After NWiR Day, many NWiR members attended the International Roofing Expo. While attendance seemed down in the expo hall, there were some great education sessions that provide good information for roofing contractors and others in the roofing industry. I’d like to highlight a few that I thought were interesting for NWiR members. You can learn a lot just from reading the conference program as many of the speakers have links to their presentations and other reference materials.
Top 5 Immigration Issues in Roofing
While roofing contractors need to be concerned with a variety of issues, this session focused on the top five issues that are most prevalent to roofing contractors, including: ways to help employees on the legal path to citizenship, how to respond with a valid defense if an employee is at risk for deportation, employment sponsored visas and the pros and cons of each, and the fines and penalties associated with ICE audits. Many of the issues discussed in this section would apply to the manufacturing segment of our industry as well. This article in Roofing Contractor provides a good overview of the issues
A College-Level Course on Roofing
This was a very exciting session to see on the program! Dr. Dhaval Gajjar is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and is developing a course on roofing-specific issues to include into the university’s course offerings.
The 2021 I-Codes: Roofing-Related Changes
As always, NRCA staff held a session on roofing-related changes in the I-Codes. Rather than summarize the discussion points here, I will direct you to this article in Professional Roofing which is a thorough overview.
I would estimate that attendance at the expo was down by 60%, purely judging by the foot traffic in the expo hall. Nonetheless, the education sessions were still pretty well attended although not at the same levels as prior years. We had a great time at the NWiR booth connecting with current and prospective members and there was almost always a steady flow of traffic through the booth.