AVIXA has announced that there are now 1,000 professionals with a Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) certification in Europe. For more than 30 years, AVIXA has administered the CTS programme, which is recognised worldwide as a leading AV specialist credential, helping businesses to elevate themselves and deliver value to their clients.
“This marks a significant milestone in AVIXA’s development in the European market,” said Chris Lavelle, senior director of development EMEA, AVIXA. “The AV market is flourishing in the region, and we are thrilled that many industry members in the region are committing to professional development. CTS holders across Europe are reaping the benefits of their hard work, with the programme allowing dedicated AV professionals to stand out from the crowd and prove their knowledge with the leading professional audiovisual certification. We would like to congratulate all our CTS holders for achieving this hard-earned qualification, and we look forward to seeing them utilise their knowledge to deliver outstanding integrated experiences.”
Many CTS holders in Europe are also progressing further in their AV education and going on to achieve further specialised credentials: CTS-D (design) or CTS-I (installation). All three certifications are ANSI accredited under the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) ISO/IEC 17024:2012 General Requirements for Bodies Operating Certification Schemes of Persons program.“CTS benefits both employee and the employer, but I feel that CTS benefits the employee most,” said Justin Paveley, CTS-D, CTS-I engineering director, AVMI. “CTS has given me self-confidence, credibility and a technical proficiency that I wouldn’t have got elsewhere.”
“In our business model, we see our main selling point as being a source of expert AV knowledge,” said Marcus Boij, technical director, Informationsteknik Scandinavia AB. “Having CTS certified staff has allowed us to demonstrate that knowledge, and compete with much larger companies when pitching for high profile tenders. As a result, we have been successful with several of these bids, including at SEB Bank, which is the largest AV installation in Sweden. With CTS, we can show how serious we are about knowledge and education.”
“Our short- to mid-term strategy is to establish a unified environment across all departments that interface on a technical level, where we all speak the same ‘AV language’,” said Alex Sanfilippo, CTS-D, director of engineering at Kraftwerk Living Technologies. “We have seen the benefit of this already and AVIXA Certification is the only platform in our industry that has such a broad range of certification and coverage.”
AVIXA’s activities in the region have increased in order to provide an enhanced offering to its growing European membership base. Recent recruits in the past 12 months include education program manager Jennifer Leutgeb and European marketing manager Peter Schaedel. Other developments include the promotion of Ben Barnard to Regional Manager for the UK and Ireland. Sarah Carless will also move into a new role as member relations manager, with Gaby Smuts appointed as program co-ordinator. In addition, Valeria Rapa has been made program co-ordinator in Italy on a permanent basis.
