September 25, 2006

Associations

APEGBC is looking to the future

Safety standards a main priority of the association

Warren Frey

Staff Writer

For the APEGBC’s new chairman, public safety and professional standards go hand in hand, whether he’s reflecting on the associations past successes or looking forward to his upcoming term.

Tim Smith, the chairman by acclamation of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC, stressed the importance of APEGBC’s role in keeping high professional standards in engineering.

“Our main priority is ensuring the safety of the public. We want to make sure members are always improving their standards of practice,” Smith said.

Increasing professional mobility is another area that Smith wishes to address.

A recent agreement between B.C. and Alberta increases labour mobility between the two provinces, but Smith said his organization intends to press for national professional mobility in the long term.

“It’s a joint venture between the federal government and the engineering associations across the country, but we’re doing it in B.C. first,” he said.

Some nations have a national approval process, but in Canada labour standards are enforced at a provincial level. “Most provinces have very similar standards, but there are little idiosyncrasies that pop up between the provinces that can slow the process. In B.C., where there’s a huge demand for engineers and geoscientists, we’re taking big steps to improve that,” Smith said.

And the APEGBC is also trying to make it easier for qualified foreign professionals to become engineers in Canada, he said.

The huge boom in construction, as well as an upswing in the mining sector, has meant projects need to look beyond traditional sources for both labour and technical skills such as engineers and geoscientists.

“Everyone’s heard the story of the taxi driver who used to be an engineer back home. We’re being proactive on this issue, and compiling a global database of qualified schools with comparable degrees to our own,” he said.

Smith stressed that bringing in foreign engineers would not mean any relaxation in current standards. “We already have a set of standards. We’re just trying to pre-qualify as many schools as we can that are up to those standards, in order to lower waiting times and make the process less arduous,” he said.

Looking back at APEGBC’s accomplishments over the past year, Smith said he was most proud of the extensive seismic retrofitting work done across B.C. on school buildings.

“Many of our members are seismic engineers, and we looked at over 700 schools. The seismic upgrading fits in very well with our mandate of public safety,” he said.

Smith also pointed to a newly published set of guidelines for legislated landslide assessments in residences as another success story from the previous year.

“That initiative came out of the North Vancouver landslide in 2005. These new guidelines let professionals know what needs to be done when building on a slope,” he said.

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