Far be it for me to advocate for more government control of our over regulated lives. But I do think industry standards level the playing field, so that quality companies are competing against other companies that have to meet a minimum quality standard.
An organization, like NICET provides serious testing of a person’s knowledge of the best practices, and organizations like IPVM provide the high quality training. Now provide good security standards (written by security professionals), and I think testing and training companies will rise to fill the installer training gap.
A common theme in this thread is that private industry can regulate itself and the market will weed out the bad apples. To a degree that is true. But I have been on plenty of projects done by quality companies that have put poorly trained people on site. I run across installers that do not understand the basics, like why proper grounding is important, or why you can’t treat CAT 6A cable like 18/2 cable, or the proper way to control a maglock. The results of poor installation practices like these don’t show up when the Owner accepts the project, they show up down the road when they upgrade their 720P camera to a 4K camera and find that the bandwidth is not there, or God forbid, a fire and the maglock won’t open because of a malfunctioning field panel.
So let me clarify my position, yes I support industry standards as a guide to best practices and proper training. But I am not an advocate of the fire industry model, with an AHJ overseeing a process, that they all too often, don’t understand themselves. My preference is to have installer competency requirements, and best practices to follow. I think these alone will help the industry, and the Owners, through the contracting process, upgrade employee training and weed out companies that reflect poorly on the rest of us. This is the model that the Telecom industry has followed, and I think served them pretty well.