Training The Next Generation of Restorers​
Hiring and retaining quality staff is consistently listed among the toughest challenges in the skilled trades. Restoration owners and managers will share their experiences recruiting, hiring, training, and developing the next generation of water damage professionals. 

Using Technology In To Elevate Restoration
How can modern restorers utilize technology to increase their ability to deliver quality service in their local markets? Restoration owners and managers will share their experiences with which technologies have been effective in elevating the services within their companies. 

Creative Solutions For Challenging Scenarios
It’s one thing to learn how to dry a structure within a controlled environment, but how do restorers train their teams to problem solve for an endless variety of complications on the job site? Restoration owners and managers will share their experiences with sourcing creative solutions from the industry and within their own teams to meet challenging water damage scenarios. 

Understanding and Implementing Industry Standards
Restorers express frustration over the lack of knowledge from many service providers claiming to be water damage mitigation experts. Restoration owners and managers will share their experiences with understanding and implementing standards within their organization as well as ways they have worked to help their peers do the same.

Getting Involved
If you are a contractor, property restoration business owner, or water damage professional, please reach out to The DYOJO to hear more about our monthly education and networking meetings for contractors in Washington State. We look forward to meeting with you on the second Tuesday of every month. Check out our FoCKED Events Calendar for more information on our regular meetings and special events. ​​

On Episode 99 of The DYOJO Podcast, we discuss:

0:00 Let us discuss moldy things 
0:58 Pending mold legislation supported by the IICRC
5:18 Holding bad actors accountable within the skilled trades 
8:39 Filtering through industry BS with Cliff Zlotnik
11:25 Industry regulation at the state level with Gordy Powell
20:07 Mold in pop culture - Zombie fungal outbreak in Last of Us
27:41 Can your company save the world from Cordyceps?
29:06 Helping young workers bridge the knowledge gap 

• Read more from The DYOJO blog

Thursdays are for The DYOJO Podcast - helping contractors shorten their DANG learning curve.

Who is at fault if a "client" signs a contract (or work authorization) but they have no authority or ability to pay?

It only takes getting left holding the bag once for a contractor to realize that there are two critical questions for every construction project:

1. Do you have the authority to sign my contract?
2. If the answer to the first question is "yes", do you have authority and access to the funds to pay me for the agreed-upon cost of my contract?

​
On Episode 98 of The DYOJO Podcast, we wrap up a review of an insurance claim from Winter Storm Uri where the contract had to sue the customer, a school district, as they believed they were not paid correctly for their water damage emergency services.

In this video, Bebo Crain and host Jon Isaacson discuss some of the hard lessons learned from being put in awkward positions with customers who either didn't understand the contract or misrepresented their authority to enter into one on behalf of the damaged property. As Bebo says, the simple the agreement, the better. Or even clearer, "The more understood, the better," for all parties involved.

​​Listen to the rest of Episode 98 or read The DYOJO blog. The DYOJO Podcast - helping contractors shorten their DANG learning curve. ​

 RANSCRIPT:

Jon Isaacson (DYOJO): Two really important questions you can sign my work off, but are you the one that's going to pay you a mentor to do do a podcast?

I don't know about you Bebo, but I've done jobs like that, where you arrive, it's a big client, well known in the community, you know, like a school district, the teams jazzed to be doing something that's helping you really feel is a good cause we're working to get kids back into school, right? There's, there's nothing cooler than that. That's everybody's like, you know, I'm not excited to be working overtime, or overnight, or 24 hours or whatever. But because we're doing something good for our community, people feel a lot better about that.

Bebo Crain (BC): During that Texas event, Texas was hit with a massive winter storm temperatures dropped below freezing for days, there was heavy emotion in the air, and you add that, then we don't experience stuff like that. And so we got hit really hard in Arkansas. And it was, I'm telling you, like in a situation like that, I mean, if we could help out, we're going to. 

