Handling a request to providing a previously issued certificate requires skill and tact. The request could be from the student or an employer. Once the original certificate is paid for and delivered our financial obligation is complete. Additional copies may be provided for a small charge. Moreover, we have a duty to protect two things when this request is made. The "working value" of the certificate and the student named on it. It is always a good idea to explain to whoever is calling that you just can't release a certificate to anybody that just might call in and that you have a duty protecting it's ownership. People like to hear that and will usually comply. When you get this sort of request, the easiest thing to do is to refer then to me. I usually follow up the call by faxing the original cert request letter and a Visa/Mastercard form and wait for the call back or a fax.

The working value of the cert is only good for one year. Whoever paid for it is entitled to that value. Once it has expired (one year), it's only use is to establish eligibility for a refresher course or for state licensing. If the student makes the request and had paid for the certificate, the only thing you have to do is make sure it is really THAT person requesting it. Begin by determining if they are close to a training center. Coordinate getting them in to the closest training center where they can show photo ID and leave with the certificate in hand. I tell then just come on in, bring a photo ID and quote the charge. Often times, the student has moved from the area or is working in another state and can not come in. If they can't come in, I verify by asking questions like: what was their address or phone number when they took the course or their social security number. Of course this won't work if they are staring at a copy of it. Then, I have them fax me some ID like their drivers license and social security card. If they pass that test and I am reasonably certain it is the same person I will take payment by Visa or Mastercard and provide any combination of email, fax, mail or Federal Express the certificate to where ever they want it.

When the employer is calling, you need to be sure the student is in agreement with the request. Tell them to have the student personally contact you. Even still you have to make sure it is the student on the phone by questioning them about personal information from the registration form. Once you are sure you are speaking to the student that took the course you can proceed with the employer with payment, issuance and delivery.

Beyond making sure the cert is provided to the rightful owner or otherwise gets used for legal purposes. The problem is that people that take the class believe they are entitled the certificate regardless of who paid for it. When an employer puts up cost of tuition, the cost of the medical exam and often the employee's salary for the week of training they may well have invested more that $1,000.00 into them. If the employee leaves the employer during the year of "value" or becomes terminated there may be hard feelings. The employer will not agree with release of the cert to the former employee. I always tell them "there is but one original of that cert and you'll need to contact your former employer and ask for the cert". Sometimes the employer will let the former employee buy it back. That statement is usually met with a "no way they won't give it to me". Now you know there are hard feelings. Often I will contact the employer and try to mediate the situation. If I am told "no" then I suggest to the student they take the refresher so they can work with a certificate they themselves have paid for.

Some state license applications require submission of every original training certificate. If the employer fails to release a certificate this could become a future problem when applying for state licensing during the term of value. After the first year has passed, we will provide the cert to the student once a verification test and payment is complete.

In order for me to produce the certificate you need to provide me with the course number and the certificate number. You can find this by looking up the certificate on the student database. Print the search results and fax it to me as a request. When seeking multiple certificates for the same student, print the complete history and make a mark indicating the ones you are requesting. The certificates will be made in the usual manner and sent to your computer for printing and delivery. Fifty percent of what you charge the student or employer is then due to us in the usual form of payment.

Now the information from the registration forms must be posted. Enter the registration data from your browser on the internet on the Trainer's Site. The students registration information becomes merged with the course information you already entered when the course was initiated. Together they produce a strip of information which eventually becomes the data on the certificate. If there are errors in name spelling or social security numbers on a certificate you put them there. This office does not proof-read your information. If the student elects to withhold his or her social security number please have this form completed and attached to the registration form. There are two steps to ensure the correct information gets on the certificates: Circulate the summary and check the final product. If certificates with errors get out they must be re-printed. If you are circulating the summary and checking the final product before it leaves your hands you should never have a problem. With this in place continuously making errors amount to carelessness or misdirectedattention and will not be tolerated.

