Critical environment rooms stand apart from all other jobsites, and for good reason. Sterile environments protect the health and well-being of hospital patients, the integrity of chips and batteries at manufacturing plants and the air quality at pharmaceutical labs and research facilities. This all depends on those who constructed the critical environment room, whether they did it well and whether those inspecting it continue to monitor the quality of service.

There is a need across the country for unionized sheet metal workers who can do this work, and earlier this year the ITI moved to meet this need by launching an online critical environment room course. The self-paced, 12-module course is best suited for journeypersons or apprentices in their upper years of education and covers how to install and inspect areas where sterile environments are a necessity.

Available on the ITI’s online learning platform, the course covers cleanliness classifications and the different entry and exit procedures for each; inspection reports; and design criteria and fundamentals. These criteria include different types of walls, floors and ceilings and their compositions, insulation, correct door usage, lighting, materials and finishes. Appropriate lint-free and dust-free garments and how to monitor the air for particle count, temperature and humidity are also discussed.

Many designs for critical environment rooms are modular and call for systems and panels that fit together. No matter the system manufacturer, they are similarly constructed and feature HEPA filters, rounded corners to keep from collecting dust and ceilings that connect to the designs.

“The course contains everything to do with how a critical environment room should be constructed and how to meet the different cleanliness classifications,” said Darrell Garrison, ITI HVACR service and TAB specialist, who worked on the project along with David St. Peter, Darek Scarlavai and Craig Reehten, now the administrator of NEMI.

Much of the course consists of training from manufacturers, with the ITI staff creating a methodical pathway on how to construct and inspect these rooms in lessons suited for the unionized sheet metal workforce.

“SMART members working on these critical environment rooms need to not only know how the HVAC system will work, but how it will work with the critical environment room and the system as a whole,” Garrison said. “Our members need to know how to install it all.”

To register, SMART members should log into their ITI account and click on the online learning portal to view all the courses. Once the course is complete, a certification indicating completion along with a Critical Environment Room Technician card to designate training will be sent to the member.

“I see this as an opportunity for more areas to get into this line of work,” Garrison said. “Every one of those chip plants around the country, the pharmaceutical plants, battery plants — they all have to have critical environment rooms that also need to be inspected. It may as well be by us.”