughter complains. She's like, "Dad, come on. We know. Okay, you climb stuff, stop."

Megan Ellsworth: I grew up with that with my grandpa, and now my fiance is a plumber. And so we'll be driving around and he'll say, "I worked in that house. I worked on that house." So I totally understand. So I'd love for you to touch on how this training and certification can help prevent on-site accidents and keep people safe.

Henry Staggs: Yeah, so let's go back to the OSHA training. For a couple years, I was, what do they call? I want to say this right. It's not authorized. Yeah, authorized OSHA trainer. They don't say certified because they don't certify trainers, but they authorize someone to do the training. So I went through the big, big course you got to go through to do all that. So it's like OSHA 30, OSHA 40, plus another 80 hours. It was two weeks of solid classroom time, a whole lot of snooze time in there.

But it was fun because I was with people from different industries, and this is one point I would like to make. I did this in infrared training also. There were people from different industries and one, and I was in this course for the OSHA, I think it's 510 or 500 or something like that. I forget now, so forgive me. But when I was taking that course, I was with people from different industries, not just roofing.

So I got to hear and see the responses that people had based on different type of topics that would come up, like fall protection or anything like that would be relevant to us, but not to others and hear how they see it. And then I could see from my perspective, their own safety needs. And it helped me improve my own perception of what's necessary on my industry.

And I think that that consult comes back to the pride. So a proud good roofer has a harness on, because that's part of the uniform, right? And you've got your D-ring right where it needs to be. You've got the chest strap right here where it needs to be. And no different than the way that they install their material, how proud they are. The way that vest fits their body, they're also very proud of that because they know that this is their lifesaver. I'm tapping my chest. You can't see that. And so they'll take just as much pride in wearing their protective personal gear. A good proud roofer who understands safety values his life and his family's life, because without him, they could be the sole provider for their family. And if something happens, like a young man fell through a skylight in a town I used to live in. He was 33 years old. I think he died. He just had a new baby. So now he's got a wife with a new baby, and her husband's gone, because they were not practicing safe standards on that site.

Which is, I'm sorry to say, it's really bad in residential developments. Every time I drive by, I see them guys up there just mucking around all over the place. And most guys, I am guilty of it too. When I was young, "I could do this." And it used to be, and this is maybe a hurdle that we're all coming right now, it used to be that part of the pride of being a roofer was you did not need fall protection because, "I ain't no wuss know," and that kind of stuff, which is all ego driven nonsense. Of course you need it. Because I don't care how tough you are, you're going to fall 20 feet, you're breaking some bones or you're going to kill yourself. Big, small, little, what does it matter? So unless you're 12 foot tall and you can just step over, maybe then. But I don't don't know that guy, I don't want to know that guy.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, a big foot. 

Henry Staggs: Well, you know what? I want him on my crew because he could be the roof loader. So the pride in the craft has to extend beyond just the workmanship, and it has to extend into how we wear our PPE, our personal appearance, the way that we speak to each other on the site, how we speak to other people. So I was on the site the other day and this guy come running across the roof. I don't know who he was or what was going on, but he's waving his arms around and he's just laying into some other guy. The other guy is holding a heating torch. And I'm like, "I wouldn't be screaming profanities at the guy with the big fiery thing, with the giant tank behind him." And I could see, I mean, how would you react? He's a little stunned at first and now he's offended.

And that sort of behavior, that to me that's unprofessional. It doesn't show any sense of pride in your craft because part of that pride is your professionalism. And this guy here is now maybe feeling threatened and he has something in his hands he could defend himself with. That could have went south real fast in a real bad way. It didn't. Thank goodness for that. And I learned later that that guy was let go. That superintendent who came at him like that, he was asked not to come back to the job site because you don't treat people like that. Part of being safe on a job is acting professional, and speaking with courtesy and respect and dignity to everybody.

