All of SI Certs’ online courses are developed from scratch to address the challenges of the ICC test and the demanding working schedules of full-time field technicians and inspectors. SI Certs has many advantages that are unique in the training and education industry. These set us above alternate training options, particularly classroom-based instruction.

Entirely Online

Taking an online course is the most affordable and efficient way to prepare for ICC’s Special Inspector tests.

You can work at your own pace, from the comfort of your home, while holding down a full-time job and family. A night schedule is inconsequential. Online education is on the rise because it’s accessible from anywhere in the world and can be accessed from tablet and portable computing devices.

Consider the cost savings of an online course – no gas to pay to travel to and from a brick and mortar classroom; no commuting time wasted; no outside commitments overrun because of class time conflicts; no leaving work early or taking off a week of work to attend class (and losing that income as a result); and no waiting for the class schedule to finish faster so you so you can take the test sooner if you want to.

A strong, interactive online course will always supercede the limitations of classroom instruction. It’s also a better wager than investing uncounted hours into self study, provided you place a dollar amount on the value of your time. You can see our thoughts on this in this article, where we compare the various methods a student can use to prepare for ICC’s tests.

All of our courses take between 25 and 30 hours to complete, from start to finish. This can easily be done in a month, and you get 90 days of access giving a student necessary buffer.

Interactive Learning

The best training comes via a personal tutor or mentor, sitting next to you and teaching you. Traditional classroom settings in our industry are too limited in terms of learning methods, tools, available resources to you and physical proximity.

An SI Certs online course solves the problems that today’s classrooms have. Through the computer, we are sitting next to you, teaching you. We do this through audio links placed throughout each lesson. Play them and we teach you audibly. The online instruction includes illustrations, photos, and graphics that teach and reinforce the concepts needed to help you learn and remember the material.

Our physical plans are also interactive. They include the same interactive elements – audio, graphics, guides and tips.

This makes the online course interesting. Traditional classes can become really boring. The teacher, if you get one, lectures long enough to bore the students. With an online course, just login when you’re ready to study and log out when you’re done for the day.

Some “classroom” environments have you sit in a room with no instruction. You’re left alone to look up 100s of questions in a booklet. You may become familiar with portions of the code, but you learn little or nothing about the actual discipline which you will soon be expected to perform. Day after day, it increasingly becomes painful to “study” this way. Fatigue sets in. In the end, the student loses because they paid lots of money (more than SI Cert’s courses) for an outdated and limited approach.

As one of the main developers on SI Cert’s courses, I completed a masters degree in teaching through a leading online university. This gave me lots of research and tools to prepare SI Cert’s online courses. We have a team of field managers, structural engineers, technical experts, course developers, and code consultants that are behind all of our online instruction.

In our online courses, interactivity is not without necessary traceability references. These are provided throughout the online lessons so you can follow along in your code books for each lesson. Using our study process, you become familiar with the code books and can navigate them very quickly. (You don’t even need to tab or highlight.) This is a required part of our Passing Strategy.

Tutorial Plan Set

The test plans are the biggest challenge to students passing the ICC Special Inspector tests. Classroom instruction continues to fail giving adequate preparation, and self-study is an aimless pursuit with no assurance of mastery. Even inspectors with 15+ years of experience reading blueprints find themselves at odds with the plans on the test.

Years of field experience isn’t necessary to passing the plans. The right tutoring, training, and practice is. To overcome the test plans, SI Certs created an instructional set of plans that prepares students to pass the test plans. Our structural plans teach similar concepts encountered on exam day. They have a built-in training system with notes, test tips, and audio playback on every page. We teach the thought process behind structural plan reading, and this complete approach is unlike anything else in the industry.

Our plans include custom added notes and audio links (tied to our online instruction) on each page, providing you with a personalized walkthrough experience to master plan reading. Our plans practice test is delivered with our QDS (Question Delivery System), simulating the real test environment with timed study and on-screen navigation. This eliminates surprises on test day and gives our users a realistic expectation of how they will perform when it counts. With our approach, most users don’t need to practice with more than one or two sets of plans, the amount shipped with our code+plans courses.

An On-Demand Tutor – One-to-One Coaching Via Email

Taking an SI Certs online course is like having a personal tutor teach you and walk you through your code books. In addition to this interactive experience, one-to-one coaching via email is available if you need additional help.

As the main developer of our educational platform, one of the most valuable things I experienced during my online education degree was the interaction with my instructor via email correspondence. I often receive more thorough responses than I’ve gotten in a live classroom full of students. After you register for a course, we’ll give you our coaching email address for personal coaching.

Email has several advantages over more traditional communication methods. First, it allows you time to carefully formulate your question and consider everything you want to ask. When I’ve participated in classroom-based courses, I would often ask questions but then think of additional questions hours after the class ended. Having email access to my instructor would have been a very helpful component, but some of my instructors did not welcome that type of communication.

A written question and answer can provide a level of detail and clarity that can be left out during face-to-face conversations. The teacher’s agenda can override what you may want or need to know. Too often, it creates an environment where students are not comfortable asking questions. Also, because of time constraints and the other classroom participants, questions and responses are limited in order to cover the preplanned classroom curriculum. Email correspondence solves these common problems.

Email is a great tool because it archives answers to important questions, which can be referenced any time in the future.

Most Affordable Course on the Market

SI Certs provides the most up-to-date, effective training at prices that everyone can afford to invest in their career advancement. Think of the cost of self-study, or of traditional classroom training and associated expenses. Our training will come out ahead. Here are all the courses we offer.