The certificates we provide are government documents. We teach this in class and we teach this to you. You should NOT take your job lightly. The processing of these certificates is an important job. Peoples livelihoodand their ability to make money to feed their family'sare at stake. The last thing we want to hear is that one of our students can't get their license of has been rejected by a prospective employer due to a mistake you made on their certificate. As well, when someone pays for any product we expect it to be free of defects. Here is what happens if a certificate is not checked before it is passed out and has bad information. The first thing is it gets run through a copy machine and sent to several places. One for the file cabinet at work, one for the file of the last project. Another one for the current project(s) the guy might be working on, and on and on. Depending how long the cert is left out there before the mistake is discovered it is hard to say just how many inaccurate copies have been made. If the student goes to any state or states that license individuals the state people find mis-spelling and social security errors that hurttoo. It costs the student and the employers in terms of waiting in some hotel room the employer is paying for, away from home, not drawing a salary while the state rejects the license due to problems with the cert. Sometimes the state will contact me and request the certificate be corrected. Not only do "WE" look foolish but then, I usually have to Federal Express the corrected certificate to the state at my expense. And often like with date errors, it is the entire class full of certificates that must be retrieved and re delivered to students and employers. Some states are not as "friendly" and simply reject the license application by mail and the student has to contact me and figure out why they couldn't get a license. While there may be room for occasional errors and omissions for some things, you know, you order too many books or unexpected classes cause you to run out and we have to Fed-Ex last minute replacements. There is no room for mistakes here. Printthe summary's have the students check them, attach it to the paperwork and finally, check the cert before you hand them out. Don't let this happen to you. To make a correction to a cert previously issued. Fax me a copy with the correct information clearly marked in bold. Do not re-enter the information into the courses, confirms and cancels database on the internet.

Each course gets a Course Cover Sheet. A course cover sheet is the beginning piece of paper that ends up being the course pack. This collection of paperwork stays with you for the entire time the students are in your building. The registration forms are joined, usually by paper clip with the course cover sheet on day one and used on the last day of class for the exam, the sign-in sheets are used daily, skills assessment forms are used on Wed. and Thursday, and the evaluation sheets are put in at the end of the course. Each course pack gets allotof use. It will likely be your job to make sure every piece of paper stays with the correct class.

The cover sheet serves several purposes. It summarizes everything about the course. allows an area to note course comments, anything special that alters this one from a standard course. When combined with your check it acts as a fax cover sheet telling me you are ready to print the certificates. The English course covers are on white paper, Spanish on green. The distinction of color only serves to visually identify the courses in your office and in mine. There is no difference between the two other than the color. Spanish cover sheets are in the English language.

Whether initial or refresher, as the course nears it's end, you will have collected the tuition'sfrom the students that will get certificates that will be issued for that day. The tuition money gets deposited into your companies account and your company draws a check for half that amount. There will be separate and individual checks made for each course. All Spanish asbestos training checks are made our to MSK, All lead-based paint courses are paid to LACTS and everything else made out to Seagull.

Note the course number in the memo section of the check (SL0734) <space> number of students you are requesting/class size (2/5), and the course code (LW) or like this: SL0734 2/5LW. This shows at a glance what the check pays for and how many the check pays for. If you are requesting 5/5 or 2/2 that's all you need. I can figure that out. If the class is one person you would note 1/1 and you don't need the name either. If you are only requesting a partial release to the right of the course number is where the students are noted. If, as in the example above, you are requesting 2 of 5 include in this space the names (first name, last initial) of the two you are requesting. If you wanted to request 3/5 put NOT: then name the 2 you are NOT requesting. Makes for less writing for you and less reading for me.

When you fax me the cover sheet and check you are telling me you are ready for the certificates. Make sure your computer is on in System 9, your printer is on and loaded with certificate paper and your ready to go. After you have prepared the cover sheets with the checks, each check gets attached to the bottom of the corresponding course cover sheet and faxed to me. This is your signal to me you are ready for the certificates.

The certificates are delivered to you in a folder labeled the same as the memo on the check you wrote me (AL0734 5/7S). Inside the folder are the "print icons". The print icons are documents that contain the information on each certificate. I'll teach you how to drag then into the print monitor to make the certificates in a minute. But first, here's WHERE you'll find them. On the desktop of your computer I have previously set-up an "alias" or a pointer to the "PROCESSING FOLDER" which is buried within the documents on your drive. In the processing folder is where the folder with the print icons are sent to resides. Don't move anything! The processing folder is where the certificates are delivered, the printing gets done and where the processed files are archived. Click on the processing folder alias on the desktop. It opens your processing folder. In the processing folder you see PRINT THESE. This folder contains the folderized "print icons", Watch: FINDING the Print Icons .

Now we are going to copy the print icons to the print monitor. This way it will leave the original ones in the labeled folder. Keep in mind the copies will be "spent" in the process of printing. Leaving the originals intact comes in handy in case you forget to load certificate paper and leave white paper in the printer, or need to make another copy at a later time. Now lets move the print icons to your print monitor so they can be made into the certificates.You can select the icons you want to print either by holding the shift key while catching them withyour mouse of click+drag your mouse over them. WatchSELECTING the Print Icons .