​I've dealt with larger entities like HOAs apartment complexes that have management shields in front of them, and things like that. And when you deal with an entity, or any property that you're gonna go on, I think that it's very important to understand who has control that property, who has control that property has control the property.

Or better or better yet, who doesn't have control of that property, talk to call. For the event, or the money that's allocated for that property, it's important to know that they can, they could withhold that information from us and make it seem like a property management company or superintendent has the authority to appropriate $1.4 million, without even knowing it's gonna be 1.4 million in the beginning.

I think it's very important for our contract contractor to have a contract and not just a contract, one that is clear with its terms, one that can be understood, like, you gotta be able to take your contract. And you got to be able to sit it down in front of three or four people after the fact that all this stuff's happened, right? Whether after you've done the considerations of the work for the money, and you've got to sit there and you've got to be able to explain it what happened, you got to demonstrate what happens and what's going on. It's got to be agreed upon, like, I agree to do this for this, you know, if something's going on, the simpler, the better. Or the more understood, the better.

DYOJO: Just asking somebody, do you have the authority to sign my contract? If they say yeah, sure. Okay. Do you have the authority to initial or initiate payment? You can sign my work off, but your Are you going to pay? Are you the one that's going to pay? I think those are two really important questions. 

The Science Panel for the Lessons Learned from Storm Response and Hurricane Recovery workshop brought Ralph E. Moon, PhD and Jeremy D. Beagle, CIH to center stage.

Ralph shared his wealth of knowledge in being called to projects for cause and origin. When he is conducting a claims inspection, he seeks to allow the conditions of the structure to speak for themselves.

Jeremy followed up with a practical discussion of some of the ways third-party consultants can miss the mark by not approaching the structure with a scientific process that leads them to make evidence-based conclusions. This process includes asking, “Why am I doing this?” as well as, “Is this accomplishing what it is intended?”
​
Ralph and Jeremy worked together in a supervisory capacity. We sat together during one of the FOP (Friends of
G. Pete Consigli, CR, WLS) Dinners and I had the joy of hearing more about their mentorship relationship. Ralph discussed at the workshop, echoing what Joseph Lstiburek also shared during the Andrew Ask Building Science Symposium, that seasoned professional must do their part to pass the torch to the next generation. Ralph stated that this process is about empowering young professionals to learn to do things the right way as they gain knowledge and independence in their processes.

Josh Winton (IAQ JOSH) (remediation) and Michael Symula (assessment) helmed the Remediation Panel for our Lessons Learned from Storm Response Workshop.

They shared how important safety is for all involved as well as setting clear and grounded expectations. Assessors and remediators should work with, not against each other.

Thank you to sponsor AEML, Inc as well as all of our sponsors, presenters, and participants.

Watch the pre-workshop interview with Jeff Cross and Cleanfax magazine

IN THIS EPISODE:
0:00 The Power of the Postcard
1:46 An Unnamed Adjuster Talks Matching Materials 
8:08 What Are We Working On - Workshop
11:06 Book 5 - Challenge Accepted 
19:10 The Government’s Plan to Save Us From Gas Stoves
29:15 One More Tidbit - 1980’s Prisons
34:26 Cutting Edge Tools - The Sony Mavica
​

Jon Isaacson is working on book number five. The working title is Challenge Accepted: An Open Letter To Young People Entering The Workforce. In this episode of The DYOJO Podcast, Jon reads from the Introduction. 

What is this book about? 
I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch. I did pretty well in my school studies but wasn’t a standout in the sense that I had scholarship offers from colleges begging me to continue my scholastic journey with their institution. I enjoyed playing sports but wasn’t the most talented. I did “win” a few best-effort awards. I played mostly B (JV) or C (Intramural) team sports. Once I acquired my license and tasted the freedom that making my own money brought, I committed to working. 

