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Influence the marketplace so that CSIA Certification becomes commonly required by end-user clients

By Michael Miller posted 06-01-2016 16:28

  

The mission of the Control System Integrators Association is to advance the industry of control system integration.

To deliver on this mission we have the following strategic objectives (focus points):

  1. Help system integrators be more professional and build better businesses.
  2. Be a forum for all members to network, train, discuss common issues and share best practices.
  3. Influence the marketplace so that CSIA Certification becomes commonly required by end-user clients. 

This strategic direction hasn’t changed and it continues to provide us with guidance. Over the years, we have asked our members through our membership survey how well we are delivering on our strategic objectives. The input on the two top objectives is that we are doing fine. When it comes to influence the marketplace, there is room for improvement.

While CSIA Certified companies state that the main value of Certification is obtained by having their companies become better businesses, it would also be nice to have more recognition of the value of Certification by the marketplace. With this in mind, CSIA is setting up an End User Advisory Board to better understand how CSIA and its Certification program can become better known in the marketplace. 

It is also intended that this will provide end users with a voice for what they want from our industry. With this information, CSIA members can better deliver on those needs. In summary, a win-win.

What could end users gain from this? It has been our general observation that as engineers get promoted within their organizations, their roles evolve to include more managerial responsibilities. We have also witnessed an end user trend over the years to outsource system integration work to independent system integrators. This has shifted the role of engineering departments at end user companies from doing to managing automation work. However, some end users continue to do automation projects in-house and would benefit greatly from the project execution best practices we have created. Not only will they be more successful on the projects that they do, but they will better understand and appreciate how we execute projects when they outsource integration work they don’t have resources for.

All of this has created the need for developmental training, in particular around vendor selection, project management of internal and external resources, within the context of increasingly larger and more complex projects. The increase in project scope will be driven in part by IoT and IIoT. CSIA believes that it can assist end users in augmenting their engineering capabilities through methodology and tools relevant to system integration work. CSIA has developed guidelines for proper SI selection and collaboration to ensure successful project delivery and project risk reduction.

Allowing end users to select the best qualified SIs based on unbiased criteria promotes advancement of the control system integration industry, the overall mission of CSIA. 

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