It doesn't matter who they are or what their position is. It doesn't matter if they're the owner, you're just a worker guy. None of that is relevant. You're all on this space. The space is dangerous, period. So we have to act accordingly. And that means we don't need tempers flaring. We don't need profane or offensive language just being spewed about. We need to make sure everybody's attention is on working safe and doing the proper work we're supposed to do, and nothing else. Not the crazy superintendent running across the roof screaming and waving his arms around. 

Megan Ellsworth: Totally.

Henry Staggs: I still don't even know what that was. And you know what? The irony is the guy that he was yelling at was doing a really good job. I just was watching him work and taking some photos, and I was impressed with his craftsmanship. He was doing a really fantastic job.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow, that's so weird.

Henry Staggs: Yeah, I felt bad for him. Yeah, so when we're talking about training, all of that comes into play, all of it. Etiquette, personal attitude towards professionalism, all that comes into play. But what's really, really important is the owners have to demonstrate and they have to implement. If the owner shows up, I've seen this owner shows up, flip-flops and a shorts, the other guys are all tied off long pants, boots and all the other stuff. And here's the owner walking around with flip-flops on the roof. And the guy literally turned to me and said, "Why do we got to wear all this junk?" I said, "I don't know. He is your boss. I don't know what to tell you," but that sets a bad example. And it's unprofessional.

And then how does that same boss ever presume to have the authority, the moral authority? He can have positional authority because he's the boss, but how does he have the moral authority later to implement any fall protection or expect his guys to take it serious?

So the guys on the roof are only going to take it as serious as their boss does. And if the boss is doing the safety talks, and they're doing the safety walks and they're checking the gear and they're making sure everybody's set up and doing all these things, that will bleed down. And I'm seeing it on jobs now, whereas just even a few years ago fall protection was nil to none, nowhere. And now it's 50, 60% I'm seeing more and more fall protection and actually utilizing it.

I would see a few years ago, guys would just throw the ropes over the edge or over the ridge or over a parapet or something and it looked like they were tied off, but they really weren't. And that goes back to the old days where guys had this big ego that, "I'm a roofer, I don't need fall protection. We need to get rid of that." No, you do need fall protection because you're a roofer. Being a roofer is a great thing, but doesn't make us superheroes. We can't fly and our bones will still break.

And I'm 55 now. I had a broken bone in my back, and I know bones can break and I know it sucks and I don't want to ever go through that again. So if I am personally in a situation where I feel unsafe, I don't go up there. I'll refuse to do the work. And a good craftsman will also refuse to do the work, just like any other trade. Other trades, you talk to a plumber, for example. If they don't feel safe down in a trench, they don't go. They say, "I'm not going down there." And they will cross their arms and they're not going until somebody fixes that trench. And the guys on the roof, they should be just as stern about that. So I'm going on and on.

Megan Ellsworth: No, this is great. This is so good. Keep going. So I'd love to know what you think a homeowner should do when maybe they've hired a company to redo the roof and they notice some of the people on the roof aren't tied off or have safety gear on. What should a homeowner do in that instance?

Henry Staggs: Well, the first thing the homeowner should do is attain the mindset that this is their home and their property and they are the ones in charge period. The contractor is there to provide a service for them. The contractors often bully themselves into being the authoritarian person on that project. And for their crew, sure, but not the homeowner. The homeowner is the one in charge. 

And so I've talked with several insurance agents. There's a problem that you may face with your homeowners insurance if somebody gets hurt on your property and they are not properly insured. Or they may be insured, but they were working in an unsafe, hazardous manner. And now you've got the insurance companies all subjugating against each other, and they're going to drag the homeowner into that. And you could end up paying or your insurance may pay, which could cause problems for you down the road as a homeowner.

But I would also say this. As a homeowner myself and homeowners I've worked with in the past, who wants to be the homeowner that finds a dead person in their backyard because they hired a roofing contractor who... I mean most people I know are good, decent people who could not see that sort of thing and never live it down. It's going to create a trauma within them. 

