When you’re out in the field doing restoration work, you’re not thinking about the paperwork behind it all. But the truth is, everything — from training to certification to how we approach the job — is built on standards. And those standards don’t just appear out of nowhere.
I recently sat down with Mili Washington, the Standards Director at the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) since 2011. She walked me through how the whole process works — and let me tell you, it’s not quick, and it’s not easy. Every single word in those documents gets sweated over, and there’s a reason for it.
Before we get into how these things are created, let’s get clear on what they actually are.
An IICRC standard is a document that lays out the standard of care for work in the cleaning, restoration, and inspection industries. That means it describes what a competent, trained professional should already be doing on the job — not the best-case scenario, not cutting corners either, just the solid middle ground of doing it right.
It’s not about inventing new methods or pushing the latest tools. It’s about capturing what’s already happening in the field and putting it into a clear, reliable framework that everyone can work from — contractors, trainers, insurance adjusters, even courts.
These standards are what the IICRC’s certifications and training are built on. If you’re certified, you’re expected to know and follow them. And they don’t just carry weight because someone says so — they carry weight because they’re developed through a formal, detailed process that pulls in real voices from the industry.
Now, let’s walk through how these standards come together.
There are two main reasons IICRC starts a new standards project:
Every IICRC standard goes through a formal revision process every 5 years, no matter what. That’s the baseline.
If there’s a real gap in the field and it falls within IICRC’s scope, then they kick off a brand-new development project.
Both types have to go through ANSI, because IICRC is an ANSI-accredited standards developer. That means there are strict rules in place for how everything is done — from who gets to be involved to how comments are handled.
Once a standard is greenlit, IICRC starts assembling a “consensus body.” That’s the group of folks who will actually write the standard.
This group has to be balanced, with members from different parts of the industry — not just manufacturers or contractors, but also users and people with general interest.
They’re volunteers, but the work is serious.
“I spend a good bulk of my time helping those consensus bodies,” Mili said. “It’s a multi-year process. It’s a labor of love. It takes time and effort.”
This is where most of the work happens — and where things slow down.
Standards aren’t written in big sweeping chapters. They’re built line by line, sentence by sentence.
“Every sentence and every word carries weight,” Mili told me. “We’ve spent an hour and did three sentences once.”
What they’re trying to write down is the standard of care — not the best practice, not the ideal, but what a skilled, competent professional is actually doing in the real world. That’s an important distinction.
If something is too technical or too abstract, it gets cut. If it’s unclear or open to misinterpretation, they rewrite it. They’re constantly walking the line between practical and precise.
Once the consensus body has a draft they feel solid about, it’s released for public review. This is one of the most important — and honestly, most painful — parts of the process.
Anyone in the industry can submit comments. There’s no limit. You can submit one or you can submit a thousand.
This is where the real-world feedback kicks in. People point out what’s confusing, what doesn’t line up with how things actually happen on-site, or what might be misread.
How Public Review Works:
“We do get a lot of comments on our standards and we consider that to be a very important aspect,” Mili said. “Painful, yes. But important.”
When the team has gone through enough review rounds — sometimes one, sometimes five — and there are no unresolved objections, the standard can finally move forward to publication.
That’s when it becomes official.
But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
“There are imperfections. Every single document that is put out — there are imperfections,” Mili said. “That five-year revision cycle gives us a chance to fix anything that we may have missed.”
Here’s the thing — the work doesn’t end once a standard is published.
By ANSI rules, every standard must be reviewed and republished within five years. But sometimes they don’t wait that long.
If there’s a big change in the industry, or if they find something they can’t sit on for five years, they’ll revise it earlier.
That constant re-evaluation is what keeps these documents useful — not just some dusty PDF no one looks at.
It might seem like a lot — and it is — but the result is a document that’s rooted in how the work is really done. Not written by one company. Not based on ideal conditions. It’s built by the people doing the work, checked by the rest of the field, and refined again and again.
So next time you reference an IICRC standard, know that it wasn’t written in a vacuum. It was built the hard way, over time, by people who care about getting it right.
And if you’re ever wondering why it says what it says — it’s probably because someone spent a whole hour arguing over that one sentence.
READ MORE:
How to Build a Resilient Restoration Business Based on IICRC and OSHA