Brent,
The work scene is brutal here in L.A. - like everywhere else. This was my second to the last inspection cert I was aiming for though. I have my nuke gauge cert for soils, ICC certs for reinforced concrete, high strength bolting, structural welding, spray applied fireproofing & prestressed concrete and I'll be taking the masonry exam this month. That'll be all of them. You'd think that there would be some work out there for those certs but it seems impossible. I've been (technically) employed by a major lab out here but in the past eight months I have not even come close to even a single 30+ hour work week and at times driving hundreds of miles (on my own dime) for as few as four hours of work. It's literally more "lucrative" to be unemployed than it is to work for this particular lab, but not nearly as interesting. The economy has to change though - I hope. My friend has every special inspection cert offered through ICC (including Master of Special Inspection), his nuke gauge cert, CWI and zero work. Sad. He and I both have four year college degrees, tons of experience working in construction and fists full of inspection certs, yet spent the past two weeks very thankful for being able to earn some $ by doing house painting. I feel very fortunate to have been able to work on that job but I feel sad for the people out there who don't even have that opportunity. These are very scary times - nothing that I've ever seen in my lifetime.
So... it might be a little crazy, but a few months ago four of us decided that instead of waiting around for someone to hire us and feed us enough hours, we would incorporated our own company and try to get work directly. I just finished our website and I'm sure it will need some massaging for different browsers, but it's pretty 'camera ready.' Check it out if you'd like and feel free to offer suggestions - for the website and anything else inspection and business related.
http://www.greenfrontierinspection.com And... feel free to pass it on if you know anyone who needs special inspections here in So Cal or anywhere - we'll travel. :-)
And, thank you to everyone who posts on these forums. I've surfed many times preparing for my CWI and it's been very informative. Cheers all.
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