Transcript:

Christoph Lohr: And welcome back to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. Joining me again is Mr. Tony Marcello, senior vice president of Training and Credential Services. Welcome to the show, Tony.

Tony Marcello: Thanks, Christoph. It’s good to be back again. Had fun last time, so I’m excited to be here to talk about some cool stuff again today.

Christoph Lohr: Likewise. Well, on today’s episode, we're going to be talking about the ASSE 12080 and really the 12000 series as a whole. And for our listeners, can you touch on a little bit about what the ASSE 12000 series is as a whole? Just to give them a quick, broad overview before we get into the rest of our questions.

Tony Marcello: Yeah, happy to answer but it’s also a tough question to answer because the 12000 series has been one of our most rapidly expanding professional qualification series at ASSE. In a nutshell, 12000 is about preventing infection and being able to live and occupy spaces in a way where people aren't in danger of contracting any number of things from waterborne, airborne, bloodborne diseases and pathogens.

There’s a big focus on Legionella as well throughout the series. But the series kind of touches on everybody, not only the tradespeople that work in these environments and are trained to be able to come in and work effectively and safely and protect occupants, especially occupants that have compromised immune systems, but then also a credential. And we'll talk more about that with the 12080 for the people that actually work in the facility, everything from administrators on down who are involved and have a stake in preventing infection and keeping the occupants of their building safe.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Let’s focus in on one of the professional qualifications within the 12000 series, that 12080. Can you explain in layman’s terms why that AC 12080 is important?

Tony Marcello: Yeah. Unfortunately, we're all aware that there continues to be outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease due to Legionella exposure. Unfortunately a pops up in the news and it continues to pose a danger for the occupants of health care and other facilities and their safety and well-being. But it also, to be totally transparent, provides a level of exposure for those health care facilities from potential lawsuits and insurance-related issues and then dealing with infections in outbreaks should they occur despite everybody's best efforts.

So 12080 is really designed for those people that are working in those facilities to make sure that they can serve on a proper kind of risk assessment and then water management plan team to protect the members of not only the staff or there were those facilities, but especially patients within health care facilities. And again, the best way to deal with an outbreak is to not have them, and so the whole idea is to make sure that the professionals that are credentialed to the ASSE 12080, the idea here is to make sure that they have all the skills and knowledge they need to be able to perform those risk assessments and develop those water management plans effectively and comprehensively and make sure that they're aware of everything they need to know while doing so.

Because some of the things that the members of those teams are going to have to look at are not going to be familiar with them, a hospital administrator isn't going to understand a whole lot about the plumbing systems and where all the risks are, and so the 12080 tries to ensure that those folks are more knowledgeable so they know what they're looking at, they understand the threat. They understand where the dangers lurk within their facilities and can be better equipped to prevent infection, and should the worst happen despite everyone's best good-faith efforts, how to react in a way that minimizes the impact that an outbreak might have.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. It sounds like there’s a pretty wide array, but maybe you want to go down the list of who should get certified.

Tony Marcello: Yeah, it’s very important. When a health care facility or any other building has to contemplate how to handle these risks, being full well aware of all the negative consequences that come from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease or some other disease caused by some other waterborne pathogen, they need to take a look critically at who’s going to be on that team, and the people that typically are on this team are the people that have a stake in what happens, and the people that are going to have to be the ones who might have to deal with a problem should one come up. And so they’re the ones who are going to be on that team to help us to prevent those problems from popping up.

On that team, you’re going to have everything from hospital or health care administrators or facility administrators. Now, it’s important to, we think about health care facilities. It’s important to make sure that everyone is thinking outside of just the hospital box. There’s a lot more that goes into that kind of health care facility envelope, all the way down to retirement homes and assisted-living facilities, where you still have people that have these compromised immune systems. All those all those types of facilities have administrators and staff that are going to have a stake in keeping their folks safe there.

You’ll have administrators, you’ll have risk managers. There’s also infection protection professionals out there in the marketplace. Those are the types of people that should also be serving on these teams. You have facility managers, industrial hygienists, which is a very kind of niche role but something that some hospitals and hospital groups will have on staff or have as contractors to consult with Legionella consultants and other consultants that are familiar with waterborne pathogens. Hospital engineers and water treatment professionals, among others.

But these are kind of the general people that you’re going to see from the health care facility side that are often going to serve on these teams.

Christoph Lohr: What does it take to get certified?

Tony Marcello: That’s a really, really good question. ASSE, as a certifying body, is a little unique in that there’s a really strong belief in the importance of training and education as part of the certification process.

At times you’ll see certification programs or essentially if you meet some basic requirements, you can just take an exam. If you pass the exam, now you’re certified. Well, the 12080 Professional Qualifications Standard specifically requires that individuals go through a 24-hour training with an approved school, and they must complete that training prior to taking the exam.

