Understanding the PSAI Certification Process and Its Importance

What does it mean to be the best of the best?

It means you’re a PRO with the best customer service. Your knowledge of portable sanitation is up-to-date and second-to-none. You know the important role portable sanitation plays in keeping us clean and healthy, keeping our outdoor activities sanitary, and making our world a better place to live.

Is that how high you want to go in portable sanitation? It’s within your reach.

Your journey to the top begins by joining Portable Sanitation Association International. We highly recommend it. PSAI is recognized around the world as an authoritative voice providing education and information for the portable sanitation industry.

Through PSAI, you have resources that will help keep you on top of your game. Most importantly, members of PSAI make a commitment to serving their customers and one another with distinction.

One of the essential benefits of membership that can help you reach that level of distinction is the opportunity to become PSAI certified.

Certification is a voluntary program offered by PSAI that authoritatively recognizes your capabilities and commitment to portable sanitation. The major advantages of certification are:

• Demonstrates to your customers and your colleagues that you are trained in the best practices and standards in the portable sanitation industry
• Gives you the knowledge of the most up-to-date equipment, processes, and procedures in order to provide the best customer service possible
• Puts you and your company on an equal level with other operators in your service area who are also PSAI certified
• Provides the portable sanitation licensing requirements of several states. Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Alabama, and Georgia are among the states that recognize PSAI certification as valid educational experience.

To achieve certification, you must complete certain steps, including:

• Have experience as a portable sanitation technician
• Provide two professional references
• Provide information related to waste disposal practices
• Successfully pass a test of technical skills and industry knowledge

Here’s another advantage of PSAI membership. To help you prepare for the certification exam, the PSAI offers a Basic Service Technician training course.

Even if you aren’t planning to take the exam, the course is a great learning opportunity. It’s been developed over many years to teach you what you need to know to succeed as a PRO. It covers best practices and industry standards. Lessons on equipment include portable restrooms (inspection, cleaning, delivery, placement, pickup), handwash stations, freshwater flush units, recirculating flush units, and restroom trailers. Other important topics are waste disposal, winter service procedures, and spill-handling procedures.

The training course goes beyond the day-to-day job to give a bigger picture of portable sanitation. It delves into the science of wastewater treatment. It covers the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis information as they pertain to the industry.

Once you pass the exam, you never need to re-test, as long as your certification remains active and you maintain it with continuing education.

Being the best – being PSAI certified – is good for you, your customers, and our industry. It’s all for the best!

All the information and forms to get you started can be found at http://psai.org/about-certification/.

Looking to Take Your Portable Restroom Business to the NEXT LEVEL? Download our FREE Guide: “Your Guide to Operating A Portable Restroom Business.”

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