So when I had a roofing contractor myself redo my roof some years ago, they went up there without ropes and I called the guy, I said, "Your guys are not tied off, and I need them tied off," because mine was a two-story building and I don't want them up there just walking around up there. Anything can happen, a little bit of dust or a loose piece of rock or a chip off a tile, they go right off the roof just like a roller skate. And I don't want to see it happen. Not in my yard. I want to see it happen anywhere, but in my yard, I own it.

So I would suggest that to a homeowner. I would also say it's tough for the homeowners because the residential market is specifically bad for a lack of fall protection, at least in my area. And when I talked with our local ADOSH... So we're a state run, we have a state program here for our OSHA program and it's run by ADOSH, so the Arizona Department of Health and Safety and the guy said, the director there at the time, Jesse said, "It's not complicated. We don't have enough guys to go out into the residential market and find them. If we did, we would, but we just don't have the resources." So we have to focus in other industries and then primarily in the commercial world, unless we're called out to the residential marketplace.

And then even then, a lot of these guys who still have that old school mentality. "Oh, it's a trip hazard. It makes it harder. It takes longer to do the work." Well, I don't care if it takes longer to do the work, you're alive when you go home. I think that's more important than two hours shaved off a job.

So that makes it tougher on the homeowner. But if homeowners being the boss, and just kind of collectively, let's say we're talking to every homeowner on the whole planet right now, if all of them got together and said, "We are not going to allow unsafe work on our property, period," that would force the market to change. They would have a choice. They would have to change if they want to continue to do the business. 

So it really does fall on homeowners to be stern. There is no tolerance whatsoever. If they're not practicing safe standards, don't even come on my property. And the homeowner has the right to stop that project. They can stop the projects. If they're working in an unsafe manner, they have every right to walk out and say, "Everybody, get down. Go away until I talk to your boss." But I get it, that can be intimidating. It can be scary for a homeowner to do that. And it's going to upset the contractor probably. It's going to upset some of the guys on the crew. But so what? And they get their feelings hurt, but they don't get their bones broke.

Megan Ellsworth: Before a homeowner hires a roofing contractor, what are some questions they should ask to ensure that that contractor and their people are trained and certified and will be safe on the roof?

Henry Staggs: Yeah, great question I would ask is are your crew, the guys on the roof, OSHA trained, minimally OSHA 10? Are your supervisory staffed OSHA 30 trained? So the OSHA 10 training is for the guys working. OSHA 30 training will apply more to the supervisory staffs, to do with record keeping and things like that. In case there is an accident, how to handle it, things like that.

And then can you show me? And the answer should be yes, because you get a little plastic card. And everybody gets to keep that little card in their wallet, so they should be able to show that. Now we do that when I'm consulting for a homeowners association. We do that. That's one of our questions. We want to know that the guys they send to the roof, not the sales guy who sold the job. I don't care if he went through OSHA training, if he's not there doing the work. It's irrelevant. It's nice when he's selling the job, you show the card off and he can build all this credibility for the company. But none of that matters when the guy shows up on the roof and they don't have that card. Or sometimes heartbreaking as it is, they've never even heard of it. 

I've talked to guys who've been in industry 30 years, never went through OSHA training once. And I'm thinking, how are you in this business 30 years, a lifetime and didn't go through OSHA training or any other type of training like TRI, the Tile Roof Institute? I've talked with the tile guy. He's been laying tile. He's a really good tile guy. I was very impressed with his work all the time. And he said, "I really liked working with that guy. And whatever company he worked with, I kind of tried to follow him around. I wanted him on my projects," and I was doing a lot of HOA stuff. And one day I was going to go to a TRI training myself and I was leaving. He said, "Where are you going?" I told him, he said, "I never heard of that. What is that?" "It's the Tile Roof Institute. How do you not know about it? You tile guy." "I never heard of it. I'm going to look it up."

And I thought, "Oh my god." And this is a company who has advertised on their website that they have TRI trained installers, right? So when I went back to the owner and said, "Wait, what's up with this thing you got on the website when there's no," now I feel like I've kind of lied to my client because I thought guys were TRI trained. He goes, "Our sales guys get that. Our sales guys get that."

