Two non-profit industry groups representing the process control and automation community have got together to present practical and valuable training in Australia.
IICA, the Institute of Instrumentation Control and Automation, represents the whole control and automation community in Australia – engineering and trade personnel, end-user organisations, vendors and the educators in our industry, and has been doing this for over 60 years.
ISA, the International Society of Automation, is a similar but much larger international organisation based in America.
Over the past couple of decades, ISA has developed an internationally recognised training program targeting process control and automation technologies. IICA instructors are now presenting the ISA training in Australia.
Why? And what is different about ISA’s training?
Instrumentation, process control and automation has always had a high element of on-the-job training. This is true of all areas of engineering, however more so for control and automation because of its narrow application areas.
Practical skills have traditionally been acquired from experienced superiors on the job.
But the numbers of experienced engineers and technicians in industry have dropped considerably in the past couple of decades as companies have reduced manning and outsourced engineering services.
The experience-pool has become concentrated in the support departments of large vendors – and an increasing proportion of this support is now overseas.
The ISA training courses provide these practical skills in a vendor-neutral format. The courses have been developed by practitioners with specialist plant experience.
The courses are continuously updated for new technologies and products. The ISA courses are now provided in over 30 countries around the world by ISA and their partners such as IICA.
The IICA instructors are selected for practical experience in their fields and are accredited by ISA for each specific course.
IICA’s program covers both introductory topics as well as new technology areas.
We presently provide courses on 10 subjects, with practical information on basic subjects such as selecting different flowmeters for different plant conditions or debunking the mystery of effective grounding and surge protection.
We also provide courses on advanced topics such as the latest wireless and fieldbus technologies.
In the last couple of years, IICA has run over 60 courses and feedback has been excellent.
There is a large degree of interaction between the participants and discussion of real problems experienced in control and automation applications.
[Graham Moss is IICA Training Manager.]
More Information on IICA training