Sensitive to non-professional installations that adversely impacted the submetering industry’s reputation early on, the UMCA is continuing to develop “Best Practices Guidelines" for recovering electric, gas, water and sewer cost.

For a number of years, the UMCA's Best Practices were used for multiple purposes, including suggested legislation and self-enforcement by -UMCA members. The Best Practices Guidelines has been broken into two documents, a summary document of minimum standards for proposed legislations and a detailed standards document for professional conduct to govern UMCA members.

The association encourages regulatory agencies to elect not to impose jurisdiction on members of our industry who have committed to comply with these guidelines. The voluntary compliance concepts are simple. If companies comply with the UMCA's Best Practices Guidelines then the regulatory agency will not step forward and seek to regulate. Conversely, if companies do not comply with these guidelines then the agency may seek to assert jurisdiction over them.