And I did a little digging and it's kind of true. A lot of sales guys will get a lot of the training that really the boots on the roof should have. And the reasoning I've heard in the past kind of sums up to, they're too busy working to go get the training, to do the work that they're doing.

So we give it to the sales guys, so it makes us look good and people hire us. And I'm like, "Well, that kind of defeats the entire purpose." So the homeowners should ask, are they trained and can I see it? I want to know that the guys actually showing up on my property have the training. And if they don't have the training, they need to get the training or some guys who do have the training. Or if you get a company, by the way, who doesn't, they just don't have it and it's not important to them. Or they try to kind of brush it off. Don't do business with them. And that's the way the industry is going to change. 

When we're in the OSHA class, when I was getting my training, the OSHA guy comes in. One of the fed guys, the guy with the big brim hat, the mean-looking guy and he said, "The only way to change the culture is to hit them in their wallet and hit them hard." And I was like, "Wow. So when they come into an area," our state was on probation for a while. Our state was in trouble with fed OSHA. Can you believe that? I mean, we're Arizona. We're bad boys.

We don't set our clocks back either. We do whatever we want to do. And we do. We're kind of cowboys wild west out here. All that's true. And this guy said, "If they ever do revoke our state plan and come in here, that's the first thing they're going to do is go find big contractors and hit them hard in the wallet and everybody else is going to pay attention." So similarly in the residential market, if homeowners started rejecting contractors or sending them home because of safety standards that they have to improve. They will because they still got bills to pay too. And if their bills aren't getting paid. And all it requires now is they get the, "Okay guys, you got to wear your fall harnesses now," whether they like it or not.

So I'm going on about... Commercial has some problems too, but the biggest infractions that I see out there just in my little area is in the residential market, reroofing and new development, all in the residential so bad.

On my way home today, I saw a bunch of roofers standing three, four stories up off the ground. I'm driving down the highway. And I couldn't tell for sure, but it didn't seem like they were wearing... I saw yellow shirts, but they weren't broken up by any straps, just a yellow T-shirt. And they're standing up on the roof, moving tile around, loading tile on the battens there. And I was like, "Oh my God, that's an apartment complex." That's the other thing too. So for something like that, if the developer is being held more accountable, they seem to kind of skate by and they'll get in too much trouble. When that young man was killed on his site, what happened to the developer? I don't know. Probably nothing. It didn't cost him anything, but it cost that young man his life and it cost a wife a husband and it cost their child a father. So I don't know how I could sleep at night. I couldn't.

Anyways, I can go off on a whole nother tangent with that. But we're human beings. And sometimes out there in the world, while we're working and doing construction, we forget that. And we start thinking of everybody as tools to do a project, just we're all hammers and screwdrivers and knives and torches and things. But all those tools are being handled by actual human beings who have families at home, people who depend on them. They have hopes and dreams. They have ambitions for their own future, and they shouldn't give it away for a few bucks on a project because a contractor didn't want to pay for a fall harness or put, a proper zip line in or whatever or put railing out. 

I mean my god, railing would solve so many problems. But if it's bit into the contract, then great. But if you have an in client who is just bottom line dollars and that stuff increases the cost of the project, then they end up getting it to the contractor who just doesn't care about it. And how can you be a contractor and not care about the people who do the work that put food on your table? I mean yeah, maybe they're psychopaths then.

Megan Ellsworth: I know. I totally agree. And I'd love for you to know. So I'd love to know if maybe a worker is working for a company that doesn't have great safety training and doesn't bring the certifications to them, where can they go on their own to get those certifications? And what role do manufacturers play in providing training and certification for workers?

