The Arch Inspections Training Process for Our Inspectors
In the interest of transparency and to help give advice to any other multi-inspector company owners out there,we are sharing the Arch Inspections training timeline, omitting a bunch of steps that are specific to our company.
Pre-hire
Background check completed.
Week 1:
Read the ASHI Standard of Practice. This is the minimum acceptable standard for an ASHI home inspection. This should be read and re-read regularly.
Begin attending inspections with other Arch Inspectors.
Week 2-12:
A ton of reading related to internal home inspection policies and procedures, as well as the entire library of our internal company knowledge base.
You will read the following:
- Plumbing: The New Jersey Plumbing Code
- Building: New Jersey’s One and Two Family Dwelling Building Code
- Deck Construction Guide, based on the 2012 IRC
- Code Check Building
- Mechanical: The New Jersey Mechanical Code
- Electrical:Electrical Inspection of Existing Dwellings
- Radon: Home Buyer’s and Seller’s Guide to Radon
- The National Home Inspector Exam study guide
2 – 6 Months
Start working on your own inspections, and start typing reports. The final report is then sent to the primary inspector, and the report is reviewed for accuracy, corrected as needed, and then sent to the client. The process of learning how to properly write reports will take a long time. This process has never gone quickly for anyone.
The Arch Inspections Home Inspection Report Writing Style Guide must be followed.
Not only must the new inspector not miss anything during their inspections, but their reports must also be consistently error-free before they start inspecting on their own. This is a very challenging task.
Lastly, you need to pass the National Home Inspector Exam, which is one of the requirements to getting full certification with the American Society of Home Inspectors (ASHI), ASHI Certified Inspector.
We’ve found it’s nice if our home inspectors have had some formal training, like a one- or two-week school, but it’s not necessary. The most important part of this job is on-site training and learning how to write reports properly, which only comes from intense peer review.
By the time our inspectors start inspecting on their own, they’ll have conducted between 120 and 160 home inspections, on average. They don’t go on their own until we’re confident in their ability to recognize problems, and their ability to communicate those findings verbally and in writing. When we can’t trust one of my inspectors to inspect a house for a close friend or family member, they’re not ready to go out on their own.
Training processes for everyone else…
So how are solo home inspectors supposed to get the needed training to go out on their own?
They need to train with experienced home inspectors. That’s it, that’s all. There’s no school that will give this type of training. Sure, some schools might send home inspectors along on a handful of real-life, group inspections, but that’s just the first rung on the 28-foot training ladder.
There is currently no formal training or apprenticeship program for home inspectors here in New Jersey, but we think there should be. ASHI has something called Parallel Inspections, which is the closest you’ll find to a formal process at the national level. It’s a pretty loose program, but we’re hoping to help make the program better.
