Organization: NCPWB

Learn How to Build and Coach a Team for Growth at MCAA18

Chip Valutis Companies with an effective team of people are bound to succeed. During two sessions, Dr. Chip Valutis will share with you insights, techniques and tips on how to transform your staff into a results-oriented, effective team and how to keep your team performing at its best with coaching designed for growth and business success.

Discover How Coaching for Growth Can Improve Your Business at MCAA18

People make (or break) your business. However, you may not be confident in how to coach them for growth. Are you getting enough out of your A Players? Do you have too many C Players roaming around? Is there a plan to ensure B Players maintain their contributions? These talent management questions keep many leaders up at night. This session will take the mystery out of coaching and start you on the path to growth. You’ll learn to identify your A, B and C players and leave with practical methods to coach each type. Come and upgrade your talent management skills; your business will be glad you did!

Learn How to Transform Your Staff into a Team at MCAA18

Teams don’t just happen; they are created. Most leaders would love a high-performance team at their disposal, but they don’t know how to create one. Consequently, most have a “staff” instead of a “team.” The transformation is possible, but you need to know the “do’s” and “don’ts,” what to look for and what to avoid as your team evolves. During this session, Dr. Chip Valutis shares insights, tips and techniques he’s learned from more than 20 years of helping leadership teams perform at their best.

Dr. Chip Valutis is a principal with Valutis Consulting, Inc., a management consulting firm in Buffalo, NY. As a psychologist, he appreciates the complexity of people, teams and organizations. As a management consultant, he loves to simplify the complex into practical tools, techniques and practices. He strives to help successful companies build the people, systems and plans required for the next level of growth.

Learn More About Chip Valutis

Learn How You Can Drive Business Results Through Trust at MCAA18

David Horsager MCAA18 Trust is a fundamental, bottom-line issue. Without it, leaders lose teams, salespeople lose sales, and organizations lose reputation, good people, relationships and revenue. With trust, individuals and organizations enjoy greater creativity, productivity, freedom and results. Drawing from the results of his industry leading research, The Trust Outlook™, and his firsthand experience working with the world’s highest performing organizations, David Horsager reveals how top leaders and organizations drive business results to become the most trusted in their industry.

This session will provide you with:

  • The actionable framework you can use immediately to build trust and solve your biggest challenges;
  • The HOW-HOW-HOW process to spark momentum, see immediate results and inspire trust; and
  • The newest research on how to develop trust individually, in your team and in your organization – or become extinct in the new economy.

The Trust Edge David Horsager MCAA18

Sponsored by uponor.

David Horsager is the CEO of the Trust Edge Leadership Institute, the bestselling author of The Trust Edge, inventor of the Enterprise Trust Index™, and director of one of the nation’s foremost trust studies: The Trust Outlook™. His work has been featured in prominent publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Get Free Resources and More

Visit David Horsager’s Website

Visit the Trust Edge Leadership Institute Website

Learn More About MCAA18

Managing the Human Side of Your Business Can be Tricky…MCAA’s Management Methods Bulletins Can Help

Finding and retaining well-educated, skilled, trained and credentialed personnel to manage your field, shop and office operations is likely one of the toughest challenges of your business. MCAA’s Management Methods Bulletins and our Guide to Human Resources Policies can help you meet and overcome this challenge.

If you’re planning to hire a student intern, be sure to read How to Find, Hire and Manage Student Interns. A well-qualified, well-educated and energetic college student with a strong interest in our industry is a valuable asset who could prove to be a future full-time hire. This bulletin will help you find interns (visiting MCAAGreatFutures.org is a great start). It also explains the best time to recruit top candidates and how to effectively manage interns.

The performance review is possibly every employee’s least favorite meeting. The stress is not one-sided; all parties involved in these discussions feel the pressure to be fair and reasonable so the employee learns about his or her strengths and areas that need improvement. Employee Reviews can help you and/or your Human Resources staff prepare for employee performance evaluations and meetings and bring them to a satisfying closure.

Employees’ use of company cars and/or trucks can present some issues, not the least of which is liability from an accident. Injuries to the employee and damage to the vehicle are serious matters on their own, but determining who and or what caused the accident and who pays can lead to protracted legal challenges.  Avoiding Potential Liability from Employees’ Use of Company Vehicles discusses the potential liabilities that could result when an accident involving a company-owned vehicle occurs and how to minimize them.

If you could use a comprehensive guide to help you organize a human resources program and policies, the MCAA Guide to Human Resources covers the issues all the issues from the welcoming a new employee, benefits management, vacation and other leave policies, internet usage, travel reimbursements, smoking, substance abuse and more.

Looking for Another Management Methods Bulletin?

You can find them on our Management Methods Bulletins page. There, you’ll find the bulletins listed by category with links to help you get what you need quickly.

GO THERE NOW

Or, find them in the Resource Center, where you can use the blue Refine Your Search bar to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for.

VISIT THE RESOURCE CENTER

Learn How to be More Productive at MCAA18

Charles Duhigg MCAA18Productivity is often measured by the speed at which we tackle our to-do lists. Real productivity, however, comes from thinking differently—managing how we identify goals, construct teams, direct our focus and make decisions.

In this session, Charles Duhigg looks at what separates the merely busy from the genuinely productive by exploring eight critical concepts. With case studies from a U.S. Marine Corps boot camp, the making of Disney’s Frozen, and how Google sought to build the perfect team, he explains how people and companies become smarter, faster and better.

Sponsored by Baltimore Aircoil.

Duhigg BooksCharles Duhigg is the bestselling author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, which explores the science of habit formation, and Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business. He is a Pulitzer prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times for his series of articles focused on Apple, “The iEconomy.”

