The Inspector Committee met on July 15 for its quarterly meeting.  There was a lot on the agenda, as this has been a busy year in our industry.  The Standards of Practice Subcommittee is still in the review process and asked the full committee for direction on whether to keep the standards more general or to get specific on a multitude of items.  The consensus was to keep them general overall but to update the current standards to meet some newer criteria.  The Education Subcommittee has been working tirelessly on creating the new pre-licensure program.  The program was proposed to the Commissioners at the last meeting, however, modifications were made recently to allow a transition period for those still on the current pre-licensure path.  Those modifications will be recommended to the Commissioners at their August meeting.  They will once again be available for public comment, and then possibly adopted at the November Commission meeting. 

There was a substantial conversation about limits of liability at this most recent meeting.  This has been a hot topic for well over a year now.  There is a lot of misinformation in the public realm stating that TREC is trying to get involved with the agreement between an inspector and their client.  This was not the case.  The issue arose because it came to TREC’s attention that there were some inspectors that were limiting their liability on an inspection to the cost of the inspection.  However, inspectors are required to carry liability insurance against violations of Subchapter G of the Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1102.  Based on the discussion at this most recent meeting, TREC recommended modifying the Consumer Protection Notice to include verbiage about the statutory requirement to carry liability insurance.  This would inform the public of potential liability claims over and above the cost of the inspection. This does not prevent an inspector from limiting their liability in their agreements for issues outside of Subchapter G of the Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1102.  Staff will be presenting proposed verbiage at the October meeting to the Inspector Committee. 

The other items discussed at our meeting included updates to the Professional Conduct and Ethics, Applications for Licensure (which modifies licensure processes for military members and their families that relocate), term limitations for IAC members, CE credit for attending full IAC meetings, Inspection Report delivery timing now being connected to the payment of that report, and an update on the Legal/Ethics and SOP mandatory courses.

The next meeting of the Inspector Advisory Committee will be on October 7 at 10 a.m.