For folks that might be interested in going through the training and getting certified, they can visit the ASSE website — asse-plumbing.org — find the tab that says personal certification, click there and then go down to approved schools and you’ll be able to find a list of the approved schools for the 12080 as a nice avenue to start your journey toward getting certified.

Once a candidate takes their 24 hours of training and ASSE is aware that you’ve done so, then you’re qualified to take the exam. The exam is 100 questions. It’s multiple choice and individuals that meet all of the prerequisite requirements, which includes the training, and they get an 80% or higher on the exam, they’re now considered, certified and ASSE will send out their professional credentials.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Now, as I mentioned before, the 12080 that we just talked about is part of a larger series called 12000 series. And you mentioned that the other standards in the series are aimed at preventing outbreaks due to Legionella and other pathogens. Do you want to just touch on maybe kind of a quick overview of some of the other ones, maybe a little bit of a deeper dive here?

Tony Marcello: Yes, I think that this is a great opportunity to talk about that because I think folks that live and work in the health care facility, the health care world, they’re not always familiar with these other standards that greatly benefit them. When the 12,000 first started, the initial couple standards that were created all dealt with infection control and infection control from the workers’ side of it.

When a health care facility needs repair work, they’re adding a wing to a hospital, whatever, any time that they’re going to have work done in a facility, that work has to be done in a way that is going to not make life harder for the people that are already there and we're not creating an environment that is going to further challenge compromised immune systems.

There’s a lot to be taken into consideration. Some of these standards exist for the tradespeople that would come into the hospital to do this work. The real benefit here is that if I’m a hospital administrator and I’ve got to figure out, I've got a job, whether it’s repair or updating a wing of a facility or even having to build a whole new wing onto a hospital, you have this group out there that are certified and have already been trained and credentialed to come into your facility and know exactly what to do to make sure that they're preserving the safe environment that already exists there. Making sure that they're not releasing dust into the air and taking safeguards against these waterborne, airborne and bloodborne pathogens. And what’s doubly nice about these credentials is that they also prepare these workers to operate safely within the environments themselves. Not only do you have people that can come in and work and operate in your facility without making your life harder because you're worried about what are they going to do that’s going to cause additional hospital-acquired infections or any other things that are going to make your life miserable.

Not only can they come in and do that, but now you have workers that know how to protect themselves. And so you don’t have to worry as much about the workers coming in and them getting sick or being exposed to harmful things that might exist in these types of environments. It’s kind of a nice win-win type scenario.

It is something that we encourage health care and other facilities to really strongly incorporate these credentialed professionals into their jobs. But since we’re talking about the 12080 specifically here today, I really want to make sure people are aware of 12060, 61, 62 and 63. And the reason why that’s really important is because these standards go really hand in hand with the 12080.

I was thinking about this, and then about the 12060s and really what they mean. We’ve talked about the 12080 as being the credential for the risk assessment and water management team that is consisted of the staff and related consultants and stuff from the health care facility side. Well, the 12060 through 63, those focus on the tradespeople and preparing tradespeople to also be members of these water management and risk assessment teams.

And that becomes very important when you understand that the tradespeople, they install these systems that go into these facilities, they maintain these systems, they repair these systems and they’re very familiar with all the different appliances that get connected to them. And so they have a unique understanding of where some of these additional dangers might lurk. I had a couple analogies that I’ve thought of.

And so when you think of any team, that team is really only as good as the members that are on that team. And so you want to make sure that you have all the right folks on that team so that you can approach these issues, which are very important from a very comprehensive perspective. So recently with my kids, I was rewatching the first Avengers movie, and so you have all these superheroes, for those who may have not seen or are aware of this movie, you have all these individual superheroes that have all these amazing powers. But they come across a challenge. The Earth is being invaded by a force that even with them working together, they’re not able to overcome until Bruce Banner rides in on this rickety old motorcycle and turns into the Hulk. And that’s the missing piece that completes the team so that way they’re able to save the city of New York and ultimately the world from some interstellar invader.

Christoph Lohr: Spoiler alert.

Tony Marcello: Yeah. The movie’s been out for like 12 years now, so if you haven’t seen it by now … But these teams are a lot the same way in that you need the collective skills and abilities from all of those folks, including the folks on the trade side, to do it.

And so the other comparison I make is if you were to go out and buy a new car, you’re going to go to the dealership, you’re going to go on the lot, you're going to run into a salesperson and test drive a car. But wouldn’t you feel a whole lot better if you got to bring your trusted mechanic along with you?

