Welcome to Beckett Talks — where we discuss the topics that matter most to the heating industry.
In this episode, we’re talking with Jeff Rozga — Technical Trainer at R.W. Beckett — and we discuss the National Education Program (NEP) Hands-On Residential Burners Training program which he has developed and conducts throughout the United States. We get into how the program was developed and how it’s changed over the years and what you can expect if you register for one of these classes. The 2024 schedule for the NEP Training Classes was released in early February and classes are filling up fast — so if you haven’t registered for a class near you, we’d encourage you to do as as soon as possible. Thanks again for joining us — please watch / listen / read on for the inaugural episode of Beckett Talks.
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Meet Today’s Guest
Jeff Rozga
Technical Trainer | R.W. Beckett
Jeff also recently completed the National Oil Heat Research Alliance (NORA) Accreditation Program becoming one of only 9 NORA Accredited Instructors in the United States.
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Hello everyone, and welcome to Beckett Talks. My name is and we’re very excited to launch this new project here at Beckett. So, what is Beckett Talks? Well, Beckett Talks is a new series that we’re launching today where every week we’ll be sitting down with someone from Beckett, so different Beckett team members every week to discuss the topics that matter most to the heating industry.
This week we’re talking about training; something that Beckett has really put an emphasis on for engaging their customer base. And with us today is Jeff Rozga. He’s the Director of Training at Beckett. Did I get that right, Jeff? Is that the right title?
Yeah, very good. Yeah, the Beckett National Education Program that launched in the early 1980s really has evolved over many, many years. The NEPs that we put together are geared for the service contractor. So if you work for an oil company or an HVAC company, it’s designed for the contractors, the installing crew, to the service managers, right down to the owners.
The National Education Program is also geared around our distributors, whether you’re an inside sales counter guy, or in outside sales. It’s geared around our OEMs that make the equipment. They have technical training teams, customer service teams, along with their engineering. So the program also benefits those, to all the rep agencies in the HVAC world. So it’s pretty much geared right around anyone that’s in the HVAC industry, the entire trade.
Okay. Yeah. The NEP classes start off with a brief introduction of the Beckett Company. We give them an agenda of what we’re going to discuss, and this starts off with a presentation in PowerPoint that is just a little over an hour.
Now, the NEP program changed several years ago where I took it to the next level, and knowing techs learned by doing, we turned the NEP program into hands-on. So, we’ll get into many lab exercises where the contractors will break into groups of two, and we have these individual burner kits. And inside these burner kits is the Beckett OEM Spec Guide, and they have three different selection of OEMs, and they will take a burner from scratch and they will assemble it to meet the specs for that customer to get ready to go onto a furnace, a boiler, a water heater. So there’s a variety of different applications that they will do.
After the burner training is complete, we jump into the electronic primary controls where the individuals will, once again, work in teams. They have a lab workbook with 22 lab exercises, and they will go into the lab workbook and they will program the Beckett GeniSys 7505 Primary Control, utilizing a contractor tool and also with the BeckettLink Pro. The next exercise takes them into the newer GeniSys primary control, the 7565, and they will open the My Technician app and they will go through several lab exercises of programming the GeniSys 7565. We end the program with the contractors completing the lab exercises with the AquaSmart Boiler Temperature Control. So they would set this up as it may be installed on a customer’s boiler in the field.
Learn more about the products covered in the National Education Program (NEP) Hands-On Residential Burner Training
That’s good. So, when you mentioned that the controls that you’re going over now are the 7505 and the 7565. Those obviously didn’t exist a couple of years back, so is this something that if a technician or anyone that took the class last year, is this something that they should be taking again, maybe year after year? Is there a benefit to them taking it year after year, or is the coursework… I see where there’s one thing there that… Excuse me, my puppy’s yelling.
But I see where there’s benefit from a technology standpoint, but is there anything beyond that that would be beneficial for people to take it year after year?
So, if it’s been several months since they’ve used the contractor tool or the Beckett Link Pro or the MyTechnician app, a refresher is always good. With my NEP program, the content always changes from year to year as well. All right. So they are always picking something up the second, the third, or even the fourth time. Okay. Plus again, the content, all of the program is always changing, so huge benefit.
There’s only nine credited instructors in the industry today, and three of them are from Beckett.
Cool. Well, thanks so much, Jeff.
Hopefully, this is more informative for the audience that might be looking to sign up. As Jeff mentioned, all of the training classes are available at the BeckettCorp.com website. You can register there and purchase your classes there, reserve them through the website, and we’d like to thank you for joining us for this edition of Beckett Talks.
We hope to be on a regular basis with this. We’re going to be publishing these Beckett Talks through Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and also on BeckettCorp.com. If there’s any topics that you would like for us to potentially have conversations about, we’re going to be talking with trainers, we’re going to be talking with product management, the executive team at Beckett, like I said, week after week, to discuss different topics that are interesting to the heating industry, relevant to the industry, and hopefully provide a different perspective or a helpful perspective to the heating industry as we go forward.
So, thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you next week on Beckett Talks.