When you have them selected you have to hold down the option key and drag them into the folder labeled Print Monitor Documents. They will be copied into it and then printed. Remember you have to hold down the option key and drag the print icons to the print spooler. Practice it on some non-relevant files before you do it to the real thing. If you drag them without holding the option key down you will "spend" them and they will be gone. Watch: COPYING the Print Icons .

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1. DO speak in specifics.
2. DO use the course numbers ie: SE0732 3/5W
3. DON'T ask if you can ask a question. That is a question and you didn't ask me to ask that one.
4. DON'T state that you have a question. Just ask it. Please DO use the "?" sign and I'll know it's one.
5. DON'T refer to the individual students by name use the terminology
6. DON'T forget to get the checks signed.

We train an avarage of about 5000 people in several hundred classes each year. This amounts to alot of paperwork.As the paperwork accumulates each week, month and year it has to be maintained, by law for a minimum of 3 years. We keep ours for ten years back. The reason for the legal requirement is that often things will happen out in the field long after the certificate is issued. Several times a year, State and Federal investigators will call upon my office to participate in various types of investigations. To name a few, these investigations include: altered certificates, improperly done work, illegal immigration activities and misrepresentation of training documents. The list goes on. For this reason it is vitally important that each and every students paperwork be impeccable.Requests for the information related to a course may come in writing by phone or during a visit. Our governing agencies are required by law to perform records audits on a routine basis. Each state and local county have investigators that work environmental cases. The FBI assigns agents to the EPA offices in each region. They in turn work with the state and local government investigators on cases involving our students. When these agents and investigators are in search of information they need as much support as we can provide. When they are working a case time is of the essence and can not be held up because paperwork from a course is missing, lost or destroyed. Often information that seemed unimportant at the time become of major importance when it is not present. If information can not be found immediately it impedes the investigation and may very well place our approval to train in jeopardy.

Most everything that we do at our training centers is governed by law. Our approvals come with many conditions. Not only must the course curriculm be strictly followed but also the registration forms, sign in sheets, course manuals, hand-outs, skills evaluations, exams, course evaluations, goverened by a law, EVERYTHING, even lunch and breaks. When the trainers are taught how to teach a class they learn there are few places they can alter the courses. Even seemingly innocent things like combining the breaks with lunch and leaving early is against the law. The law provides for no variation from what was initally submitted to become an approved training provider. You or anyone at your facility are restricted from adding or subtracting from ANYTHING. Things that seem harmless could result in a major violation. One of the conditions of approval is that if we disobey the laws and regulations we can lose our approvals to train. If we lose our approval status in one state, the remaining states have the authority to shut us down indefinately. We call this the domino effect. We have seen this happen to other training providers. Therefore, we take what we do seriously. You need to understand that what you do or cause effects everyone in this company. There are literally hundreds of people that rely directly on the money we make providing this training to provide for our families. There are thousands of students that have grown to enjoy the convenience that we offer. I hope this underscores the important role you play. You are the one that makes sure the i's get dotted and the t's get crossed. There is no one else. You have to check after the trainers and the students to be sure everything gets included. Long after the course is over the paperwork may be called upon.You must provide paperwork that is impeccable. It can be reviewed and evaluated for accuracy at any time in the future.

The stream of paperwork that flows through your office should essentially be the same for each course. Just as well, it is the same for each training center. This system provides for familiarity for me and consistancy throughout. Although there are a few variables It should be the same everywhere. At the end of the week you

Our contract requires us to provide all of the printed material that your center uses to provide each course. The printed material is available from our printer and will be delivered by UPS within a two week delivery period. Although you order based on the anticipated market, unexpected needs may be delivered sooner. We ask that you refrain from having anything printed locally and use our system. We use this system for two reasons. We choose to maintain control over the material and it's content and it is expensive to use your own printer.

Material is requested using the COURSEWARE ORDER FORM. Please download and print the form each time you order as they change often. List the quantity that you have on hand as well as your expected needs. You should order ahead for about six months. If you are uncertain of the training centers usual numbers please call in.

We use Apple Macintosh computers because they are so easy to use and maintain. They operate very much like the Windows based system. This web site provides an easy to follow training on the Apple Macintoch operating System called "System 9". Please take the time to read through this site and the links. CLICK HERE.

We provide one thing that follows the student for the remainder of his or her career, the certificate. The certificate is the one physical thing the student walks away from the course with. We owe it to them to provide the most accurate certificate possible. There are several things that could lead to erroneous information on the certificate. I made this movie that highlights several things about the certificate and shows some of the problems we find when certificates are nowcompletely reviewed for accuracy on the way out the door. Click this link for a 20 minute lesson on the cert CHECKING THE CERTIFICATE.