I recently went through an EPA lead safety audit with my construction company, and since there isn’t much information out there about what these audits are actually like for contractors, I thought I would share my experience. This article will help you understand what happens during an EPA audit and how you might be better prepared when your name gets drawn.
Make sure you read the takeaways at the end.
First, some context: I was notified by email that I was to report to an audit location in 2 weeks. I am lucky I checked this email account because I wouldn’t have seen this notification otherwise. Keep in mind that they notify you by email. Here is a copy of the document they emailed to me telling me to report to the audit.
You can read the email but there are tons of fluffy sentences in there. Let me break down the key components for you.
Something to note is that every government organization is obsessed with paperwork. They want to have a piece of paper documenting every single thing because that’s how they prove to their superior that they did their job. Make sure you have a printed or digital copy of everything you wish to show them.
1. Copy of current state business license.
For us this was our contractor’s license. We have it hanging in a frame on the wall of the office so we took it down and printed a copy of it.
2. Copy of RRP Renovator Certificate for each supervisor/employee.
At Kile Construction, I am the certified renovator for the company so I am responsible for making sure we follow the rules and train all of our employees. I’ll show you how I do the training later in the article. For this one I made a copy of the RRP renovator certificate.
3. Copy of the RRP Firm Certification.
In addition to a supervisor/employee being the certified renovator, the firm is also required to be registered and have a certificate. Yes, there are two different certificates required, one for the company and one for the person at the company who is responsible for knowing the rules and training everyone else on them. I made a copy of our firm certificate that hangs next to our contractor license.
4. A list of all general and subcontractors used on pre-1978 homes.
This one is interesting to me because I was told that the way that they determine who to audit is by checking on permits pulled for houses built before 1978. These are public record so anyone can find this information. But, by taking lists of all other contractors used on pre-1978 jobs they are able to build a database of companies that worked on these projects regardless of public record. If they wanted to ramp up audits, they could do so this way.
We only had a couple pre-1978 jobs to show in this audit so we simply looked at our records for these jobs and pulled out all the invoices and payments to other contractors in order to compile our list.
5. A list of all pre-1978 projects we worked on since January, 2023.
Lucky for us, we only had a couple of these since we’ve been doing a lot of new construction and work on post-1978 homes.
6. Copies of all permits, contracts, contract modifications, and payment invoices for homeowners/subcontractors for 5 randomly selected renovations listed in question 5.
If you are getting audited this is probably where you’re starting to sweat. Let’s say you worked on 20 projects on homes built before 1978, you have to have all of the paperwork for every single one because you will get audited on 5 randomly. That’s a lot of paperwork! Hopefully you keep this stuff up to date as you go so you don’t have to go digging too much.
For us, this was pretty easy because we only had a few properties to go through and we knew exactly which ones would be looked at.
7 + 8. Copies of documents required by the RRP rule…
When you work on these pre-1978 homes you are required to test for lead and document your testing with, you guessed it, paperwork! I like to take pictures of everything I do as well in case I forget something else, I have photos to back it up. I actually did forget 1 of 2 pages of this paperwork for all of the jobs that were audited because I just never knew there was a second page! Totally my mistake. Luckily, I wrote down the information this paperwork covered on the first page because it just made sense to me. This was simply writing down the testing locations and since I had photos to show where I tested, I wasn’t fined for this. Whew!
If lead is discovered, we are required to show the homeowner a pamphlet all about how bad lead is for your health and environment. We have to get a signed receipt showing that we gave them the pamphlet.
Finally, every employee that works on these projects that contain lead needs to be trained. I created an online training that each of my guys went through that included a couple videos and a multiple choice test. When they completed the test, I got a digital record of them taking the test, their score, and the date they took it. This turned out to be a great way to prove I trained everyone.
Proving We Followed the Rules On Lead-containing Projects
For the 2 projects we were audited on that contained lead, we had loads of pictures proving we were taking all the necessary precautions, and then some. We had photos of:
- HEPA air filters running in the work area.
- Particle counter readings showing the air was free of dust.
- Our guys wearing masks and paper suits.
- Ground coverings.
- Masked off doorways and windows.
- Double bagging the waste.
- Training documentation for all emplyees on the job.
We passed with flying colors because we photo-documented ourselves following all the rules. This is what you want… You want to have a checklist of everything you will be audited on and make sure you check everything off every time you do a project like this. Put it all in a file and save it for later so when you get audited, you don’t have much work to do and you can sleep at night.
The Online Training for My Employees
Here’s exactly what I did. I’m kind of a techy guy since I own a marketing company alongside my construction company… I work on computers a lot and am privy to all sorts of online tools and methods for getting stuff done.
I used a platform called High Level to create an online course. This is what it looks like:
There are 4 steps:
- Download and read the lead safety pdf book.
- Watch a Youtube video about interior lead safety procedures.
- Watch a Youtube video about exterior lead safety procedures.
- Take the quiz
Very simple and straightforward. The quiz questions were not too difficult but would require them to actually review the content. There are five questions in total. I’m considering opening up the training so people like you can check it out but I’m not going to go through all the effort if nobody wants it, so if you want it, contact us or comment in the section at the bottom of this article. If there’s just a few people I’ll just add you in.
Takeaways From This Experience
All general and subcontractors are required to be certified.
First of all, the EPA expects every single contractor who works on a pre-1978 home or child-facility to be certified through their Lead Safety Program. This was news to me as it must have changed since I did the certification in 2020. When they ask us for a list of all subcontractors, they are getting a list of people that should be certified. That is not something we ever checked because we were under the impression that our subs worked under our certification. Wrong! Every sub is supposed to be compiling all of this paperwork that I mentioned in this article. All of it. Pretty crazy, right? It’s like there’s more paperwork than actual work.
So, now we have to check that our subs our certified in order to get bids on projects built before 1978… This adds a lot of work and friction to the process which might just be the point, ehh?
Scope of Work is very important.
For liability purposes, it’s very important to have a thorough and concise scope of work for projects that contain lead. If one of your subcontractors isn’t certified then you are responsible for everything they do on the job. If they go outside of the work area that you tested and disturb any paint, you are immediately in breach of the rules and liable for huge fines. Every surface that is touched must be tested and the rest of the procedures followed. It is also an option to treat every surface like it contains lead and not test.
If your subcontractor does something like this and they are certified, then they are on the hook to test that area.
To be honest, this part doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but I am just telling you what the auditor told me. I suspect they will say things to grow compliance but at the end of the day, it’s our ass on the line so we need to do what we can to protect ourselves.
The Auditor was a nice person.
Getting audited isn’t fun but we got lucky and our auditor was seasoned and nice. They had been doing this for a long time and so weren’t necessarily trying to put us through the ringer like a newbie might do. That said, we were very careful about following the rules and compiling our paperwork.
The one thing that was kind of a bummer is that one of our subs that we use on tons of jobs got audited as well and he was not certified because we all thought that he could work under our certification. They could have fined him like $9000 but instead they just gave him 2 months to get certified. As long as he does, he won’t be fined. That was nice of them to do because they could have put this guy out of business if they wanted to. I don’t think that’s their goal.
Conclusion
Getting audited is no fun. My family lost some sleep over it but in the end it worked out. If you are a contractor working on pre-1978 homes, you better know this information and get certified. Make sure you charge your customers extra for all the extra work you’ll have to do. The hoops are getting so great that soon contractors are just going to refuse to work on pre-1978 homes to avoid the hassle.
This could result in the value of these homes going down… but that’s all speculation at this point. All I know for sure is that you better be careful.
God Bless,
Chuck Kile
