b'ONE-TO-ONEAs a former tile contractor, howcalseminarsonthefrontendof did you transition into consultingthe show. NTCA and trade shows work? What specific skills did youalso allowed me to meet and inter-have that qualified you to becomeactwithalltheindustryplayers. aconsultant,andwhatstepsdidRelationshipsIdevelopedyears you take to educate yourself aboutago are still active today and have codes,standards,properinspec- alwaysservedasaresourceover tion reporting and writing, etc.? the length of my career. GivenIamintheprocessofLearning codes and standards are retiringandnotactivelylookingabitofachallenge. Youhaveto for work, I am going to be a littleendure some very dry reading and more candid in my response than Ilearn how to deal with frustration. would normally be. You also need to understand them. I would ask that readers considerIpersonallyreadeachindustry-my comments not offered as a roadrelatedcodeorstandardamini-map, but rather how things workedmumoftwoandoccasionally forme.Ihavealwaysbeenathreetimes. I have had to refer to technically-oriented guy. Early on,TCNA methods or ANSI standards I even lost accounts because I wassince taking a job at CTEF in 1998, too difficult to deal with. One ofso after 22 years of near-daily ref-the ironies of that was years later,erencingmethodsandstandards, asmycompetitorsbitthedust,IIknowwhattheyareandwhere didnt appear so difficult.IcanfindwhatIamlookingfor mostofthetime.Plus,theben-efitofservingonvari-ous committees is that I Gobis was a successful tileget a chance to review contractor for many years and member of the NTCA Boardand sometimes vote on of Directors before workingchanges. for the CTEF and then ventur- Intermsofproper ing into consulting.inspection,thatiscer-tainlyaquagmire.If someone hires me to look at a job and figure out a problem, I abso-I have always been a voraciouslutely have to be able to do what it reader and always wanted to knowtakes to determine a cause beyond why something did or didnt work.reasonable doubt. This often means In the mid-80s, I joined NTCA anddeconstructing the installation. wasanactivemember,attend- For instance, in my most recent ingalltheshowsandblockingproject,theclientsaidaliquid-outtimeforback-to-backtechni- applied crack-isolation membrane 60TileLetter | August 2020'