I have attended almost every CSIA Conference since about 2000. Why do I keep coming?
I haven't been a system integrator, personally, since 1983. Back then, all you had to do to be a system integrator (or panel house, as we called them) was to get a flat board and write "I R Integrator" on it and hang it on the outside wall of your garage. I owned a manufacturers' rep/distributor firm that had an integration business. Lots of people became system integrators that way.
CSIA was formed to take a rather amorphous side-business and turn it into a profession. It has done that, in spades. If you are an end user, and you hire a CSIA integrator, you have a real good chance of getting somebody who knows what they are doing, at a very deep level. Vendors know that CSIA integrators won't screw up their equipment and give them a black eye.
But there's more to it than that. There are only a couple of conferences that I attend every year that I think are above the cut for the average conference. One is PlantSuccess (www.plantsuccess.com) and the other is the CSIA Conference (www.controlsys.org).
If you are a system integrator, please consider coming to this conference next year. If you are an end user/asset owner or EPC, make sure you put in your specifications that the system integrator must be CSIA Certified.
This is how you make sure you get value, and quality, and worry-free systems.