Because that individual is going to be able to point out problems with a vehicle that you don't even know to look for. And that’s where the 12060s and bringing in those tradespeople onto these water management teams and these risk assessment teams, why it’s so important. Because although the people from the facility side have a great level of knowledge, they don’t understand those plumbing systems and where some of these other additional dangers lurk like the installers do — just like the installers don’t understand insurance billing and all the things that an administrator needs to worry about from the facility side, those people just don’t have the right amount of experience in the right areas to fully protect and be totally comprehensive in their team to protect their facility. That’s why I really appreciate you bringing me back to the show to talk about these things, because when you start to think about these systems and things that some of the facility folks might not think about when you're dealing with cooling towers, water features — which is also an area that a lot of people don't seem to recognize as exposure threats — all the potable water systems, the fire protection systems, you’re dealing with potential dead legs that can harbor some of these pathogens. Ice machines and humidifiers, a lot of folks might not even be aware to even look at those things as potential exposure risks. And then you have just all the other kind of pipe systems within the facility. By having kind of a complete Avengers team that includes the facility side as well as the trade side, it really puts together a comprehensive team that could avoid outbreaks, which is going to save lives, and you’re also now equipped with the right team that you need again, should an outbreak occur despite everybody’s best efforts, now you also have that team in place that can react efficiently to minimize the damage.

Christoph Lohr: I think your point, Tony, about the 12000 series as a whole I think is a really poignant one too, because last I saw too, in the 2024 UPC Appendix P for Professional Qualifications includes all the 12000 series ones in there. So a jurisdiction has the option to adopt these professional qualifications for 12000 series for their jurisdiction as they as they so choose. But then on top of that, the comprehensive list there is a great opportunity for design professionals who put in their specs qualifications for the installers on their projects.

They can use that same list for certain applications as well. There’s a lot, I think it’s a really good point you make there, Tony, in terms of adopting these different codes and these different professional qualifications and making people aware of that because there’s a lot of different mediums for people to apply it.

Switching gears a little bit, how should those people that get that certification, how should they promote the certification, in your opinion?

Tony Marcello: Yeah, that's a good question. Before I move quite in that direction, just to kind of touch on your last statement, I think it’s also good for people to understand that hospital groups, or individual hospitals or individual health care facilities, can also require these certifications in order to qualify for jobs; they don’t necessarily have to wait for their jurisdiction to adopt it.

So if a hospital group, let’s say, wants to require that everyone who’s going to do work in their facility has to have this 12000 credential or that 12000 credential because they recognize the benefits of having that, they can do that. I just wanted to be clear that although in the code world we typically think about it in terms of adoption, but when it comes to these particular standards, private entities do have the ability to require that folks have these certifications; they don’t have to wait for the jurisdiction to put in some sort of mandate. I just wanted to add that. But to get to your question as to how people should promote their certifications, certifications, they're accomplishments, right? In order to become certified, you have to demonstrate a level of competence; people just don’t give away certifications. People should be proud of any certification that they achieve. And then as they continue to maintain it, they should be proud of what they’ve accomplished and what they have shown to be qualified for. Step one should be, once you get your official credentials, you should slap it on a refrigerator next to your kid’s spelling test to show that you also do cool things. If an employer is not aware that you have gotten this credential, you should make them aware. Now, in most cases people that go through the training and certification, they’re being kind of sponsored or their company is paying for it. But if someone should do it on their own, they should be sure to make sure that their employer is aware that they’re now qualified to operate on these teams. Now that we’re also in the digital age, we’d also encourage people to make mention of and add that credential to their professional networking profiles, email signatures, any outward-facing way that they want to show people that they’ve accomplished this, they’re qualified to do this, and they are ready to be a part of the solution in managing Legionnaire’s disease and outbreaks from other pathogens.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, to wrap things up, Tony, I want to circle back to what we talked about at the beginning and what you mentioned in the beginning, which was how this is becoming really the fastest-growing credential, right now, professional qualification, or among one of the biggest ones. The next time we have you on the podcast, because you’ve already been on I think two or three times — I’m imagining a fourth one is around the corner at some point — what do you think we’ll be talking about with the ASSE 12000 series in terms of the growth?

Tony Marcello: It’s hard to say because, as I mentioned, this 12000 series, which isn’t, compared to some of the other professional qualifications we have, isn’t that old. I think the first standard of the series came into being maybe six, seven years ago, which really isn’t that long ago. So to go from one or two standards to now it’s starting to get to be seven, eight, nine standards.

I think what you’ll probably see us talking about in the future with regards to 12000 is going to be kind of the air quality part. So where we have the 12060s, I think you’re going to see some additional PQs being developed that are going to be maybe geared a little bit more toward some of the HVAC side of things in the air quality side to help further protect those delicate environments.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, Tony, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing even more of what you know.

Tony Marcello: I appreciate it; it’s always a great opportunity.