Future Environment Designs Training Center Opens a Satellite Office in Rochester.

Future Environment Designs, Inc. (FEDTC) is happy to announce the opening of our satellite office in Rochester, New York.  This new location will be offering FEDTC's training courses that have an average Coursecheck rating of 4.8 out of 5 from over 1,800 reviewers.  Our satellite office will be working out of the Diversified Environmental Training location at 1700 Hudson Avenue, Suite B, Rochester, New York 14617.  This facility will be used for training only.  All recordkeeping will remain at our Corporate Office in Syosset.  We understand pricing is a little different in this area as compared to our usual training areas.  To help FEDTC get used to the area we will be offering a price match for the courses we offer in Monroe County.  So when registering click on the invoice button and send us a copy of a previous invoice you received from one of the local trainers and we will match it (for your efforts we will discount it 5%).

Training Room at Diversified Environmental Training

We are looking forward to the expansion of our services in Rochester, New York, including our At Your Convenience service.  The At Your Convenience service brings the training and/or respirator fit testing to your location.  All we need are five or more people and we're At Your Convenience!  Tired of traveling through rush hour traffic to get to your training center?  Tired of paying travel expenses for your employees for training?  Tired of the same old non-productive training classes?  Or are you just tired of the same old training?   If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then you need to give us a call.  We can perform the training in your office. We provide a laptop, a projector, PowerPoint presentations, and a wireless device for internet access. You provide the seating and the blank wall (no blank wall, we’ll provide the screen). We do the rest.  We can do this training for any of the courses and services in our Course Offerings and Training Services Catalog.

At Your Convenience Training

In Rochester, FEDTC will continue to offer our One-Stop Service which allows employers to contact us or register online to:

• Schedule staff development on asbestos, mold, or other safety and health regulations (see our Course Offerings and Training Services Catalog.),
• Schedule respirator medical evaluations to comply with the OSHA respiratory protection standard 1910.134,
• Order the proper respirator and filters for your staff, and
• Schedule quantitative respirator fit testing to comply with the OSHA respiratory protection standard 1910.134, to be performed on the day of the class.

We provide this One-Stop Service making your occupational safety and health requirements simple and easy to complete on the same day as the training.  Contact us here or register online here.

Quantitative Respirator Fit Testing At Your Convenience or One-Stop Service

FEDTC is one of the few training providers that provide the FEDTC Dropbox folder (with hundreds of reference documents regarding indoor air quality, asbestos, lead, mold, etc.), we also provide our students with the negative air app (to help calculate the number of negative air units for a work area), our project monitor and air sampling technician courses include all three asbestos air sampling table (Federal, NYS, and NYC these can be purchased separately here) and for those considering opening your own business our book "Do As I Say, Not As I Did What I've Learned After 30 Years of Being in Business" discusses the four pillars of operating a successful business, you can purchase the book here.  We are thrilled to bring these services to Monroe County and specifically to the Rochester area.  See you in class! 

Counting Down to a Month of Conferences - First it's PACNY's Environmental Conference and Then EIA's!

The Professional Abatement Contractors of New York (PACNY) have announced the dates and schedule for their annual Environmental Conference on March 16th and 17th, 2023.  It will be held at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, New York.  To register for the conference or sponsor the conference click here!  Also, this month is the Environmental Information Association's (EIA's) 2023 National Conference & Exhibition being held from March 25th to March 29th, 2023.  It is being held at Renaissance Nashville Hotel, Nashville, Tennessee.  To register for the conference or sponsor the conference click here!

PACNY 2022

Both of these conferences provide tons of information that helps keep our classes up-to-date.  We are looking forward to several presentations that should provide information about some current issues such as "Managing Typical Regulated and Hazardous Wastes Generated on Abatement/Remediation Projects in NYS", "Asbestos Building Inspectors - an Open Discussion", "Exposure Assessments", "Asbestos-Myth Busters", and "What Your Injured Employee Think of You, Navigating the NYS Worker's Compensation Law and Related Benefits" just to name a few.

EIA Conference 2022 in Phoenix, AZ

We will have a table at the PACNY conference and we will be tweeting the conference using the hashtag #FEDTCPACNY.  We will be selling our asbestos air sampling tables ($15 per table) and we will be selling and signing our book "Do As I Say, Not As I Did" ($15 per book) at the table.  Come by and say hello!  Sheryl Esposito will be womaning the booth as she has for the past couple of years.  Our co-host for Two Guys Talking Pumps, Dan Crothers, the International Sales Director of FermionX maker of the Airbox Sampling Pump, will also be attending the conference and is also a sponsor.  To know more about the Airbox sampling pumps see our YouTube video "Two Talking Pumps" below or visit him at his booth where he will have the Airbox sampling pump in person!  Looking forward to seeing you there.  

