When you join a trade association, what are you actually joining for?
A membership certificate? A logo for your website? Your company name on a directory?
Those things have their place, but we believe membership should mean considerably more than that.
At the Automatic Door Installation Association, we believe the role of a modern trade association should be to actively support the people and businesses within its industry — helping them develop, stay informed, demonstrate competence and connect with others.
Ultimately, membership should provide genuine, ongoing value.
Training and Continued Development
Industries don’t stand still, and neither should training.
For businesses working with automatic pedestrian doors and associated systems, maintaining knowledge and competence is an important part of working safely and professionally.
That’s why training and continued professional development form such a significant part of ADIA membership.
We provide access to training across automatic doors and related areas, including our City & Guilds accredited BS EN 16005 training, alongside courses covering areas such as gate and barrier safety, fire door safety, access control and health and safety.
We also continue to develop new training and resources in response to the needs of the industry.
But training shouldn’t simply be about gaining another certificate.
The goal should always be to give engineers knowledge they can actually apply when they’re out working in the real world.
Information You Can Actually Use
Standards, legislation, industry guidance and best practice can sometimes feel unnecessarily complicated.
A trade association should help make that information easier to understand.
Through our website, blogs, social media channels, member communications and growing collection of guides and resources, we aim to take important industry information and make it accessible and practical.
Sometimes that means a detailed technical resource.
Sometimes it might simply mean answering one common question in a LinkedIn post.
Either way, if something affects the people working within our industry, we want to help our members understand it.
Helping Businesses Demonstrate Competence
Customers, contractors and organisations increasingly want reassurance that the people carrying out work are appropriately trained and competent.
Trade associations have an important role to play in supporting that.
Through initiatives such as the DoorSafe Register, ADIA provides a way for engineers who meet the relevant requirements to demonstrate their credentials and for others to verify them.
For our members, this isn’t simply another logo to display.
It’s another way of demonstrating their commitment to professional standards and giving their own customers confidence in the people carrying out the work.
Creating an Industry Community
One of the most valuable parts of belonging to an association can be something that’s difficult to put a price on: access to other people within your industry.
Automatic doors don’t exist in isolation.
Our industry overlaps with access control, gates and barriers, industrial doors, construction, electrical engineering, facilities management and numerous other sectors.
Creating opportunities for people from those areas to meet, talk, share experiences and build relationships is incredibly valuable.
That’s why networking has become an increasingly important part of what we do.
Sometimes the best piece of advice, new supplier, working relationship or business opportunity comes from simply getting the right people in the same room.
Giving Members a Voice and a Platform
We also believe an association should champion the businesses that support it.
Our members collectively represent an enormous amount of knowledge and experience.
We want to give those businesses opportunities to be seen, share what they’re doing and become more connected with the wider industry.
That might mean highlighting member achievements, sharing vacancies and opportunities, creating networking opportunities or simply helping businesses connect with one another.
When our members grow stronger, the association and the wider industry benefit too.
People You Can Actually Speak To
Perhaps one of the simplest things we believe an association should provide is also one of the most important:
Someone to ask.
Whether it’s a question about training, membership, qualifications, technical matters or simply finding the right information, our members know there are real people behind the ADIA.
We’re a small team, and we don’t pretend otherwise.
In fact, we think that can be one of our strengths.
It allows us to remain approachable, respond to what our members are telling us and continually improve what we provide without losing the personal relationship we have with the industry.
So, What Should You Get From a Trade Association?
For us, the answer is simple.
More than a membership certificate.
You should receive training and development opportunities.
You should have access to useful information and resources.
You should have opportunities to connect with your industry.
You should have ways to demonstrate your commitment to competence and professional standards.
You should feel supported.
And, most importantly, you should be able to see where the value of your membership actually goes.
We’re continually developing the ADIA, introducing new benefits, improving our resources and listening to what our members tell us they need.
We’re not interested in adding things simply so we can make a longer list of membership benefits.
We want to provide things that are genuinely useful.
Because our goal isn’t simply to grow the Automatic Door Installation Association.
It’s to make being part of it increasingly valuable to the companies and engineers who put their trust in us.