Tom Wells knows that the greatest tool he wields as a stormwater inspector isn’t his digital camera, maps, permits, or notepad. It’s his credibility.
That’s why Wells, senior erosion control coordinator with Lamp, Rynearson & Associates, an Omaha, NE–based civil engineering consulting company, became one of the first stormwater inspectors in the country to earn the industry’s new CISEC designation.
Wells obtained this designation—the Certified Inspector of Sediment and Erosion Control—after attending an April workshop in Lincoln, NE. He now points to the certification as an important new way to show the clients with whom he works that he is a professional, one who’s studied the nuances of stormwater pollution prevention plans (SWPPPs) and the myriad best management practices (BMPs) that contractors can use to prevent stormwater from leaving construction sites.
“It’s another way to distinguish myself from other inspectors,” Wells says. “It’s just another way to add some credibility and legitimacy when I’m doing my reports, when I’m working with the city. I thought it was important enough to attend the classes and take the test.”
Wells is one of about 200 inspectors who have earned the stormwater inspection certification. That’s a healthy number considering that the certification has been available only since late 2006.
That’s when a group of veteran stormwater professionals, led by Jerald Fifield, a professional hydrologist and president of Parker, CO–based CISEC Inc., offered its first certification classes. Today, CISEC offers regularly scheduled one-and-a-half-day training sessions, followed by three-and-a-half-hour certification exams. Upcoming training and exam sessions will be held in Lafayette, IN; Minneapolis; and Douglas County, CO; and at IECA’s annual conference, EC08, in Orlando, FL, in February; and StormCon ’08 in Orlando in August.
Wells, for one, is pleased to be one of the first CISEC professionals. The certification has done the job of boosting his credibility among the developers and city officials whose job sites he inspects for potential stormwater drainage issues.
“I made sure to put the new designation on my cards. I include it in my e-mail signature,” Wells says. “I think it immediately adds credibility when I’m handing my cards out to other people in the industry. It does the same when I’m handing them out to contractors and to the other regulatory people I meet on a daily basis. These people see that designation and know that I do take my profession seriously.”
That, of course, is the reaction that Fifield was hoping for when he first began mulling over the idea of creating a new certification in 2005. This new certification, though, differs from others in that it focuses on stormwater inspectors who have already demonstrated a comprehensive knowledge of the principles and practices of sediment and erosion control. The CISEC certification, then, acts as an important supplement to these professionals’ already considerable expertise and, at the same time, serves notice to contractors, developers, and municipal officials that anyone holding the CISEC designation is an experienced, savvy pro, one whose advice and recommendations they should respect.
Because of this focus, even the requirements for being able to take the CISEC examination are intense. The program’s Web site, www.cisecinc.org, spells them out, requiring that anyone applying for the certification must first demonstrate a complete understanding about sediment and erosion processes and how the discharge of pollutants associated with construction activities may impact the environment.
And that’s just the beginning. The Web site states that applicants must have the ability to meet the EPA’s requirements for a qualified inspector; must be able to read and understand construction-site SWPPPs; must have construction-site experience inspecting the installation and maintenance of BMPs, identifying waste management problems, and addressing the impacts of non-stormwater discharges; and must be able to communicate and write accurate inspection reports. Applicants also need to have inspection skills in one or more of the following types of construction projects: large land development; linear, including roadways or pipelines; vertical, including town houses or single-family residence construction projects; or big-box commercial buildings.
Applicants must also have at least one of the following qualifications to take the CISEC examination: two or more years of construction-site field experience and prior classes in sediment and erosion control or the Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) designation and one or more years of construction-site inspection experience.
In other words, the CISEC process is a series of training modules and exam designed for established stormwater and erosion control specialists.
“This designation is designed to show contractors, builders, developers, and municipalities that when they are dealing with someone holding a CISEC designation, they can be confident that their inspections will be done in a professional and consistent manner,” Fifield says.
The Value of Communication
Dale Hoffman, workplace compliance manager with Denver-based KB Home, attended the first set of CISEC classes held in November 2006. Earning the certification made sense for him because he performs stormwater compliance audits on KB Home job sites. Hoffman figured that any additional knowledge he could gain would help him identify potential stormwater problems on these sites.
