june 2009 issue
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President's Notebook
A Whirlwind of Activity
BY JIM BECKETT, P.ENG.
APEGGA President
Since assuming my role as your President at the APEGGA Annual General Meeting in April, so many activities have taken place that my head is still spinning. Interestingly enough, a common thread through all of these events has been the issue of mobility — and mobile is definitely what I have been.
My first official duty as President was leading the APEGGA Council Strategic Retreat at the end of April. You will see the results of the retreat when our 2009-2018 Strategic Plan is approved by Council and published.
The plan is worth checking out. Over the last five years or so, APEGGA staff and Council have refined the strategic planning process so that it has real meaning and impact, stemming from the high-level governance of your Council and its policies, through our budget and business plan, straight along to the day-to-day operations conducted by staff.
In other words, strategizing is not some arcane exercise to generate documents for an idle life on the shelf. We have a solid, well-thought-out plan, it influences APEGGA’s actions and decisions, and it’s reviewed and updated annually. You’d be hard pressed to find a better system for turning ideas into actions.
The strategic plan’s annual refinements flow out of the strategic retreat, which kicks off the term of a new President and Council. A key aspect of the deliberations at the 2009 retreat
was the impact that two new trade agreements will have on our approach to registering applicants who transfer to APEGGA from another provincial or territorial association.
One is the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between B.C. and Alberta. The other is the Agreement on Internal Trade. Known as TILMA and AIT, both agreements say largely the same thing, when it comes to the role of self-regulating organizations such as APEGGA. That is that we must accept the judgment of our sister associations and allow transfers within Canada without doing our own screening.
This, of course, has implications. Each self-regulating organization operates a little differently than the others do. We need to decide which differences are significant and harmonize them.
The New Engineer
From the retreat, I was off to the National Engineering Summit 2009 in Montreal, followed immediately by the Engineers Canada Annual General Meeting. The summit was subtitled Leading a Canadian Future: The New Engineer in Society.
A strong representation from the engineering community took in the summit. The host organizations were
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Engineers Canada
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the Association of Canadian Engineering Companies
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the Engineering Institute of Canada
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the Canadian Academy of Engineering
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the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students
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the National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Science.
Our great country’s first National Engineering Summit ran May 19 to 21, with participants from the health, environment, infrastructure and industrial sectors, as well as academia. These groups had the opportunity to identify, with the engineering profession, steps to affect positive change for a healthier, cleaner, safer, more competitive and sustainable Canada in a global society.
The summit raised many questions concerning the education of future engineers. Any educational changes, of course, would have an impact on the policies and practices we use when we license engineers, particularly those who are internationally educated.
The summit arrived at a declaration, called Leading a Canadian Future: The New Engineer in Society, and you can read the full document on page 26 of this month’s PEGG.
At the Engineers Canada AGM, the most interesting issue was a proposal to continue working on a national framework for licensure. It was fortunate that APEGGA spent so much time discussing this at our annual retreat, leaving me in a great position to participate in this discussion.
In the end, we approved a motion calling upon the Staff Liaison Group (made up of executive directors of all provincial/territorial engineering associations, including our own Neil Windsor, P.Eng.) to make recommendations for a guideline for licensure which could be adopted by all associations, and to bring it forward within a year.
Such a guideline would ensure that all associations continue to meet the high standards of licensure necessary to protect the public interest, so that each or our associations can be assured when accepting a transfer application that the original licensure met the national standards. I really look forward to seeing the results of this work.
Our American Cousins
With hardly any time to unpack and repack, we were off to a meeting of the 2009 Western Zone Interim Meeting of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying in Banff.
NCEES is an American non-profit organization made up of the licensing boards from the states and territories in the U.S. And yes, you read that correctly: the NCEES Western Zone met in Banff.
NCEES develops, scores and administers the examinations used for engineering and surveying licensure throughout the U.S. It also provides other services that facilitate mobility for licensed engineers and surveyors.
What, you may be wondering, was the Western Zone meeting of a U.S. national organization doing in Canada? For one, it was making history. No zones of the NCEES have met on Canadian soil before.
And for another, it was reflecting the excellent level of trust that’s been built between Canadian associations and the state boards that do the regulating in the U.S. For the last decade, your Association has been spearheading an effort to forge relationships with U.S. regulators and improve mobility with the U.S.
This initiative continues to pay dividends, in the form of improved recognition of Canadian credentials in many U.S. states. It was our pleasure and honour to host this event jointly with the Idaho Board of Professional Engineers and Professional Land Surveyors, and show off one of our great mountain parks.
We did hold an international mobility forum during the meeting, but of course most of the agenda had to do with NCEES business. The biggest issue of discussion focused on educational requirements for future engineers (sound familiar?).
NCEES has determined that in the future, it will set as a model law for licensure in the states of bachelor’s degree plus 30 credits. This could be a bachelor’s degree with another year of undergraduate study tacked on, or a master’s degree program (probably without a thesis).
It was clear from the discussions that most state licensing boards doubt that they will be able to get their legislation amended to accommodate this recommendation, and there is quite a bit of interest in reopening this question at the annual meeting in August.
When I asked the various delegates why this recommendation had been accepted in the first place, it appears that it was a result of feedback from employers and learned societies. These groups are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the education that current engineering graduates are receiving.
Since many of our members are interested in licensure in the U.S., this is an issue we will have to watch very closely for the next several years.
The Road Beckons
As of writing this column, I’m getting ready to head off to the annual general meeting of the Canadian Council of Professional Geoscientists in early June. I wonder what the topic of interest will be (hint: mobility and low rates of licensure).
Please contact me with your questions and concerns at president@apegga.org.
I look forward to hearing from you soon — regardless of where I am in this whirlwind!
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