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INDUSTRY MATTERS
Winning the audits
Winner of compliance auditor of the year at the IOPSA
Annual Awards held in April 2019, Robert Schoeman
shared a little of his career and insights on the industry
with Plumbing Africa.
By Robert Schoeman | Edited by Benjamin Brits
As a qualified plumber who has been in the trade for
16 years, auditor and business owner, I average four
audits a day, three times a week. I am part of the
IOPSA Auditing Team of around 50 members.
Although I don’t often physically work with my teams,
I spend a lot of time training them and showing them
the right way to do the installations. I also sometimes
take them with me on audits so they are able to identify
where one can go wrong. I find this is really the best type
of on-the-job training you can get.
BECOMING AN AUDITOR
Being a plumber my whole life, the first time I issued
a COC I got audited and I failed on two items. The
auditor and I spent over an hour in discussion on the
plumbing standards alone, and when he asked if I would
be interested in auditing, I agreed. I was nominated (at
that time) to the Plumbing Industry Registration Board
(PIRB) who managed the auditing process. This is now
managed under the Institute of Plumbing South Africa
(IOPSA). I completed the specialised compliance auditor’s
training in the last half of 2017, and I have been actively
auditing since the beginning of 2018.
Since I started auditing, I can say that I have seen
improvements in the industry in terms of quality and
compliance. Most plumbers are also very excited about
the opportunity to learn, and usually meet you on site
to discuss any queries on the findings, or the South
African National Standards (SANS) in general, which
is great for creating awareness and educating them
on the requirements face to face. However, with a lot
of the bigger companies, it becomes hard to maintain
consistency in compliant work because they have so
many teams out on the road.
There are only a handful of plumbers that continue in
their ways, despite being audited previously and advised
of the compliancy requirements. These plumbers tend
June 2019 Volume 25 I Number 4
to only fix non-compliant matters when their work
gets audited and you see this on the audit result each
time. In the bigger picture there has definitely been
an improvement. It’s great to see the progress and it’s
exciting for the industry.
THE CHALLENGES AS AN AUDITOR
The role of the auditor is not to engage in any argument,
however the standards that have been promulgated
are applicable to every level of person working in the
industry and therefore no matter if you are an architect,
developer, QS, engineer or plumber you are required to
abide by the set laws. Therefore, it only makes sense
that an architect cannot design something that does not
allow a plumber to do the correct installation or give a
developer the right to come up with their own way of
doing plumbing work because it means more profits.
The biggest question is always why do we have to do
this? When it comes to the general workforce, they don’t
always know what is happening like the business owners
or managers do, but the workforce are the people that
actually need to know all of the laws, changes, trends etc
because they are the ones doing the work.
There are some common mistakes the plumbers make
such as securing of the pipes and the supports of the
geyser trays, and things like the overflow discharge on the
geyser for the safety valve, but what we must just keep
in mind is that the standards that have been established
have to be followed. We audit according to these and as a
plumber you don’t always want to spend unnecessary time
on a site, but the standards are law and must be adhered
to whether you agree with them or not.
A big challenge is the change in mindset especially
with the older or more experienced plumbers. Getting
them to accept the regulation requirements versus how
they have been doing the work for the last 20 to 30
years can be difficult and they tend to get very upset.
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