The buzz around the industry for the past number of years has centered on the installation sector and how the shortage of qualified installers can be dealt with. The Installation Summit in Dallas in early August brought to light a number of ideas and opinions from a host of players from all sectors of the industry each anxious to help come up with an answer to help bring this situation to a close and find a way to produce a sufficient number of installers with the knowledge and the hand skills to successfully install the products manufactured by this industry.
The input was varied and brought to light a number of starting points and a number of takes as to the nature of the problem. Several suggestions impressed this observer. One was that retailers and everyone else should really first consider controlling their own destiny, and secondly, that perhaps the system itself culprit. The problem first appeared with the advent of the independent contractor installer in the 1960s replacing installers that were primarily employees of the retailers they did work for. Under this pre-60s model, retailers were more inclined to foot the bill for installer training and installers were better equipped to correctly train apprentices to ultimately develop into skilled master installers.