President's Viewpoint

Serving the Public First and Foremost

APEGBC is constituted and governed by the Engineers and Geoscientists Act of the Province of British Columbia.  The Act stipulates that APEGBC’s number one duty is not to serve our members but rather to “uphold and protect the public interest respecting the practice of professional engineering and the practice of professional geosciences.”

To achieve our duty as a protector of the public interest, APEGBC’s role is that of a regulator.  It is my contention that APEGBC actually provides the best possible service to our members by being a good regulator.  It is through excellence of practice that the public—who pay us to do our work and also who we ultimately serve—will recognize the true value of professional engineering and professional geoscience as practiced by our members.

Regulation takes two forms: 

• Upholding the standards of practice  for professional engineering and professional geoscience, and;
• Proactively supporting the professional excellence of professional engineers and professional geoscientists.

The maintenance of practice standards is done through APEGBC’s well-established Practice Review, Investigation, Discipline and Enforcement processes, which will continue.  It is the hope of Council that these processes will be modernized with some Act changes that are under consideration. The proposed changes will be subject to member consultation in August.

Proactive support for professional excellence is currently provided by APEGBC through provision of practice guidelines and support for branch activities; however, APEGBC could do much more in this area.  To that end, Council is working on:

• An organizational quality management program to certify quality assurance at the organizational level.  Currently over 10 organizations are involved in the pilot program.
• A Professional Education, Enhancement and Renewal (PEER) program to address quality assurance issues through the preparation of practice related materials developed from key insights and data gathered from the investigation, discipline and the practice review process.
• A strategy to engage current and potential members practicing in areas other than the five core disciplines of civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical and structural so that the public interest is best served with respect to assuring public safety in the practice of engineering and geosciences.

None of the above will be implemented overnight but will use pilot programs to engage members and establish effectiveness first.  Council is very sensitive to the fact that its responsibility to set fees should not be taken as license to initiate new programs without due consideration to our mandate to protect the public interest.
To that end, this year’s budget process was by far the most rigorous that I have witnessed in my 6 years on Council.  With the responsibility to set member fees has come increased scrutiny of programs and an increased awareness of the financial impact of those programs.

Council has set the member fee so that it now covers just over 90% of the core regulatory programs, up from 77% last year.  We trust that this will protect the public interest, which will serve the members well, and yet do so in a more proactive way.