Certification

Overview

Certification is a key aspect of the Institute’s quality assurance initiative for Resource Consumption Accounting (RCA). Certification is intended to reduce adopter risk by:

Providing RCA Adopters assurances on service providers’ competency and vendors’ software capabilities.
Fostering an open and informed RCA practice environment where competency levels and capabilities are transparent and can be required by RCA Adopters.
Preventing unwarranted compromises in RCA Adopters’ decision support information due to software product limitations or unqualified or inexperienced service providers.
Encouraging RCA Adopters to periodically assess their model, system, and staff through a structured, independent review.

RCA Institute certification can be held by both individuals and companies. Certification will grant the use of a certification logo for marketing and general public communications in accordance with the RCA Institute’s certification logo license agreement/s. All certification will require ongoing membership in the RCA Institute and completion of maintenance activities appropriate to the type of certification such as continuing education, periodic software recertification, and Adopter biannual reviews. More details on RCA Institute membership are available here.

The RCA Institute maintains an online database of all current certifications. The certification database will provide an organizational affiliation if the Institute is provided with this information.

RCA Institute Certification will be provided in four categories namely: (1) Designer, (2) Implementer, (3) Software, and (4) Adopter. More information on the nature of each of the certifications are provided on the tabs on this page.

Designer

Steps to obtaining certification: The completion of the RCA Institute’s Introductory Module and Competency Module training courses. Master level is achieved after completing the RCA Institute’s Master Module training for designers and three projects are reviewed and evaluated by the RCA Institute as meeting Institute standards.

Who is certified: Only individual private persons can obtain designer certification.

What designer certification means: The certified person has successfully completed the requisite introductory, competency and master level training courses of the Institute. The person has also achieved a pass rating for the RCA conceptual design on three projects for which the RCA Institute conducted independent evaluations.

Implementer

Steps to obtaining certification: The completion of the RCA Institutes Introductory Module and Competency Module training courses. Master level is achieved after completing the RCA Institute’s Master Module training for implementers and after three projects are reviewed and evaluated by the RCA Institute as meeting Institute standards.

Who is certified: Only individual private persons can obtain implementer certification.

What implementer certification means: The certified person has completed the requisite introductory, competency and master level training courses. The person has also achieved a pass rating on three software implementations of RCA models for which the RCA Institute conducted independent implementation evaluations.

Note: The RCA Institute does not provide software training. All software training is provided by the individual software vendors.

Software

Steps to obtaining certification: The software vendor applies to the RCA Institute for certification upon which the RCA Institutes provides data for an RCA model the vendor must construct in the software. The RCA Institute evaluates model results and completes a software scorecard. A software product maintains a valid certification status if the software vendors employs at least one full time employee that is a certified RCA Designer.

What is certified: Software products by name and version are certified.

What software certification means: The certified software meets certain minimum functionality requirements for RCA modeling and transaction processing i.e., it provides core functionality. The RCA Institute will make available to its members – upon request – a copy of the complete software scorecard.

Adopter

Steps to obtaining certification: A company completes an RCA Institute Adopter survey and is selected as an Adopter. The Adopter’s RCA project is subsequently implemented, goes live and is certified by the RCA Institute. For an Adopter to maintain its certified implementation status at least one full time employee must be a certified RCA Designer.

What is certified: An Adopter’s implementation and use of RCA for a particular business segment, business unit and/or location.

What adopter certification means: The Adopter’s RCA implementation meets certain minimum design, certified software usage, training and management process requirements. An Adopter maintains a certified status by undertaking periodic (2 yearly) use reviews of its RCA system and practices by the RCA Institute.