Our Certifications & the S520 Standard We Helped Write
When the topic is the air your family breathes, “certified” should mean something specific, not a logo on a truck. At Mold Eliminators, it does. Our founder, Craig Herrmann, is an IICRC Master Certified Flood Expert, one of only three in all of Southern Nevada, and he did not just pass the test for the national mold standard. He helped write it.
That distinction matters more than any marketing claim, because mold is a health topic, and health topics do not reward confident-sounding sales pitches. They reward people who can show their credentials and point to the rulebook they follow. On this page we lay out exactly what our IICRC certifications are, what the ANSI/IICRC S520 standard is, and why a company that helped author that standard is a fundamentally different thing than one that simply read it. If you want the person behind the credentials, start with Craig Herrmann himself.
Mold Eliminators founder Craig Herrmann reviewing IICRC certification credentials in Las VegasWhat an IICRC certification actually means
The IICRC, the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, is the nonprofit body that sets the technical standards for the entire restoration industry in the United States. When a company says it follows “industry standards” for mold, water, or odor, the IICRC is who wrote those standards. So an IICRC certification is not a participation badge. It is proof that a technician sat for, and passed, a discipline-specific exam tied to a published, peer-reviewed standard, and that they keep that certification current.
That last part is where most of the industry quietly falls down. Certifications expire. Standards get revised. A certificate from 2009 hanging in an office tells you what someone learned a long time ago, not what they are held to today. The credibility is in the word active, in certifications that are current with the latest edition of the standard, kept alive through continuing education. It is the difference between a license that is valid and one that lapsed years ago.
Here is the plainest way to think about it. In a field with almost no licensing requirement to even start a mold company in Nevada, IICRC certification is the closest thing to a real professional license the industry has. It is voluntary, which means the companies that hold it chose accountability that the law did not force on them. That choice is the entire signal. It is why our standards-first approach runs through everything from our mold remediation work to the way we handle mold testing.
Need help now?
Talk to a Las Vegas expert
In-house certified crews. One-hour emergency response across the valley, 24/7.
Craig’s 16 active certifications across 15 disciplines
Craig Herrmann holds 16 active IICRC certifications spanning 15 separate disciplines. That breadth is unusual, and it is deliberate: water damage, structural drying, mold, and odor are not separate problems on a real job site, they are one connected problem, and being certified across all of them is what lets one crew own the whole job instead of handing you off. A few of those credentials stand out.
The reason this list reads like a resume and not a brochure is that we want it checked. Every one of these is verifiable through the IICRC, and you can see the fuller picture on Craig’s profile. When a job needs documented proof that the people doing it are qualified, that is exactly what these credentials are for, and it is the same standard of evidence we bring to clearance testing at the end of a project.
What the ANSI/IICRC S520 standard is, in plain English
The S520 is the national standard for professional mold remediation. Its full name, ANSI/IICRC S520, tells you it is accredited by the American National Standards Institute, the same body that backs standards across countless industries. In practical terms, the S520 is the rulebook. It defines how mold remediation is supposed to be done: how to assess contamination, how to set up containment so spores do not spread to clean areas, how to remove the affected material safely, and, critically, how to verify that the work actually worked.
Why does a standard like this exist at all? Because mold remediation done wrong is worse than mold remediation not done. Cut a moldy wall open without containment and you can seed spores through an entire house. Declare a job “done” without independent verification and you have sold a homeowner peace of mind they did not actually get. The S520 exists to stop exactly those failures. It is the consensus document that every legitimate restoration company in Nevada is expected to follow, whether or not they helped create it.
The current version is the 4th Edition, published in 2024. Standards get revised as the science and the field advance, and the move from one edition to the next is not cosmetic. It reflects updated methods for assessment, containment, and clearance. So when we say our remediation process follows the S520, we mean the current 4th Edition, applied by people certified to the current standard, with results confirmed by an independent third-party lab rather than declared by the same crew that did the work.
The ANSI/IICRC S520 standard 4th Edition, co-authored by Craig HerrmannWhy “we helped write the standard” is different from “we follow it”
Craig Herrmann is a co-author of the ANSI/IICRC S520 standard, 4th Edition, and he has served on the IICRC board since October 2015. Read that again with the prior section in mind. The S520 is the rulebook every Nevada restoration company must follow. Craig is one of the people who wrote it.
This is the heart of the page, so we will be direct about why it matters and not overstate it. It does not make our crew immune to mistakes, and it does not mean we are the only competent company in the valley. What it means is depth of understanding. When you help author a standard, you do not just know the rule, you know why the rule exists, what failure it was written to prevent, and what the edge cases are that the one-line summary leaves out. That is the difference between someone who memorized the answer and someone who understood the question.
- Following the standard means doing what the rulebook says. That is the baseline, and it is a good baseline. Most certified companies operate here.
- Teaching the standard means being qualified to train others on it. A smaller group reaches this level through years of advanced certification.
- Writing the standard means sitting on the consensus body that decides what the rule should be in the first place. That is where Craig works, and there are very few people in it.
You do not have to take our word for any of this. The IICRC board, the certifications, and the S520 authorship are all matters of public record. See the full account on Craig’s page.
Why credentials outweigh marketing on a health decision
There is a category of subjects where getting it wrong genuinely hurts you: your health, your money, your home. The honest way to choose a provider in that category is not to count five-star reviews or react to the scariest ad. It is to ask a colder question. Who is actually qualified, and how can I verify it?
Mold sits squarely in that category. The wrong remediation can spread contamination and leave a family breathing the same air they called about, while a confident invoice tells them the problem is solved. That gap, between the marketing claim and the verified result, is exactly the gap that credentials and an independent standard close. A certification is checkable. A standard is published. A lab result is run by someone with no stake in the outcome. None of that is true of a slogan.
This is also why we are deliberately anti-upsell, and why our on-site inspection is free while lab analysis is a separate, paid step you only pay for if it is actually warranted. We would rather tell you that you do not have a problem than sell you a remediation you do not need. That posture only works when it is backed by real qualifications, because the whole point is that we have nothing to prove and nothing to inflate. If you want to see how that principle runs through the company, read why homeowners choose us and how our process is built to verify rather than assume.
What our credentials change about the work itself
Held to the current standard
Every project is run against the S520 4th Edition by people certified to it, including the person who co-authored it. The rulebook is not a brochure line here, it is the actual procedure. See Craig’s credentials.
Verified, not declared
We do not certify our own work. Independent third-party labs run the clearance testing that confirms a job is finished, so “done” means a result you can hold, not a technician’s assurance.
One accountable, certified crew
No subcontractors. Every technician is a W-2 employee working under one set of certifications, so the same accountable team owns your job from first reading to final verification.
That is what the credentials are for. Not a wall of logos, but a way of working in which the qualifications are real, the standard is current, and the result is verified by someone with no reason to flatter it. If a company cannot show you that chain, the certification is decoration. Ours is the procedure, and you are welcome to ask us to prove any of it.
Want it checked by people who helped write the rulebook? Start with a free inspection.
A free, no-pressure on-site inspection from an IICRC-certified team, with optional independent lab analysis only if it is warranted. One-hour emergency response, 24/7, across the Las Vegas valley. We tell you when you do not need us.