Innovation Winter 2024.25

Professional practice inquiries

How can I meet my obligations concerning field reviews? If requested, can I do field reviews remotely?

Engineers and geoscientists are indispensable for their technical knowledge and professional competence throughout project design, decision-making, and delivery stages. To maintain the quality of work and protect the public interest, periodic field reviews are required to be conducted by engineering and geoscience professionals at the site of construction or implementation of their work. While terminology related to field reviews varies across different areas of practice, the obligations of registrants to undertake field reviews remain the same when their work involves professional engineering and professional geoscience deliverables in any capacity. The requirement for field reviews is outlined in the Engineers and Geoscientists BC Bylaws. Field reviews are an important verification step to ascertain that the implementation or construction of work substantially complies in all material respects to the professional engineering or geoscience concepts or intent reflected in the documents prepared for such work. Through field reviews, registrants must identify nonconforming work, communicate the problem in writing to the party responsible for the implementation, request rectification, and confirm and record when the work is made to conform. The number and frequency of field reviews are at the discretion of the registrant responsible for the work and will vary based on considerations such as nature of work, risk, complexity, guidelines, the number of deficiencies found early in the work, and others. These considerations and more are found in the Guide to the Standard for

Documented Field Reviews During Implementation or Construction which provides additional guidance to help registrants meet their field review obligations. While remote technologies have advanced significantly, registrants must use their professional discretion to assess and determine the suitability of remote field reviews on a case-by-case basis, given the type of work and the project circumstances. If certain scopes of a field review are delegated, registrants are expected to follow the Guide to the Standard for Direct Supervision and demonstrate active involvement and continued interaction and input, and this must be documented. Registrants should consider the level of complexity, nature of the field review, and the ability of the delegate field reviewers to deliver the required level of quality and accuracy to appropriately complete the field review, or complete tasks related to the field review such as taking photos or videos. Registrants should also be mindful of potential conflicts of interest, whether real or perceived, with a contractor or client gathering data for a field review. Registrants have the obligation and responsibility to ascertain that field reviews are appropriately carried out for their work, regardless of whether in-person or remotely. Financial or scheduling constraints are not appropriate reasons to absolve this responsibility. For further inquiries and questions, please contact practiceadvisor@egbc.ca . Ryan Dai, EIT Junior Practice Advisor

at

Upcoming Webinars For a complete list of our upcoming technical webinars, please visit egbc.ca/Events

Mandatory Regulatory Learning Module for 2024-2025: Duty to Report Practising registrants must complete this mandatory one-hour Regulatory Learning Module in the current reporting year (July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025). The course is available on-demand through the Knowledge Centre at egbc.ca/Knowledge-Centre .

Innovation Winter 2024/25

21