INNOVATION November-December 2014

regu la tor y note s

Members Asked to Ratify Bylaw for Mandatory Continuing Professional Development In the fall of 2015, members will be asked to ratify a bylaw to establish a mandatory continuing professional development program. This will commit all practicing members and licensees to undertake a minimum amount of professional development each year and report annually that this requirement has been met. The Evolution of Continuing Professional Development in BC

For the last 20 years, the issue of mandatory professional development has been widely debated by members, and discussed at great length by APEGBC Councils, task forces, committees, and working groups. But despite a vast amount of research and deliberation, BC remains the only province in the country where neither engineers nor geoscientists are required to partici- pate in a mandatory professional development program. 1 In the case of engineering, the only other province with a voluntary system is Ontario; however, a recent recommendation from the Elliot Lake Inquiry stated that Professional Engineers Ontario should implement a mandatory professional development program within the next 18 months. APEGBC’s first guideline for continuing professional development was introduced to members in 2006, along with a voluntary program to compliance, a comprehensive information and marketing campaign was undertaken to increase voluntary compliance. Despite this, compliance reporting showed very minimal increases, and remains below 50% of practicing members. One of the groups who considered the need for a mandatory professional development program was the Professional Renewal Task Force. Comprising a diverse group of members and led by a government appointee to Council, this task force was charged with determining whether APEGBC’s programs were contributing to the end goal of effective and responsible self‐regulation that protects the public. The task force acknowledged that it is APEGBC’s respon- sibility to have “ mechanisms in place that ensure members remain competent, current and safe practitioners, and through which mem- bers and the association can demonstrate to the public, members and other professions members’ commitment to professional development .” With this in mind, the group recommended to Council that a bylaw for mandatory CPD be put before the membership for ratification. The bylaw proceeded to voting in the fall of 2009 and received 57.7% support, falling short of the two-thirds majority required to pass. Following this, APEGBC’s CPD Committee conducted signifi- cant research to determine what specific aspects of the proposed program were of most concern to members. Based on the results of their survey, in which more than 3,000 APEGBC members participated, the committee revised the existing CPD guideline to align its requirements with those of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta. This new guideline took effect in 2012 and remains in effect today. 1 CPD is mandatory for professional engineers in all provinces but BC and Ontario, and in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. CPD is mandatory for professional geoscientists in all provinces but BC, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and PEI, and in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

Mandatory CPD Basics Who: All members and licensees with practice rights. What : 240 hours on a three-year rolling total (average of 80 hours per year). Where : Activity can be in person or online, accrued in six different categories. When : Bylaw vote in fall of 2015. If ratified, bylaw takes effect in January 2017.

declare compliance with the guideline on an annual basis. In the first reporting year (2007), 41.4% of members reported their CPD compliance to APEGBC. In 2010, APEGBC began recognizing members who voluntarily report compliance by adding a “Declared CPD Compliant” note to the member’s record in the online member directory. Seeing no significant increase in those reporting

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