Executive Director's Message 

by Bob Lowe

 

 

Control Engineering is pleased to announce the 2010 System Integrators of the Year. CSIA proudly recognizes each as a member.

 

(over $50 million)

The CSIA Web 2.0 initiative is in the testing phase and headed up by a team of staff, vendors and a tech team of CSIA members. The CSIA Connected Community will be a web platform to interact with members, prospects and end users on topics that matter to the control system integrator community. Look for the launch soon!

The membership committee is looking for presidents, CEOs and other senior managers willing to spend less than an hour each quarter to help mentor our new members. We currently have 31 new members and 15 active mentors. With membership growing and not wanting to overburden any of our volunteer mentors, we are in need of about five individuals to help our new members realize the value of their CSIA membership. Our mentorship program is designed so that no one person has more than two new members under mentorship at any time. As the time arrives for mentors to make contact with their paired new members, an e-mail is sent with new member contact information and talking points. As conversations are had with the new members, notes are accumulated by the membership committee and dispersed to all mentors. This is a great opportunity to get involved with CSIA activities with only a minor time commitment (four hours a year). Please contact Joe Martin (614) 761-5600 x331 or JTMartin@MartinCSI.com for more information.

 

The Best Practices Committee has been busy over the past few moths with several projects. First we took on developing a guidance document for CSIA staff to provide policy and direction regarding CSIA certification status extension and revocation of certified status. It was found that no official policy had been documented over the years and with the current economy the staff was running into more needs for a policy so extensions and revocations could be done in a standard manner. This document has been submitted to the Executive Council for approval and it is currently in its final stages of edits.

 

Another project that we have been working on involved an update to our current policy on Branch Office Certification Audits. The current policy had been in place since 2007 and needed some clarification as well as updates for version 3 of the Best Practices audit criteria. This document includes a policy statement as to how to determine when branch office audits should be required as well as the criteria on which the branch office should be audited. Another part of this update involved editing the checklist that an integrator is required to complete for the auditor when considering a branch office certification. These documents have also been submitted to the Executive Council for review and approval and we are applying final edits to them now.

One other project that we have taken on is to review feedback received by the two auditing firms from integrators being audited on version 3 of the Best Practices Guide. This was to help us determine if minor modifications were needed to the current version. This process has taken several months so far and the committee is currently reviewing the consolidated notes from these meetings with ideas for changes. Once the committee agrees on these modifications we will move forward with getting this completed with the plans to release a new minor revision prior to the Executive Conference this year.

I would like to encourage you to consider joining this Committee and help us to continue to improve the auditing process and overall "Best Practices." We will begin looking at the development cycle for the next major revision that should be completed by 2011 or 2012 and we would love to hear your feedback on what areas could use some additional work. Please feel free to contact me at any time at (712) 722-1663 X151 or Jeff.Miller@interstates.com if you have questions, ideas for improvements or would like to join the committee. I will guarantee you that if you join you will get more out of this than you give!

CSIA Attorney
 
Lien and Mean

If getting paid is a problem (and you don't mind angering a customer), filing a mechanic's lien can be a powerful remedy. 

 

What is a mechanic's lien? It is, quite simply, the right to sell the land (i.e. the place where your company did its work) to pay the debt owed. What does that give you? Three things: 1) a second "pot" of money to target - namely the value of the land (the first "pot" being the bank account of the company that owes you); 2) typically the right to get your legal fees reimbursed (not usually the case in American courts); and 3) serious leverage. 

 

How do you go about filing one? You need to be quick about it - and there are a lot of technicalities that must be satisfied to get these right. For instance, to acquire lien rights in some states a "notice of commencement" must be filed at the beginning of a project. Also, there usually is only a very brief window of time for filing a lien after work has been concluded. 

 

For all of these reasons, I do not recommend that any company file a lien without consulting a lawyer (and, believe me, I don't always say that). But once on file, they often do the trick.
 
Mark Voigtmann is the leader of the automation practice at Baker & Daniels, a law firm in Indianapolis, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Beijing. He can be reached at 317.237.1265 or Mark.Voigtmann@bakerdaniels.com