Ensuring Water Quality & Safety: ASSE 12000 Series Certifications and Their Importance

Christoph Lohr: And welcome back to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical. In this episode, we talk with Kurt Steenhoek, international representative of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry. Mr. Steenhoek discusses the importance of the emerging science on water quality and why it is vital for plumbing installers to have training in this topic.

He will also dive into the specifics of a key new certification the plumbing industry should be aware of, the ASSE 12061, among other certifications. After discussing how building owners and plumbing engineers can also reference and utilize the certification on their buildings and projects, the conversation will conclude with an overview of all the ASSE 12000 Series certifications and their importance.

Kurt, really glad to have you on the podcast. 

Kurt Steenhoek: Thank you very much. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. So let’s jump into this. One of the big pieces that has kind of caused a lot of the need for this training is, especially from my observation, water quality. Why is water quality becoming more of an important topic for plumbers today to understand?

Kurt Steenhoek: Yeah, thank you, Christoph. It’s great to be here. After Flint, I guess, is where we really kind of dove in and we had a lot of people in the field there and working on the water quality when they had issues. And that was the point where we decided, hey, we need to take a look at this from a trades perspective.

And we had to ask ourselves, do we belong in this space and do we need to be able to figure out how to get the tradespeople and the contractors into this space to make better water quality in the future? And the answer was yes. 

Christoph Lohr: So, as more and more facilities, particularly health care facilities, begin requiring training and certification for infection control, could you touch on and explain why in layman’s terms, specifically the ASSE 12061, certification is important. How does it fit into that overall infection prevention? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Yeah, you bet. So when we took a look at this as a pilot program and found out what was really out there in the water in the buildings and in the facilities, we decided we would take a look at the ASSE 12000 Series because we were already working in it in the medical gas field and other fields inside these facilities so it fit into that model. So we opened up the series, we developed the training program, we developed the book, and then we decided that we needed to have several different series in that, because when we took a look at the building, we took a look at the mandates that were coming out from CMS and from Medicare and Medicaid.

It said all building systems, so we took a look at that and we did plumbing, we did HVAC, we even took a look at the piping within the sprinkler figures, and it’s astonishing what’s come out of that. 

Christoph Lohr: We started the conversation with ASSE 12061, but my understanding is that 12061 is part of a larger series.

Are there other similar standards in that particular series that are aimed at preventing outbreaks due to Legionella and other pathogens, and can you talk about maybe the specific numbers and naming and some of the specifics of those? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Absolutely, yeah. The 12060 Series is really, it’s 12060 and that is the contractor, so the contractor that’s working in this facility is already doing the design work, doing the installation, doing the remodels. We needed to have them certified and they needed to know what they were doing in the space to be able to estimate it to be able to work with the engineers and to be able to work with the hospital facility folks and other building facilities to get them to understand what they were looking at when they were estimating it and delivering it.

And then after that, we had the 61, which is the plumber, which takes in consideration of all the plumbing systems. That is good water in and good water out. When we look at Legionella, we look at a holistic approach, and we want to find out where is this coming from? It's not just a specific area where we had the outbreak; where is it coming from and how do we stop it, and how do we manage it going forward? So we looked at that and we’re training the plumbers in the plumbing systems for that. If we take a look at the HVAC side, we saw it in the cooling towers and in the ice machines and different areas of that nature, and so then we develop the training modules for the HVAC piping and the heating and the air conditioning piping as well. So that was that. And then we started looking at the other system that we do in the UA is our sprinkler fitters, and a lot of times these have their own designated line coming into the buildings, and it sits there stagnated and they have blowdowns and they have different testing procedures that they have to do.

Well, that exposes people because that water’s been sitting there for a long, long time. People don’t really realize or think about it, but you’re exposing people in the workplace and you’re exposing people in the buildings because these are occupied buildings when they're doing this. So we train them to specifically handle that in their system as well.

Christoph Lohr: Are there any others? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Theirs is a 60. So 60 is the contractor, 61 is the plumber, 12062 is the HVAC, and 12063 is the sprinkler fitter. 

Christoph Lohr: That’s a really good breakdown. Is there any other series that has been developed similar to those ones? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Yeah, once we went through the pandemic following all this, we started looking at air quality.

It was really important to building occupants and owners to take a look at that and how are we going to design that. So we put together a specific 12050. So we reopened the Infectious Control 12000 Series, and we developed the training module for the contractors 12050 and then the HVAC technician, the people that are working in the air delivery systems, in the 12051.

Christoph Lohr: That's fascinating. So you really have covered the whole breadth in terms of air and water inside the built environment then. 

Kurt Steenhoek: Yeah, it’s interesting. We put it in simple terms like this back in the ’90s, before we had certifications and installation certifications for medical gas, there was all kinds of cross-connections and people were having problems and people were dying on the table and we had to figure out a way to tackle that. At that point, one good point is that we didn't have anybody certified. Today we have 100,000 people certified in medical gas and we’re protecting the health and safety inside those facilities, inside dental offices, inside anywhere you’re getting delivery of medical gas, vacuum systems, and everything they’re being designed and installed much safer to these standards. That series kind of opened the 12000 in the infectious disease control and construction with ICRA, and then, over time, these things just expose themselves to where we helped develop some of those from our perspective and brought a lot of professionals to the table to help develop these as well. 

