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PSA Project Management Committee reports on the SIA CSPM Clinic

The two-hour clinic, which took place during ISC West 2014, served as a precursor to the SIA Certified Security Project Manager Review Course and certification exam offered at TEC 2014. Project Management Committee members who attended the clinic provide their perspectives on the program’s curriculum changes and the value gained through CSPM certification.

Craig Jarrett | PSA Project Management Committee Chairman
President – Netronix Integration, Inc.

The SIA Certified Security Project Management Course Clinic covered changes to the CSPM program, which I believe were long overdue. It was mentioned that only about 300 people had taken and received the certification in the past 10 years. New to the program is a change that a student does not have to sit through the class room training to take the test. The class has been completely revamped and includes a current curriculum taken from what security project managers need to know today, the world has changed since the original SIA CSPM was put together. There are a few additional training classes that are being built currently and will be available soon although the only one they mentioned was “Estimating”.

New class materials are being taught and tested this year at PSA-TEC and ASIS Atlanta. The main “Domains” of the course that were mentioned and briefly discussed were Security specific knowledge, planning, execution, monitoring change orders, paperwork, project closeout and management skills.

After sitting through the two hour brief and going into a little about each of the domains I felt that they covered all topics that a Project Manager would need to know to properly perform their job. The discussion did not get into the detail but just covered the basic topics including items like code, billing forms, change order documentation, project team building, scheduling and material vendor management just to name a few. I felt pretty excited that this could now be a course that my project managers could attend and get some real value out of. Without having some real feedback from someone who has gone through the new course I think that it is worth the time, money and effort to get a few of our people through to validate what has been put together in this updated course.

Ben Wilson | PSA Project Management Committee Member
VP of Operations – Safeguard Security & Communications, Inc.

This year at ISC West I was able to attend a two hour clinic that offered an inside view of the SIA Certified Security Project Management course.

The clinic offered a great thousand foot view of what the CSPM program can offer a professional in the field of security project management.  There was brief detail offered on all the different levels of knowledge required to be a successful and I think it would greatly benefit any security project manager that has at least two or three years’ of experience as a manager.  This clinic will give project managers many new tools and different views of the program but for the real education, project managers should invest in the Certified Security Project Management Review Course.

This course will place the two or three year security project manager in a great position to succeed after the review course and once they pass the exam, it places them above their equals.

And frankly, in my opinion, any security project manager would greatly benefit by taking this review course and passing the certification exam.