APEGA
WE ARE A 21ST-CENTURY VERSION OF WHAT THE ENGINEERS WHO PROPOSED APEGA IN THE FIRST PLACE ENVISIONED. THEY WOULD BE PROUD OF WHAT WE HAVE BECOME — AND WHAT WE ARE BECOMING.
includes it in its resource guide Reaching 30 by 30: Promising Practices for Increasing Diversity & Inclusion in Engineering. One of the anchors of that guide also has APEGA roots. Our Women in APEGA group created a document called Managing Transitions: Before, During and After Leave. This key tool in helping ensure that women retain their positions in the profession has become the national guideline on the subject. Many Permit Holders helped Women in APEGA in this project, sharing their best practices for the good of our professions and the workplace. I am proud to say that gender equality is well established in the staffing and governance of APEGA. In fact, 60 per cent of the leaders on our Executive Team are women. Furthermore, to your credit, our professionals have elected a gender-balanced Council. IMPROVING REGISTRATION With diversity come challenges. APEGA must, for example, maintain high standards of licensure while accepting applications from potential Members from around the world. Registration is particularly complicated for applicants from abroad. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been improving a range of processes in a multi-year renewal project. We are reducing input errors and other impediments to timely licensure, and at the same time making assessment and examination procedures more consistent. Soon, we will launch the most recent success in this project. Competency-based assessment (CBA) is an improved system of reporting and examining experience. For engineering applicants for Professional Engineer and Licensee, CBA will be the future of
self-regulatory organizations in Canada, that’s done by writing the National Professional Practice Exam (NPPE). With the participation of other engineering and geoscience self-regulating organizations over almost two decades, APEGA continues to develop, maintain, administer, and manage the NPPE. Since October 2015, the NPPE has been a computer-based exam, improving its security and efficiency, while adding the convenience of more writing dates and venues. CREATING A CULTURE OF DIVERSITY Why should diversity matter to APEGA? One reason is practicality: diversity is inevitable. We are already a diverse organization, particularly when you consider the many countries of origin of our Members. One of those Members from elsewhere is me. Although I’ve been in Alberta for most of my adult life, I was born in Sri Lanka. Diversity also matters because it leads to better decisions by broadening the perspectives of teams and boardrooms. On principle, that is something we must embrace. Diversity relates to the professional development sessions and the mentoring program we’ve offered for years. We’ve strived to make them relevant for those from different cultures. We also help build science literacy in young people. We develop initiatives to support diversity in the professions and workplace. In fact, it was APEGA that instigated a diversity initiative that’s now supported by engineering self- regulating organizations across Canada. The slogan 30-by-30 — which we coined — refers, in its national iteration, to the proportion of newly licensed women in the engineering profession reaching 30 per cent by 2030. Engineers Canada has taken on the initiative and
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