Henry Staggs: There's a lot in that question. So if a worker is working and they feel unsafe, they have every right to blow the whistle on that contractor and they can do it anonymously. It is illegal for the contractor to take any action against them for it. So the contractor has to watch their P's and Q's. They can't fire this guy for turning them in, and they don't even have to know who the person is because you can do it anonymously. And then OSHA, or in our case, ADOSH will come in and they'll do an investigation. And then once that happens, now they've got OSHA or ADOSH breathing down their neck and coming out and checking on them and doing surprise visits. And that's one way to hit them in the wallet and force them to take corrective measures. So that's one thing they can do.

Another thing you do is just refuse, don't work. Go work somewhere else, find a different job somewhere else and just refuse to do the work entirely. And that might cost them a paycheck, but it won't cost them their life, which is very important.

Manufacturers. So here's an interesting little history thing I learned when I was studying to become a consultant. There's a lot of study involved in that, lots of study involved in that. I read so many books. I never read so many books in my life. I'm a roofer. I don't read books [inaudible 00:35:40] and suddenly I've got this huge stack of books that I read.

Anyways, I learned that many, many years ago, 100 years ago, whatever, the manufacturers always had a consultant type person on the project. You could not buy materials from a manufacturer unless you had their inspector come out and check the job all the time because the manufacturers used to own all the warranties. So we call them no dollar limit warranties now. That used to just be the norm 100 years ago or so, or whatever it was. And especially when hot mop was first coming out, and this all happened right after the great big Chicago fire.

So the great big Chicago fire happened, the whole dang city burns down. Now all of a sudden the construction is like, "We kind of did this wrong. We got to do this better." And one of the things that they did was bring more inspectors in to check things as well as improve the quality standards for products and materials that they're using. And everything's not made of wood anymore. So that is kind of where consultants have their roots in those old manufacturer inspectors.
So now we're still around. We do the same thing essentially, but in a different role. But in my case, I work with the manufacturer as an independent. So I work on behalf of the owner or the owner's representatives. And then I, oversee is not the right, so I monitor the project, I do observations, I do things like that. I document for them. And a lot of my documentation ends up in the hands of the inspector for the manufacturer. And then I collaborate with them, send them photos and do whatever. Different manufacturers have different ways they like to do things. But however they like to do it, we do it that way to ensure that what we're doing is meeting all the standards. 

And so when the manufacturer's offering that level of service, they're going to also require that the company be certified. Which means that the installing crew, and it's getting a lot stricter than it used to be. It used to be real easy to get these certifications, but not anymore. It's getting a little tougher, that the installing crew, the former superintendents and workmen, they have to go through the manufacturer's training and certification process in order to become certified to do the work that they need done in order to get the warranty that the customer wants. So that's another one. If the client is insisting on the warranty to be backed by the manufacturer who's got billions as opposed to contractor who doesn't, then all those requirements have to be met.

Part of that training is going to be safety training. So if they're doing torch down for example, obviously part of the torch down training is going to be how to operate the torch, how to know when you've gone too far with it, what to do, where your fire extinguishers go. How far apart should your fire extinguishers be? I'm working a torch down project now. And I'd say within five or minutes of any particular spot at least, there's a fire extinguisher and they sit on these big red plastic pedestals and they sit down kind of in these little four prongs that hold them in place. You can't miss the fire extinguishers on this roof.

And as they're working and moving down the roof, the fire extinguishers move right along with them. And if they don't have those fire extinguishers on the roof, then the manufacturer can say, "You know what? We're not going to certify this roof," or other little things. Or they check the seams or they see burn marks, things like that.

And it causes the contractor to always be aware of what they're doing. It causes the workers to be very keenly aware of what they're doing. And you don't want to be the worker who causes the job to fail, the ultimate inspection. I say the ultimate. They call it the final, I call it the ultimate because we have four or five final inspections before the... I'm on my third final inspection on the shopping center right now. So every time I go out, there's a little something, "Come on, guys." So I think Monday we're going to do the ultimate one, and that's when the manufacturer rep is going to come out and walk the roof along with me. So that's kind of how the manufacturers play into it, if that all makes sense. There was a third part to that.

