PRESIDENT'S NOTEBOOK

Council, Staff Refine
APEGGA’s Strategies



BY LINDA VAN GASTEL, P.ENG

APEGGA President

Close on the heels of the Annual General Meeting, APEGGA Council and senior staff traditionally hold a weekend strategy session. The session provides an opportunity for new Council members to meet and build relationships with the people they will be working with for the next several years.

More importantly, it provides an opportunity for focused discussion of issues and helps set the agenda for Council for the coming year.

This year we focused on APEGGA’s long range plan – a plan that provides strategic direction for APEGGA over the next five to 10 years. We began by reviewing the existing plan, and moved from there to identifying issues facing APEGGA in both the short- and long-term.

Council, staff and members had been asked for input to the identification of issues prior to the session, so we already had a good starting point. Most of the issues raised naturally fell into one of four major theme areas: regulation, reputation, connection and governance.

The regulation theme area includes many immediate issues – inclusivity, ASET and the technologists, enforcement effectiveness, offshore sourcing of professional services, and others. APEGGA’s primary responsibility is protection of the public through regulation of the practice of the professions, and our continued ability to fulfill our mandate depends in part on our handling of these issues.

It has become clear over the past few months, however, that many of our members do not necessarily share a common understanding of APEGGA’s regulatory role – our mandate.

Council believes that we must first understand and clearly articulate our regulatory role – in a way that clarifies for everyone the basic expectations of APEGGA, and provides a foundation for building consensus on long-range strategic direction. We have formed a task force to deal with this initiative.

The reputation theme area deals with recent challenges to the reputation of our professions such as the charges of bad engineering associated with mega-project cost overruns, and with the perceived value – or relevance – of the professions to members and other stakeholders. Our primary tool in dealing with issues in this area is advocacy on behalf of the professions. APEGGA is increasingly active in this area.

Communication Improvement Needed
The major issue in the connection theme area is connection with members. We are very much aware that APEGGA needs to improve communication and consultation with members of the Association – not just when significant issues such as inclusivity are being considered, but on an ongoing basis.

We have had a lot of feedback from some members regarding how to improve, and we spent a good portion of our strategy session dealing with this issue. Many good suggestions were made, and you can be assured that Council and staff view this area as a top priority for the coming year.

We’ll start with engaging our members and stakeholders in dialogue on inclusivity, but we won’t stop there. You can expect several opportunities to become engaged on issues of importance to our professions and our Association over the coming year.

The final theme area is governance of the Association. This is Council’s job – Council acts as the board of directors of APEGGA – and several opportunities for improvement were suggested. Council, staff and the governance committee work together to tune up Council processes and improve performance measurement, stewardship and effectiveness.

We have formed a Strategic Planning Task Force, led by President-Elect Larry Staples, P.Eng., with a mandate to document the current state of our strategic plan, incorporate input from Council and then engage the membership in dialogue on the content of the plan. The intent is to affirm well-understood and broadly endorsed strategic directions for the organization. Look for more information on this as the year progresses.

APEGGA has an ambitious agenda for the year ahead. We want to see improvements in a variety of areas – in our regulatory practices, our advocacy activities on behalf of our professions, our member consultation and communication practices, and the internal functioning of our organization.

APEGGA’s Evolution
Some of this work is in response to near term challenges resulting in part from our increasingly diverse professions and changing work environments. Some of the work capitalizes on continuous improvement opportunities. Some of the work is more proactive in nature and recognizes that, just as our professions are evolving, APEGGA must evolve to maintain relevance to members, the government, the public and other stakeholders.

Some of you have already taken the time to contact me with your perspectives and concerns regarding APEGGA initiatives. I’d like to hear from more of you. The website has an e-mail contact area that makes that easy, and I encourage you to use it.

An organization like ours thrives on member involvement – and I look forward to hearing from you.


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