By taking the classes, though, Hoffman gained an unexpected benefit: He received affirmation that he is, indeed, doing his job well. “During the class, we’d talk about a lot of the measures I’ve already been doing. It helped to confirm that what I had already been doing is the right way to go about inspecting these sites,” Hoffman says. “That was a good feeling. It just helped reinforce that I was doing the right thing on these sites.”
Because of the nature of the job, most stormwater inspectors work alone when they’re poking through construction sites. They’re largely on their own as they search for potential sediment and erosion issues. And if they find any? They must recommend solutions to these potential problems and do so without being viewed as the enemy by contractors and developers.
It’s often a precarious balancing act. Contractors, of course, want to complete their projects on time and under budget. Taking time to install BMPs properly, and then repairing or replacing them if an inspector finds problems, is something that some contractors would rather avoid.
Taking the CISEC class and exam reminded Hoffman that no matter how it often feels, he’s actually not alone. An entire community of stormwater professionals is experiencing the same balancing act on a daily basis.
“A lot of times when you go out and do an audit on a job site, you find several deficiencies. You begin to question yourself. Are you reading something wrong? You start to think that maybe you’re being too picky. There shouldn’t be so many problems,” Hoffman says. “But then you go to these classes, you get in a room with other people who are doing the same things you are, and you realize that, yes, you are doing this the way it is supposed to be done.
“You realize that you’re not really on an island by yourself,” Hoffman says.
Most of the time when you do a compliance audit, you feel like the Lone Ranger out there. But you’re not really alone. There are a lot of other people doing the same thing.”
In-Depth Studies
Befitting CISEC’s focus on inspectors who already have field inspection experience, the CISEC classes—and exam—cover the practice of inspecting job sites and analyzing SWPPPs on an in-depth level. The CISEC manual, which is used with the training modules and contains extensive material found on the exam, is thick as a phone book and includes sections devoted to EPA rules and regulations, BMPs, inspector duties, and construction permits.
During a recent CISEC class held last October in Bartlett, IL, a western suburb of Chicago, stormwater inspectors listened as instructor Fifield shared with them the number-one rule of inspecting job sites: “You are there to work with the contractors and the developers,” Fifield told the class. “The overall goal is to minimize the amount of pollutants leaving the site. When you see a problem, you need to suggest ways to solve it. That’s important: suggest, not mandate.”
The students attending this class had already made it through the first day of CISEC classes. This morning—starting early with doughnuts and coffee—the students and Fifield were working their way through a virtual construction site, looking for potential stormwater drainage issues.
Commenting on the images splashed across a screen at the front of the meeting room, the inspectors didn’t hesitate to find problems. Even the site’s entranceway didn’t escape their critique: The entrance to the sprawling site lacked a tracking pad for incoming or outgoing vehicles. Without this pad, the vehicles could have easily spread dirt and debris throughout the site, debris that could have ended up in stormwater runoff. The site also didn’t include a sign clearly marking its entrance, a sign that Construction General Permit regulations require.
The rest of the site fared little better. Students discovered a set of fuel tanks resting less than 100 yards from an onsite canal. That was a violation according to the SWPPP issued for the class, and it had the potential to cause serious stormwater control issues. A single leak, for instance, could send a steady stream of fuel into the site’s canal.
The site was riddled with problems. From the comments in the class, though, this case study wasn’t too far-fetched. The students agreed that they’ve all seen at least some of these violations on real sites.
Again, Fifield emphasized that even when inspectors find obvious site violations, it’s in their best interests to work with—not against—the site’s owners.
“Remember, you never tell people what to do,” Fifield stressed to the students. “You offer alternatives and let them choose. As long as their choice will solve the problem, you go with it.”
The students then went through another case study, this one even more of a challenge. They were asked to pretend that a developer had hired them to perform a site inspection prior to the vertical build-out process—after firing a previous inspector. The previous inspector had done a terrible job, filling out his forms incorrectly and missing several violations. It was up to the students to correct the errors and rescue the hopelessly incomplete paperwork.