Megan Ellsworth: No, no, you totally answered that. I would love to know, any other pieces of advice for home and building owners out there looking to hire a contractor to replace the roof in how they should approach making sure their people are safe?

Henry Staggs: I would like to see homeowners, building owners expect and insist on professionalism from the contractor in NCCER. Somebody said about a year ago or so that we need to professionalize our industry, and that was all in conjunction with NRCA and NCCER's training program that they're working on. And the NRCA. Did I say NRCA? Yeah, NRCA is pushing through, John and all those guys are working real hard to get those programs into the trade schools. And I know when I was going around the trade schools and doing my little circuit I did there here in town, roofing wasn't... Even the young kids, they just didn't see roofing as a serious trade. It was something you did to make money maybe for a while, but it wasn't taken as a serious trade. And I didn't like that because it's the most serious trade. The foundation and your roof. If those two things are solid, everything else in between can be repaired or replaced. Did I say refixed? Maybe refixed. Because you get the wrong contractor. You're refixing it. The roof leaks, like, "Oh, I had a roof leak repair. Is it still leaking? Yes, I got to get another." Well, you didn't have a repair then. So we got to have a re-repair, re-repair. Stuff like that.

I'm dealing with something like that now. They didn't put drip edge on, they put the gutters on the fascia, the water's running behind the gutter and the owner's like, "This ain't right." I'm like, "Yeah, that's not right." Roofer's like, "What's the problem?" Really? That's an importance of training right there. You should know that. 

But it starts from the top down, but also from the bottom up and it kind of meets in the middle. So if the people paying the bill, the stakeholders, they're the ones that are writing the check for this insist that their contractors are professional from the top all the way down to the bottom, from bottom all the way up to the top. Everybody there is a craftsman and they take their trade seriously. I don't care if they're the guy sweeping the dust off the roof in preparation for the guys coming behind them, laying down the membrane or if they're the guys doing the membrane or they're the guy walking up doing the QAO work, that's me. It doesn't matter. Everyone is there doing their part in the bigger picture to create a final product that's acceptable to the person, the stakeholder paying the bill. And that person paying the bill needs to insist on taking craftsmanship, period. No ifs, ands or buts about it. If homeowners would start doing that, if building owners would start doing that more and put that above price, obviously price is going to have a factor. But once that becomes the norm, right? Everyone's expected to function this way. Then the prices will adjust and then everybody back to competitive prices again. 

And we won't have these guys coming in who just literally do not care. Or they think that they're supermen and they can fly, and they're just going to do the work haphazardly and, "I haven't been hurt in 30 years. What makes you think I'm getting hurt now?" Well, I don't know. 30 years means you've probably been doing it for a long time. You're older, your body's more beaten down. 

Megan Ellsworth: For real.

Henry Staggs: I'm guilty of it. When I was a young guy in my twenties... Okay, I'll tell a terrible story. I was doing a house for my grandma. She's 89 years old, she's still alive right now. She's still doing construction work. She's always been a remodeler. But now she has a full double on chair and a little table, and she brings her drink and her table and she sets it in the middle of wherever they're working and watches the guys work and tells them to do stuff. She's awesome.

I come from that family. That's why for me, it's like, "You don't know how to swing a hammer. What do you mean?" It's like I was born with one. There were our plastic, I had a big plastic hammer as a toy. That's what we played with. 
So I'm doing this rough. It's about maybe 30 foot from this one section all the way down to the ground. And I remember it's an old, that's about 100-year-old house and it's got really narrow shiplap siding on it. And it has a door that's no longer a door that was just nailed shut, and these steps that go to nowhere up to this door that's no longer a door. And we had our ropes. So this is a, it's like, I don't know, maybe it was an eight or nine, 12, pretty good slope on this roof. And it had a cap that set up top and it had all the hips that came up all around it.

So we wrapped a rope around that metal cap and we tied it to our waist. That was our fall protection on that roof. I did want fall protection out there, and I didn't know any better. I never even heard of a fall harness at that point. And so that was something they did on the military base near us that. We didn't do that in town. We're townies. We don't do this stuff. 

