MALTA, N.Y. - According to the Building Performance Institute Inc. (BPI), a home performance credentialing, quality assurance, and standards-setting organization, it experienced tremendous growth in 2010 due to a confluence of factors:

• BPI Certified Professionals are now located in all 50 states and five foreign countries, with Western states seeing the most aggressive growth of over 400 percent in 2010.

• The number of contracting companies earning BPI Accredited Contractor status doubled for the second year in a row.

• The organization’s nationwide network of affiliate training organizations increased 78 percent - to 242 training organizations.

• Over 100 utility, state, and local incentive programs now call for BPI credentials.

Also in 2010, BPI achieved accreditation from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a developer of American National Standards for the residential energy-efficiency retrofit community.

“ANSI accreditation helps ensure that consistency is applied throughout the credentialing process and in conformance with requirements throughout the industry,” said Larry Zarker, CEO of BPI. “We are pleased to meet these ANSI obligations with our standards initiatives and to contribute to the overarching ANSI governance programs as a member of the standards community.”

BPI’s Standards Management Board has approved titles and scopes for the development of 10 new standards covering residential retrofit work in 2011. The drafting of each standard will be overseen by the Standards Technical Committee, a group of 13 volunteer industry experts. BPI is developing policies and procedures to come into conformance with ANSI/ISO 17024 requirements for each of its personnel certifications by early 2012. BPI is currently undergoing a public comment period following ANSI procedures to publish its Home Energy Auditing standard as an American National Standard.

Publication date:01/24/2011