Certification at its best?

P

Przrat

New member
IKECA. OK One of you certified members please tell us . How much does it cost. What does the training consist of. Do you have to join? Do you have to pay a yearly fee after you become certified?.

This is what I heard about being an IKECA Certified Graduate. Online training. Mostly memorizing the NFPA Codes. A fee to become certified. A fee for membership. A manditory periodic fee to remain a member. No membership fee, your certification is revoked? Periodic refresher courses of the NFPA codes. Online of course. More fees. Imagine that, we could pay for the entire life of our business never meet a person, just pay kinda like car insurance. Bet they have a lot of stuff to sell us too. Stickers and the like.
Do any of these certification companies actually show how to clean a hood?

At the Black Magic School of Dance................scratch that.
Black Magic Hood Cleaning Certification School, we were showed how to clean a hood. Classroom only. How to disarm a fire suppression system. (No longer allowed) according to the codes. A full day of that. Golly, what a suprise, a non member actually reads the codes without paying membership fees, WHATEVER. Sales techniques. Insurance needs. And the final day was set up to sell us newly certified members every piece of equipment they could shove down our throats. All kinds of stuff we would never really need. I did like the complete bright yellow wet suits with resperator , goggles and black boots. My partners and I looked pretty cool. Nice truck with a nice hot water machine and a $700.00 wet vac in our yellow suits. Not a customer in sight. We did look good though.

I once thought these schools were there to help individuals get into the hood cleaning business. Ya know, show them how. Now it looks like they lost their way or found a more profitable way to bleed money from enterprising people.
Just imagine what it must cost to set up an online test based on the NFPA 96 codes, and charging lifetime fees. What a great idea. Screw hood cleaning. I am going to set up a certification school. There isnt a real governing body. I can say what I want. Keeping newbees out or making it very difficult to start up. New ways to get the money.
 
Ed, this is what I really liked about Rusty's school. You were given the basic classroom type stuff, then you also busted grease all through the week at REAL accounts. I am a little slow sometimes and need to do things for myself before I can catch on, this school was perfect for me because it was 80-90% hands on and 10% classroom stuff. If you are interested give Russell Clark a call. It's a great school in my opinion.

By the way, I get absolutely nothing out of recommending the school to anybody. No kickbacks, no nothing, so I have no agenda in sending people there besides the feeling of helping somebody succeed in their business.
 
No one has ever said that IKECA showed people how to clean hoods. To be a member you must have liability insurance at one million plus workers comp and a working knowledge of the industry. The cost now is $700 per year. We have two meeting a year to discuss general concerns and national topics. We seat four(?) members on NFPA and we are now a member of ANSI (Accredited Standards Developer for the kitchen exhaust cleaning industry.

We have associate members that have products for sale at the meeting and IKECA for the most part does not offer many things for sale.

We are not for everyone-for those who have the answers this an waist of time and it would not be recommended. For those who seek a more positive link to the industry, this could be for you.
 
I liken certification to the written part of a drivers test. You can study your butt off, pass the written part, then you are given a permit and you can practice your actual driving with someone who has a license. You can not get your actual drivers license until you prove you can really drive a car and obey the rules of the road. At least that is how it is done in Cali.

The industry could be set up this way, certified cleaners could go out with those who are already licensed and once they learn how to clean an exhaust system properly, they can take a practical exam to become licensed exhaust cleaners.
 
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