Safety Training That Works: How FED Keeps Its Courses Fresh and Engaging by Natasha Serafimovska

At the beginning of last summer, Safety + Health Magazine released the 2022 Training Survey with some telling results.  Companies are tired of the same old safety training that is stale, repetitive, and ineffective.

When asked about their greatest challenges around worker safety training, companies identified these five common concerns as their biggest pain points:

• Keeping training interesting, relevant, and up-to-date;
• Offering consistent training across the organization;
• Flexible schedule to accommodate various shift structures and work models;
• Getting employees to complete their training and implement what they’ve learned;
• Getting management buy-in about the importance of the training;

As a safety training provider who’s been around for over 30 years, this got us thinking at Future Environment Designs Training Center (FEDTC) about why that is the case.  Why do training providers struggle to keep safety training fresh and engaging at a time when there are so many tools and learning models at our disposal? 

Here, we share how FEDTC keeps our training fresh, engaging, and flexible.  We hope that this will help our current and new customers better assess our course offerings as well as give other training providers some insights into how they can improve their approach so that we can all raise the safety training standards and reduce injuries across the board.

Asbestos Handler 

Keeping Employees Interested and Engaged

Safety training is a regulatory requirement which means that most workers go through the same content each year.  Not only that, but safety content in itself can sometimes be a bit dry as there’s a lot about rules, regulations, and what workers should and shouldn’t do in different scenarios. 

That said, it doesn’t mean that safety training should be boring.  At FEDTC, for instance, we take great care in making our courses as engaging as possible.  At the beginning of the pandemic, we implemented Poll Everywhere, a polling tool that allows students to interact during virtual and in-person classes and helps the trainer check in with students as part of their presentation. 

This breaks up the one-way communication of the training format and gives students the desire to ask questions, comment, and give feedback.  All of this has significantly increased participation, and discussions, and has helped us make our courses much more interesting for our students.

Asbestos Operations & Maintenace

Offering Training That’s Consistent and Tailored to the Organization

If safety training is to work, it needs to be consistently delivered across the organization.  Likewise, the content needs to be adapted to the organization’s specific scenarios for it to resonate with the employees, as not all businesses face the same safety concerns.

At FEDTC, we review our training materials annually to determine if they need to be updated.  We also adjust our classes to meet specific work procedures and practices our clients use, such as working with asbestos cement pipe or asbestos electrical wire insulation.  All of this makes the training relevant and consistent with the working environment in which our clients operate. 

Not only that, but we regularly attend conferences such as Professional Abatement Contractors of New York (PACNY), Environmental Information Association (EIA), the American Council for Accreditated Certifications (ACAC), and others to stay abreast of the latest research, regulations, and standards in the industry. 

40-hour HAZWOPER 

Making Training Flexible

A large portion of our courses is available as both an in-person course and a virtual class which students can choose based on their location, work schedule, and availability.  We also run the same courses several times each month so that students have more options to choose from. 

When it comes to online training, we offer courses that are on-demand and students can take whenever they want or virtual instructor-led classes which can enrich the learning experience but do require student participation in a specific time. 

Mold Worker/Remediation/Supervisor/Assessor Course

Driving Course Completion and Compliance

For us, the training doesn’t end in the (virtual) classroom. Instead, we engage with learners post-training via email, text, or phone to answer questions and keep engagement high.  If we go back to the polling tool, we also use polls to keep the communication going in between courses if they take place on different days or months.

When it comes to compliance, we use polls at the beginning of our training sessions to see how much our learners remember from the previous year.  This helps us identify key areas we need to put extra focus on or update the content to make it more memorable and engaging.  This has dramatically improved learners’ knowledge retention and improved the overall outcomes of our training courses. 

At FEDTC, we understand that learners may need several touchpoints with the content in order to learn it. That’s why we try to provide as much and as diverse content as possible through our website, blog, and LinkedIn New York Asbestos Group.  For example, learners (and their employers) can use our Resource Page to get access to a plethora of recordings, papers, and conference presentations which are constantly updated via Dropbox.  We also provide a Negative Air Calculator for learners to get a better understanding of how negative pressure can keep work areas safe and lower contamination levels. 

OSHA 10-hour Construction Safety Course

Showing the Value of Safety Training

Finally, we don’t take things for granted.  We use Coursecheck, an online course feedback tool, to invite students' feedback and use that as a guide for improvement.  So far, we’ve received over 1500 online reviews with an overall 4.8 out of 5-star rating. 

