Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP)

What It Is

The Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals is a nonprofit professional society founded in 1992 by practitioners from 18 companies who wanted to promote maintenance and reliability as a profession. It now has more than 6,000 members worldwide. Through its certifying body, SMRPCO, it runs the Certified Maintenance and Reliability Technician (CMRT) exam, which tests four areas: maintenance practices, preventive and predictive maintenance, troubleshooting and analysis, and corrective maintenance. The ANSI National Accreditation Board accredits the CMRT. SMRP also publishes a Body of Knowledge for the field, holds an annual conference that draws more than 1,000 people, and runs a foundation that awards scholarships to students entering the profession.

Why It Matters

Many trades have a license that proves a worker's skill. Industrial maintenance mostly does not, which makes an independent, accredited credential valuable. The CMRT gives technicians a way to show employers a verified level of competence, and SMRP's chapters and conferences connect technicians with peers solving the same problems in other plants. An organization created by practitioners, for practitioners, also shows that this field takes its own expertise seriously.