At work, I found that accepting the challenge of doing my best wherever I was employed helped me enjoy the work and achieve better results. Life is difficult and many things can seem impossible, but if things were easy they would not be as exciting to overcome. If making a better life for yourself were easy, everyone would be doing it.  

• You do not need to be exceptional to make a difference. 
• You do not have to have your life figured out by the age of 16, 18, or even 21 to be successful. 
• You will need to embrace the challenge of life if you want to define, pursue, and achieve whatever success means to you. 

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school, other than I had some general ideas which I will explain further in this book. I was fortunate enough during my youth to have been provided some basic ideas about how to work (aka work ethic), exposed to people who made positive career choices and hadn’t made significant mistakes with long-term consequences (see Three Internal Holdbacks). These items helped me land some early jobs, achieve some initial success in those entry-level positions, and build confidence for seizing upon advancement opportunities. 

If the idea of living with the challenge of entering the workforce and advancing your career appeals to you, I believe this book will be helpful. You can read this book all the way through or you can keep in on your bookshelf until you need a small spark when you are facing a challenging scenario. Just in case this introduction is all that you ever read, I would like you to remember these three things. 

The Three Be’s Challenge yourself to build a foundation for life by developing these core character traits, I call them the Three Be’s:

• Be honest 
• Be hardworking 
• Be willing to learn  

I have hired, trained, and promoted numerous young people who came to my businesses with little to no prior skills. It is my ongoing belief that if you are honest, hardworking, and willing to learn, we can teach you to be successful in anything. On the other hand, if you are not willing to be honest, aren’t willing to work hard, and you aren’t willing to learn, there is little that we can do for you.  

• Whatever your goals are, if you bring the Three Be’s to the table you are going to have a fighting chance.   
• If you aren’t sure what you want to do after high school or with your life as a young person entering the workforce, focus on the Three Be’s and you will be building a solid foundation for success. 
• If you start working and you are unsure of your abilities, develop the Three Be’s and you will find that you stand out from the majority of your peers. 

One thing you should consider if you are not exercising these three character traits now, it will be that much more difficult to develop them later in life. What you do now will become a habit. Bad habits are hard to break. So, if you aren’t being honest, you aren’t working hard, and you are not willing to learn, those negative habits will become rooted in your life. The longer you practice these three things, one way or the other, the more natural they become. Good habits take consistency to form. 

Being honest, hardworking, and willing to learn will not guarantee success but they will set you up for greater opportunities.  

This short book was written to encourage young people entering the workforce to keep working hard, recognize your opportunities, and provide you with a few tools that will help you along the way.  

I challenge you to read this book, do you accept? ​

Have you heard about the government’s plan to save us all from the health and environmental hazards of natural gas-burning stoves? 

• Washington State Ban on Natural Gas Heating Is All Cost, No Benefit - https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/11/10/washington-state-ban-on-natural-gas-heating-is-all-cost-no-benefit/ 
• The Great Gas Stove Meltdown - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/patriotism-unity/the-great-gas-stove-meltdown
• Gas Stove Bans Are Advancing Around The Country - https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/gas-stove-bans-rundown 
• Are Gas Stoves Bad For Our Health? - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-gas-stoves-bad-for-our-health/ 
• Are Gas Stoves More Energy Efficient? - https://www.constellation.com/guides/appliances/energy-efficient-ovens-stoves.html

Are gas stoves bad for our health? According to Scientific American, “Broadly speaking, there are two categories of concerning emissions related to gas stoves. First, there is the unburned natural gas that can escape before the flame ignites or leak from a gas hook-up. This gas is more than 90 percent methane. Second, there are the pollutants created by combustion when a burner is on, most notably nitrogen oxides, which can irritate the lungs.”

Are gas stoves more energy efficient? According to Constellation, “It takes three times as much energy to deliver electricity to your stove than gas, so buying a gas range could save you money in the long run. Your final bill will depend on how much time you spend cooking, but if you have an electric ignition, you can expect to pay less than half as much per month to run a gas range.”​