Learn More About Charles Duhigg

Workplace Violence Prevention and Protection Safety Training Video & Materials Now Available

MCAA’s new worker safety training video, Workplace Violence Prevention and Protection, and its accompanying materials are now available to members. The video teaches viewers to identify warning signs and take appropriate action to prevent workplace violence. It also shows viewers how to protect themselves and others if they find themselves in an active workplace violence situation.

Download or play the video

There’s More…

Accompanying materials are also available to assist you in highlighting key training points, documenting worker training and confirming that workers understand the training concepts:

Highlight key training points

Download the Pocket Guide

Document worker training

Download the Documentation Sheet

Confirm that workers understand the training concepts

Download the Test

Download the Test Answer Key

Want Even More Safety Resources?

MCAA has you covered, with a full range of resources to help you protect your workers from injury and comply with applicable safety regulations. Here’s where to find them:

On our Direct Links to MCAA & MSCA Safety Resources page, where they’re listed by category with links.

Go there now

In the Resource Center, where you can use the blue Refine Your Search bar to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for.

Visit the Resource Center

Have questions or need personal assistance?

Contact MCAA’s Pete Chaney.

Soldering Lead-Free Valves Takes Added Practice

Plumbing manufacturers have made great efforts to remove as much lead as possible to comply with regulations established under the Safe Drinking Water Act. In order to meet these requirements, most manufacturers have used brass alloys containing small amounts of silicon or bismuth to improve machability. In the following years, most plumbers learned how to effectively make joints with the new alloys, but sometimes it is not apparent how complete the fill is in joints unless they are tested.

A recently released NCPWB technical bulletin demonstrated how joints that appear to be correctly soldered could often be frayed. The bulletin’s author, Walt Sperko, provided examples of incorrect joints and guidance. Pre-heating the tube more than the casting is critical for no lead copper alloys. This is because casting’s thermal conductivity is much lower than copper.

Incomplete fill from under-heating

When the plumber does not spend enough time on heating the tube, the solder has a tendency to only partially fill the joint. While silicon-based alloys were found to be more difficult to wet properly, both proved insufficient with poor technique.

NCPWB members can also download the Soldering Procedure Specification resource SPS-107-1 to better understand the welding procedures for brass and lead-free alloys.

A Thank You from Our Family Members Devastated by Hurricane Harvey

Hear from some of those affected by the Houston floods earlier this year. Your donations to the MCAA Disaster Relief Fund are making a difference for them and other UA and MCAA family members whose lives have been turned upside down by natural disasters.

If you would like to make a contribution to our Fund you can easily do so via a check made out to the “MCAA Disaster Relief Fund.” Checks can be mailed to the attention of MCAA CEO John Gentille at the MCAA National Office, 1385 Piccard Drive, Rockville, MD 20850.

Want to Teach Your Workers to Prevent Jobsite Fires? Check Out this Video!

MCAA’s Fire Safety Training Video will teach your workers to recognize common causes of jobsite fires and how to prevent them.

Your workers will learn about:

  • Health effects of smoke inhalation and burns
  • Common causes of jobsite fires
  • Proper fire prevention techniques
  • Safe fire response, including knowing when to fight the fire and when to get out and leave it to the professionals

Download or play the video

There’s More…

Accompanying materials are also available to assist you in highlighting key training points, documenting worker training and confirming that workers understand the training concepts:

Highlight key training points

Download the Pocket Guide

Document worker training

Download the Documentation Sheet

Confirm that workers understand the training concepts

Download the Test

Download the Test Answer Key

Want Even More Safety Resources?

MCAA has you covered, with a full range of resources to help you protect your workers from injury and comply with applicable safety regulations. Here’s where to find them:

On our Direct Links to MCAA & MSCA Safety Resources page, where they’re listed by category with links.

Go there now

In the Resource Center, where you can use the blue Refine Your Search bar to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for.

Visit the Resource Center

Have questions or need personal assistance?

Contact MCAA’s Pete Chaney.

Soldering Lead-Free Valves? Beware!

Are you planning to solder in a couple of dozen 1-1/2 inch brass control valves in that heating system you are installing in that high-rise building? Brass valves, of course, are castings and all the castings you buy today are lead-free. Does your journeyman who can solder a wrought 1-1/2 inch copper coupling with ease make the same quality joint when one side is a heavy-wall cast valve body? How about if the castings you bought are alloyed with silicon for machinability improvement rather than with bismuth?

Learn more

MCAA’s “A Day in the Life of Ted” Video – A Must-See for College Students!

“Despite being on the executive board of my school’s MCAA Chapter, I still didn’t fully appreciate what it is actually like to work for a mechanical contractor until this presentation. The “A Day in the Life of Ted” video was an excellent view as to what makes your section of the industry different than a typical building contractor.” That was one student’s reaction to the video at MCAA’s GreatFutures Forum.

The video follows Ted McHugh of West Chester Mechanical in Aston, PA through a typical workday. In addition to highlighting the daily demands associated with keeping a project on time and within budget, it showcases for students how a great future is achievable in the mechanical industry!

“I have never been more proud to be a plumber for a union contractor…”

MCAA is a family. Tragically, members of our family now need our help. Many of our MCAA and UA families had their lives turned upside down by the unbelievable tragedy named Harvey.

That’s why MCAA established the MCAA Disaster Relief Fund. THANK YOU to those MCAA-affiliated local associations, individuals and member companies, both contractors and manufacturer/suppliers, that have contributed to our Relief Fund.

Together, We are Making a Difference!

If you would like to make a contribution to our Fund you can easily do so via a check made out to the “MCAA Disaster Relief Fund.” Checks can be mailed to the attention of MCAA CEO John Gentille at the MCAA National Office, 1385 Piccard Drive, Rockville, MD 20850.