And I decided I didn't want to go all the way around the other side and get that ladder, which is completely on the other side of the house. You get off that roof, get on a different slope, crossover, get down the patio, then go off the ladder. So I jumped off the edge of the roof and I rappelled down on that ladder. And as soon as I was doing that, there goes my grandma driving by and she saw me. And later that night, I got a safety lesson from grandma. Oh, she was really mad. "Who do you think you are? This ain't no mountain boy." "I'm a roofer. I can do that." "The hell you can. You can't do that."

But that was the kind of stuff we did, and we thought it was fun. We thought go down the ladder backwards or slide down, things like that. Just silly, stupid things that we did. Why? Because we didn't know better. We weren't trained to know better. And the people we worked for, they didn't care. They were just trying to get the lowest possible price that they could possibly get. And that was us at the time.

Yeah. So I would insist on professionalism from the top to the bottom, and the guy pushing the broom or the guy installing the singles, the foreman, doesn't matter. They should all take pride in their work. And I tell my daughter all the time, any job worth doing his job work doing well. I don't care if it seems important or not. The guy who cleans the toilet, you want that guy to take a real good care in doing his job. You want that. When you go to use the bathroom in a public place and you notice it's not clean, it's gross. It's repelling. You're like, "Oh god," and it makes you think about this. The whole business looks great. It's a beautiful store. Then you go into the bathroom and, "Oh my God, what in the heck happened in here?" And now all of a sudden you have a whole different idea of what kind of business this is. Maybe I don't even want to buy anything there anymore because I don't know where this is ending up. This is really gross in there. In the men's rooms. It can be all over the floor. People step in it. 

This happened in a Barnes & Noble. I went in, there's a whole big puddle on the floor and I'm like, "Oh, gross." So I went. I didn't even go there. I left to go around in the mall to go to a different bathroom. I was coming through there. It dawned on me, I saw some kids rolling around in the carpet in the kids area. I said, "Oh my God, what if somebody tracked that on their route through this carpet down here and now we got kids rolling on it?" And that's all I could think of when I was in the store was that.

So my point is, in this terribly gross story I'm using is it doesn't matter what the job is or how insignificant it may seem, it's not. It is just as important as every other part of the job because it will definitely impact. If the guy pushing the broom, sweeping the dust off to get in preparation for the membrane guys doesn't get all the dust off, it can affect the appearance of the membrane, can have little lumps and the owners can say, "What's that? Why is it lumpy right here? What's going on?" You got guys up there spray-painting things and they're cutting stuff open, trying to take out little rocks or chunks of whatever. Every single person on the job has to take absolute pride in their work. And the owner has to insist on it or they don't work there. Yeah, I think I'm going around in circles here.

Megan Ellsworth: No, I completely agree with you Henry. I just can't thank you enough for the great advice you've shared with us today.

Henry Staggs: It's advice. I don't know if it's great, but it's advice.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, really good advice honestly. For homeowners, workers, building owners, construction company owners, roofing contractors, everyone out there listening, I hope you were taking notes because this is good stuff. And you can find all of this at AskARoofer.com. Henry does all sorts of videos for us, The Arizona Roofer and we just can't thank you enough for the great advice and information you share with us.

Henry Staggs: Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. I enjoy doing it. I enjoy doing the AskARoofer videos. Pulled me out of my comfort zone. I can talk in front of 300 people. I won't break a sweat. I get in front of a camera and I'm like, "[inaudible 00:48:48]," It's all fake. I'm telling you.

Outro: It's all a facade. Well, thank you so much, Henry. Again, everyone go to Askaroofer.com to learn more and we'll see you next time on the AskARoofer Podcast.

If your roof needs answers, subscribe now to the AskARoofer Podcast. We've got your questions covered one episode at a time. Go to AskARoofer.com to submit your questions and learn more. Stay tuned and keep those questions coming.