Christoph Lohr: That’s so fascinating. I really like that comparison to the medical gas side, which obviously has had a lot of success in making medical gas systems safer. Going back to the ASSE 12061 certification, what are the most important components as part of that certification specifically? 

Kurt Steenhoek: I think the most important is, we look at control points and we look at risk factors and we take every building as occupancy is the different risk factors. If you have immunocompromised folks in health care systems or in nursing homes, their risk factors a lot more because their immune system is more compromised.

So we break those down and then what we do is we take a look and we figure out, what is the water coming in? And we take a look at that and say, what's being delivered from the water purveyor? And then where is this Legionella? Where is this other bacteria, where is it growing and where do we need to tackle it so it doesn't become a problem? So then it becomes an ongoing maintenance. of the system. Once you get it all mapped out, then your value comes back down. So it’s an initial investment doing this, but you find out where the Legionella is. The other thing we do is we find out where you might have dead ends, and you might have piping that needs to be repiped.

The other thing that’s nice is in the design stage, we can work with the engineers and we can help them design systems that can continuously flow so we don’t have dead legs, we don’t have the problem areas that we’re finding. And so the future, it’s going to be much better on the design side as well, working with contractors that are certified in this and the installers that are certified with the engineers because that's really what it’s about. It’s a full spectrum of all of us working together. 

Christoph Lohr: I think that really looking at it from top to bottom and working together, I think it’s a really important part. In terms of who’s getting the certification, is it just the plumbing installers, and then what does it take to get certified? 

Kurt Steenhoek: We have the 12000 Series, the installers get certified, the contractors get certified, but we also have, there’s a 12080 Series that you know about, and so these are facility folks that are getting certified so they have knowledge of what they need to do internally inside their buildings too. We had worked with some infectious disease control people when we first started, and they were actually going down developing their own series, and we worked together to develop this 12080 in there as well, which, it’s really a good model.

It touches everybody that has any responsibility or anybody that has access to those systems.

Christoph Lohr: And who should get certified and how do they get certified? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Generally, what you’re going to do is you’re going to take, the contractors it’s a 40-hour class to start with; not a 40-hour, I’m sorry. Let me go back on that point. To get certified for a contractor, you go to a four-hour class and you take a 50-question test and you learn that the journey people take a 12-hour class and then they take a 100-question test and they need to pass that, and then that certification is good for three years. And then they get recertified on a recertification for continuing education.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. That’s a really good breakdown. Now, it seems like a lot of it focuses on the plumbing installer. What should other plumbing industry professionals, like engineers or building owners or others that work on these systems from outside the installation side, understand about the ASSE 12061 and the other 12000 and 12050 series?

Kurt Steenhoek: I think, from a perspective of the 12060, that’s a pretty short class. A lot of times, if we’re giving that class, we’ll bring in building owners and stuff and let them listen to that first four hours and they don’t really need to get certified in that. But then, if they want to get to a deeper dive, they can take the 12080 Series and understand why all these others are important to work within that building.

So, design professionals. And professionals that work in the facilities, facility maintenance folks, would really behoove them to have the 12080.

Christoph Lohr: And then what should they understand about ones, the certifications that are geared toward the installer like the 12061? Is there anything that they should consider as part of their process, as far as looking at that 12061? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Yeah, I think the nice part is that if you take a look at the mandate from CMS, the Medicare and Medicaid mandate that you have to have a water management program within your facility, these certifications were first designed around that, around the hospital settings because we felt if we get the most immunocompromised settings, and the most highly contagious ones that can really hurt people, then every other building below that is just going to be taken care of no matter what. You can train to that and it applies to all buildings, but to have the knowledge for them to understand what the tradespeople look for and how important it is, that’s a good deal.

If you understand why you’re hiring somebody to do this, it’s pretty simple math. 

Christoph Lohr: Yeah, that makes sense. I remember seeing something as part of the preparations for our podcast here, that the ASPE engineering methodologies to reduce the risk of Legionella, one of the recommendations in there was for the engineer to include an  ASSE 12061 certifications in their specifications as a requirement for the contractors.

Any thoughts on that in terms of good recommendation or any additional context or anything on that? 

Kurt Steenhoek: I think when we took a look at developming our system, we looked at these mandates, but we also looked what is ASHRAE doing on 514 and 188. and we put that right in our training module.

So what the engineers are looking at, we put that directly in there so we’re all speaking the same language, whether you’re designing an understanding or whether you’re installing an understanding or maintaining an understanding, that’s that common basis there with the ASHRAE documents and that really helps because we’re all working from the same platform of standards.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, to wrap up our conversation today — I like to ask the question because it’s a little bit of a tricky one — in one word, how would you summarize your conversation with me today? 

Kurt Steenhoek: Informative. I think, that’s what I want to do. I want to inform people about this problem and we’re here to help them.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical and IAPMO, Kurt, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise and insights with myself and our audience. 

Kurt Steenhoek: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.