Other than looking at what other people are saying, the best way to demonstrate the value of the training FEDTC provides is to give it a go.  FEDTC offers many short and refresher courses which you can use as a test drive to see if our methods suit your needs.  Once you’ve assessed the outcomes of those courses, we’d be happy to have a wider discussion about how we can deliver holistic safety training that is going to meet the needs of your particular business. 

OSHA 30-hour Construction Safety Course

The Bottom Line

Safety training may not be your favorite pastime activity, but its value in the workplace is indisputable. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that in 2020 there have been 4,764 work-related deaths where construction and transportation fatalities accounted for nearly half of those.  Construction, in fact, is cited as the industry with the highest rate of workplace fatalities in the United States.   

This highlights the importance of delivering quality and engaging workplace safety training.  The onus is both on training providers and employers to collaborate and come up with solutions that are relevant, engaging, and tailored to the circumstances workers face each and every day.

Merry Holidays and a Happy New Year from Future Environment Designs! What Do We Have In Store for the New Year!

A Merry Holidays and a Happy New Year to all of you who journeyed with us this past year.  It has been a see-saw kind of year with some ups and some downs.  As some of you know we were trying to sell the business.  We've decided we are not going to sell the business and instead will ride the business into the sunset (as we prepare and get ready for retirement probably another 10 years).  As we go into our 35th year of being in business we continue to adjust and modify the services we offer to our clients, allowing our clients to utilize our 35 years of experience and Angelo Garcia, III's 40+ years of experience.  

Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Centre

In 2023, we will continue our At Your Convenience service.  The At Your Convenience service brings the training or respirator fit testing to your location.  All we need are five or more people and we're At Your Convenience!  Tired of traveling through rush hour traffic to get to your training center?  Tired of paying travel expenses for your employees for training?  Tired of the same old non-productive training classes?  Or are you just tired of the same old training?   If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then you need to give us a call.  Future Environment Designs Training Center (FEDTC) (with a Coursecheck rating of 4.8 out of 5) is now providing training At Your Convenience.  We can perform the training in your office. We provide a laptop, a projector, PowerPoint presentations, and a wireless device for internet access. You provide the seating and the blank wall (no blank wall, we’ll provide the screen). We do the rest.  We can do this training for any of the courses and services in our Course Offerings and Training Services Catalog.

The Bergdorf Goodman Windows

In 2023, we will be expanding our collaboration with SiteDocs to help you elevate your safety programs.  Future Environment Designs can work with you to create the various Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)-compliant safety and health programs (i.e., hazard communication, respiratory protection, confined space entry, bloodborne pathogen, and construction safety & health programs) that would go into the SiteDocs platform.  We can help you meet the training requirements, develop the data (such as Safety Data Sheets and Chemical Inventories), and create the checklists that would be used by your staff to meet the regulatory requirements.  With the SiteDocs platform that information would be readily available to all your staff.  To learn more about what SiteDocs can do for your safety program, you can book a quick call with Brent Martyniuk here.  To learn how Future Environment Designs can help you with developing your various safety and health programs contact us here.  We believe the SiteDocs platform would greatly impact your business helping you save time and money, and elevate your safety program from being on the shelf to being part of your day-to-day operations.

Saks Fifth Avenue

FEDTC continues to offer our One-Stop Service which allows employers to contact us or register online to:

• Schedule staff development on asbestos, mold, or other safety and health regulations (see our Course Offerings and Training Services Catalog.),
• Schedule respirator medical evaluations to comply with the OSHA respiratory protection standard 1910.134,
• Order the proper respirator and filters for your staff, and
• Schedule quantitative respirator fit testing to comply with the OSHA respiratory protection standard 1910.134, to be performed on the day of the class.

We provide this One-Stop Service making your occupational safety and health requirements simple and easy to complete.  Contact us here or register online here.

Finally, FEDTC will continue to lead the field by attending the Professional Abatement Contractors of New York (PACNY) Environmental Conference (save the dates March 16-17, 2023) and the Environmental Information Association (EIA) National Conference & Exhibition (save the dates March 25 - 29, 2023).  We will bring back the current information from these conferences and share it in our classes.  FEDTC is one of the few training providers that provide the FEDTC dropbox folder (with hundreds of reference documents regarding indoor air quality, asbestos, lead, mold, etc.), we also provide our students with the negative air app (to help calculate the number of negative air units for a work area), our project monitor and air sampling technician courses include a New York State or New York City asbestos air sampling table (these can be purchased here) and for those considering opening your own business our book "Do As I Say, Not As I Did What I've Learned After 30 Years of Being in Business" discusses the four pillars of operating a successful business, you can purchase the book here.  We wish you a Merry Holidays and Hope to see you in the New Year!