It was a lesson that paperwork, and the documents required by federal and state regulations, are nearly as important as the actual onsite work that inspectors do.
The damage from the previous inspector, in fact, was serious. The inspector neglected to sign several of his inspection documents. He also either failed to conduct his inspections every seven days as the SWPPP required or simply misplaced the paperwork showing all the inspections he did complete.
One student suggested what may be the soundest approach to dealing with this problem: “Maybe we should start over?”
This long day—which ran from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.—culminated in a three-hour exam. The exam covers everything that stormwater inspectors need to know for their occupation as well as to successfully analyze SWPPPs.
The CISEC Web page, www.cisecinc.org, includes several sample exam questions. Some examples:
- The EPA requires signers of the NOI [Notice of Intent] to retain site inspection reports as part of the SWPPP for at least
a. one year from the date that the permit coverage expires or is terminated;
b. two years from the date that the permit coverage expires or is terminated; or
c. three years from the date that the permit coverage expires or is terminated.
d. There is no requirement. - EPA expects inspections to include areas used for storage of hazardous waste materials. True or false?
- There is no EPA requirement for signing inspection reports. True or false?
- Which BMP will remove the least amount of sediment in runoff waters?
a. A properly installed silt fence barrier placed at the toe of a hill
b. A properly designed and installed sediment basin
c. A rock barrier placed around an area drain
d. A straw bale barrier placed in front of a curb opening - When inspecting for planting of seed, it is important for an inspector to determine if:
a. a seedbed has been properly prepared;
b. information on the bag seed tags meet required specifications; or
c. proper seed planting equipment is used.
d. All of the above
Did you answer these questions correctly? If not, maybe you should study a bit longer before taking the CISEC exam. (See the end of the article for the correct answers.)
A Wise Investment of Time
Pat Eyre has worked as a stormwater inspector for Sandy City, UT, for just six months. But thanks to the CISEC class he took—and the certification he earned—Eyre says he feels as confident as a veteran while inspecting a job site.
“The class was very informative for me,” Eyre says. “Maybe it was because I was relatively new to the field, but I felt like I learned a lot during the class. It helped me to understand the real role of the inspector as far as making suggestions and recommendations as opposed to being too specific and telling them what has to be done.”
Before attending the CISEC class, Eyre says, he thought he’d be telling contractors exactly what they needed to do to solve a stormwater issue.
That, of course, is exactly the approach that CISEC instructors speak against during the class.
“During the class, they emphasized every time that if I see the BMPs working, that’s fine. But if they’re not working, I need to get together with whoever are the contact people and let them make the decision on how to solve the problem,” Eyre says. “We can throw out suggestions, of course, but we’re not supposed to dictate to them what they should be using.”
Eyre recently drew on his CISEC class experience while investigating a local job site. He noticed that the silt fencing that ran around one of the site’s inlets was not doing a good enough job of protecting it. Construction crews and winds continually knocked down the fence, and the inlet pipe had become choked with dirt and debris.
Eyre suggested that crews place large rocks around the face and opening of the pipe to offer additional protection. These check dams slowed the runoff down on its way to the pipe opening. The water still dispersed through the large rocks, but the silt and debris did not.
“Before attending the class, I might not have thought of a solution like that,” Eyre says. “But in this case, I was able to find a solution that worked for everyone. I’m grateful to the class for that.”
But it’s not just new inspectors who benefit from the CISEC class. Wells, who’s worked as a stormwater inspector for eight years, says he, too, learned several new strategies through his CISEC class.
“I’ve been doing this for several years,” Wells says. “But you always learn something new. In my class, it wasn’t approached as ‘This is what you need to know to pass the test.’ It was more along the lines of ‘This is sediment and erosion control. This is what you need to be looking for at a job site.’ It was very educational for newer or less experienced inspectors. But it was beneficial to me, too, to get that recap. When you do this job day in, day out, you forget some of the little stuff. This was a good refresher course for me. I’d recommend it for inspectors who want to increase their knowledge or supplement what they’ve already been doing.”
Answers to the sample exam questions:
1. c, 2. True, 3. False, 4. d, and 5. d.