PLSIC is filling nine seats on the body that develops technical standards for parking lot striping work in the United States. Registration of interest is open today.
For most of the last two decades, the parking lot striping trade has operated without written technical standards. Property owners book work without a basis to evaluate it. Contractors do the work without a documented benchmark to point to. Specifiers write contracts that rely on word-of-mouth reputation, because there is no standard to cite.
PLSIC is fixing that. The PLSIC-2027 series of technical specifications, in development now, covers paint chemistry, surface preparation, layout, application methods, ADA compliance, retroreflectivity, and quality verification. The body that writes those standards is the Standards Development Committee.
If you work in this trade, a contractor with $30,000 a year or more in striping work, a manufacturer, a property manager who books striping, a state or municipal traffic engineer, an academic in materials or pavement engineering, an independent specifier, you can apply.
PLSIC is being built. The Standards Development Committee is part of the founding architecture. The first nine members will shape what the standards are and how they are developed for the decades that follow. The seat exists once. The work it sets up runs from here forward.
The Standards Development Committee is a nine-member body chartered by PLSIC to develop, review, and adopt technical standards for parking lot striping and pavement marking work. The Committee is established separately from the PLSIC Board of Directors. The work is grounded in documented procedures that survive whoever holds the seat: open public-comment periods of not less than 45 days on every draft, published seat-category disclosure, written responses to every negative ballot, a two-thirds adoption threshold, recorded provision-level recusals on commercial-interest votes, and a published appeals procedure.
This is not a figurehead role. SDC members work the standards: review proposals, debate provisions, weigh public comments, vote on adoption with reasons recorded. Standards the Committee adopts become the technical reference for an industry that has been operating without one. The work is technical: paint specification, equipment specification, layout and accessibility geometry, retroreflectivity, surface preparation, and the safety equipment crews use on the lot.
What the Committee does not do. The Committee does not run PLSIC; it works inside the standards-development scope set by its charter. The Committee does not certify contractors; certification (Certified Parking Lot Striper, CPLS) is a separate PLSIC program with its own governance. The Committee does not lobby; this is standards work, not advocacy work.
Nine seats across six interest categories. Balance across categories is a structural requirement, not a preference. Vendor and vendor-adjacent commercial-interest seats cannot exceed one-third of the voting membership at any time. The Committee is balanced this way because standards that are credible to property owners, regulators, and the contractors who must build to them depend on that balance.
If you fit more than one category, name the seat that fits the way you would serve.
Three-year terms, served on a staggered cycle so the Committee always carries continuity. The first nine seats are split into three cohorts of three members each, with initial terms of one, two, and three years; from that point forward, three seats turn over each year, and every member appointed or reappointed serves a full three-year term. The staggered start lets the Committee retain institutional memory while opening seats on a predictable cadence the trade can plan around.
Quarterly working sessions, in person or by video as the Committee schedules. Review work between sessions: public comments to weigh, drafts to read, dispositions to write. The standards work runs on a structured input track grounded in public process. Every draft goes out for a comment period of not less than 45 days, and the Committee answers every comment that is submitted, on the record.
Members serve under a written Conflict of Interest and Recusal Policy. Members disclose commercial interests on every agenda item, refresh disclosure when the agenda touches their products or services, and recuse on provision-level votes that touch their direct commercial interests. This is what allows the SDC to do its work in a small industry where many people know each other.
The Committee operates with editorial independence. PLSIC sponsors, vendor partners, and program participants comment on drafts through the same public process available to anyone else. They do not preview, veto, co-brand, or otherwise shape what does or does not appear in a standard outside the documented comment-disposition process.
Members also get:
A seat on the body that writes the first written standards for parking lot striping in the United States.
A voice and a vote on the technical questions that will define how the work in this trade is specified, performed, and verified for the foreseeable future.
Listing on every published standard the Committee adopts, with seat-category disclosure.
Documented service on a chartered standards-development body, with operating procedures that meet the procedural baseline expected of U.S. standards-development organizations.
The application path is being finalized in coordination with charter ratification and will be published at parkinglotstriping.org/standards-committee in the coming days.
To register interest now and receive the application package when it opens, write to info@parkinglotstriping.org with the subject line "SDC application" and include:
A short paragraph naming the seat category you would serve in.
A one-page CV or equivalent summary of relevant industry experience.
Any prior standards or industry-body service you have held (helpful context, not required).
We will confirm receipt within five business days and send the full application package as soon as the charter is ratified. The founding application window is open through Monday, July 20, 2026. PLSIC's Founder reserves discretion to extend the window by up to one week if response volume warrants.