Volume 8, Issue 1

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The Certified Reliability Professional (CRP) program has been designed to distinguish professionals who have gained and successfully demonstrated unquestionable expertise in the field of reliability engineering. To achieve certification, candidates must complete a series of training courses focused on important reliability engineering topics, successfully apply the learned body of knowledge in the workplace and publicly present this expertise in an industry conference or journal.

This article presents a brief overview of the requirements and process for achieving CRP certification. Additional information is available on the program Web site at http://www.ReliabilityProfessional.org.

Overview of Requirements for Certification

Each activity in the program earns points (called "CRP credits") toward achieving Certified Reliability Professional certification. 35 CRP credits are needed for certification and all certification requirements must be completed within a 5-year span. The credit allocation is as follows:

Course Requirement: 15 CRP credits must be earned through participation in training courses that cover relevant reliability engineering subjects. (The current list of eligible training courses is maintained on the CRP Website.)

Project Requirement: 15 CRP credits must be earned by completing a project that applies the participant’s learned body of reliability engineering knowledge in a way that will benefit his/her organization.

Publication Requirement: 5 CRP credits must be earned by presenting the results of the CRP Project via a paper or presentation delivered in an industry conference or journal.

The rest of this article provides more information about enrolling in the program and completing each of these requirements.

Enrolling in the Program and Requesting Credit

The CRP program uses a Web-based system to manage and track each participant’s progress toward certification. To enroll in the program, simply select New Account from the My CRP Info menu at http://www.ReliabilityProfessional.org and provide the information required to create a participant account. After enrolling in the program, you will receive a message via e-mail that confirms that your participant account has been created. This e-mail provides the unique CRP Number that has been assigned to you along with instructions for logging in to the system to manage your account (i.e. to update contact information and also to add or view credit requests). You will also receive a “Welcome” packet via mail that provides information about program requirements, samples of the forms needed to document your CRP Project, relevant contact information, etc.

Whenever you attend an eligible training course or complete one of the other CRP requirements, simply log into your “My CRP Program Account” page and click the Request Credit button. When you provide the required details (e.g. date, location and course that you attended), the information will be submitted automatically to the CRP Administrator for your region so that the request can be evaluated and processed. You will receive an e-mail notification when the credit request has been granted. In addition, your “My CRP Program Account” Web page (like the one shown in Figure 1) is always available for your reference. It provides a summary of all pending, processed and, if applicable, denied credit requests, along with the current status of your CRP credit totals.

Designing Your Training Curriculum

In order to assure that all Certified Reliability Professionals possess the minimum required skills for performing reliability-related work, the program requires that all participants complete a “core curriculum” of training courses that address essential subjects within the discipline.

This includes courses that address:

• Life Data Analysis
• Quantitative Accelerated Life Testing Data Analysis
• System Reliability and Maintainability Analysis
• FMEA or RCM Analysis

Figure 1: My CRP Program Account Web Page

The list of training courses that are eligible for earning CRP credit has been designed to meet a wide variety of interests and needs. Each course has a published CRP credit value, allowing you to create a personal training curriculum that meets CRP program requirements, fits your own personal interests and meets the particular needs of your organization. When designing a personal training curriculum, you will select specific training courses to meet each of the core curriculum requirements and then select additional training courses from the approved list in order to complete the 15 credit requirement.

For example, participants who are interested in focusing on Reliability in Design may choose to attend the 5-day MSMT Foundations course and the 2-day course on FMEA (RS 470) to satisfy the core curriculum requirements. They may then supplement the core curriculum with courses in Design for Reliability (DFR), Reliability Growth Analysis, Design of Experiments and/or Fault Tree Analysis.

Participants who are interested in focusing on Reliability in Maintenance may choose the 5-day Advanced Reliability Analysis for Repairable Systems course (RS 540) and the 2-day introduction to Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) in order to satisfy the core curriculum requirement. They may then complete the 15 credit requirement with courses in Advanced System Analysis, Reliability Growth and Repairable System Analysis, Design of Experiments, etc.

Many other course combinations are available to help you tailor the program to meet your particular objectives. If necessary, you are also welcome to contact the CRP Administrators(CRPAdmin@ReliaSoft.com) with questions about a particular educational path that you may be considering.

Project to Demonstrate Knowledge/Skills

When you have completed (or are close to completing) all of the courses in your selected training curriculum, the next step is to begin planning a project that will implement some of the concepts and methodologies that you have learned in a way that will benefit your organization. There is a wide variety of projects that may be eligible for CRP credit and we encourage you to work with colleagues within your organization to select and define a project that will be suited to your individual expertise and your organization’s needs.

In order to be eligible for CRP credit, you must fully define the project using the Project Proposal form posted on the CRP Web site. This form calls for a brief description of the project (including specific “deliverables” and “business case”), the proposed analysis approach, the scope and timeline, applicable success criteria and other details. If your project proposal is accepted by the CRP Board, a Project Mentor will be assigned. You will need to submit a project status report to the Mentor at a mid-way point for your project and then a final report at project completion. If your final report is approved by the CRP Board, 15 CRP credits will be granted.

Presenting Your Experience

After the CRP Project has been completed and approved by the CRP Board, the final step is to share the lessons learned from your project by publishing a paper in an industry recognized journal and/or conducting a presentation at an industry conference. A list of acceptable presentation venues is maintained on the CRP Web site. This includes conferences and journals such as the International Applied Reliability Symposium (ARS), the Annual Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS), the IEEE Transactions on Reliability and many others.

Achieving Certification

When you have been granted the CRP course credits, project credits and presentation credits necessary for certification, the CRP Administrator for your region will review your account record and process your certification. If you have given permission for the CRP program to publicize your achievement, a record of your certification will be published on the CRP Web site.