This fall, Toronto will become home to a drywall estimating program — the first offered to Canadians and Americans.
Training
TORONTO
This fall, Toronto will become home to a drywall estimating program — the first offered to Canadians and Americans.
Spearheaded by the Interior Systems Contractors Association of Ontario (ISCA), the ambitious endeavour makes sense to organizers who say few estimators in North America have access to any in-class training specific to the drywall trade.
Calling the school The ISCA Training Institute for Drywall Estimators, the first edition of the two-week course starts in September and will cover the ins and outs of commercial and residential take-offs.
Tuition for the new course will be $500 for Ontarians and $1,200 to $1,500 for out-of-province and American students.
It will be taught at ISCA’s new $5.5 million Interior Finishing Systems Training Centre (IFSTC), which opened in Woodbridge last year.
The key objective of the course, put on in conjunction with George Brown College, is to move towards standardizing quantity take-offs throughout Canada and the U.S., says Hugh Laird, executive director of ISCA. Many drywall contractors work well beyond their home ground, so a standardized format makes sense.
He says there should be a big demand for the training program in part because there are many inexperienced estimators working in the field.
Costing jobs can be especially complicated these days because a lot of new building designs are complex, requiring calculations beyond just material requirements. Inexperienced estimators often underprice jobs, creating headaches for their company and lowering the bar for the industry, points out Clint Kissoon.
Kissoon teaches drywall estimating at George Brown through an ISCA course which is accredited by the Ontario Institute of Quantity Surveyors. Open to employees of ISCA contractors, it may be the only course of its kind in Canada or the U.S. but it is in danger of being axed because of declining enrollment.
Laird and Kissoon hope by opening the new school, the training tradition will continue. Kissoon says the new program should do well in Canada and the U.S. because while general estimating courses abound, there are no other courses geared specifically to drywall estimating.
“If you look at the big picture, drywall is still a fairly new industry. Plaster was the standard until drywall started coming into use in the late ’60s and early ’70s,” points out Laird. Some countries (in Asia and the Middle East, for example) are just discovering drywall as an efficient and inexpensive alternative to plaster.
“It’s just starting to explode on the world market.”
"If you look at the big picture, drywall is still a fairly new industry."
Clint Kissoon
Instructor
Laird says the response to the course has been favourable from various drywall associations, including the Association of Wall & Ceiling Industry, a major American association with more than 2,000 members.
“They’re hot on it.”
He adds that if interest proves strong on the international front, ISCA and its partners (George Brown and the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors) might consider sending an instructor overseas to help local associations and groups set up their own estimating programs.
ISCA hopes to put on four classes in 2007 at its Woodbridge centre. How many courses are offered in 2008 will depend on the industry’s response.
The drywall association will invest $40,000 to market the program in the first year through brochures, advertisements and a website.
“It’s the only real risk we face,” says Laird.
“You know what they say: ‘If you build it, they will come’. We’re building it and hopefully they will come. If not, I may have to take early retirement,” he quips.
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