Summer 2019 PEG

APEGA

Let’s continue talking about APEGA Centennial 2020. What has Council instructed staff to do? GE The centennial is so important that Council has made public awareness APEGA’s number one centennial mandate. APEGA, under the direction of the Registrar & CEO, is going to be giving the public a much better understanding of who we are and how we go about protecting public safety and welfare. That’s a central piece of the centennial celebrations—and it has already begun. The tagline for the centennial is A Century Well Built. How have APEGA and the professions built Alberta? GE Starting from April 10, 1920, when the first provincial act enabling us to self-regulate became law, you can match much of the province’s timeline to ours and see how we’re connected. For a year up to that date, our founders worked with the provincial government to build a self-regulatory model. That’s why I’m the 100th President and not the 99th. Frederick H. Peters, P.Eng., was President number one, although the association didn’t technically exist for his term. Those first 40 or 50 years, we were really building the province’s infrastructure. We were building a safe and successful Alberta, which is a major theme for the centennial.

practices for the public’s welfare, and ERCB/AER serves the public interest by making sure the public’s resources development is conducted appropriately. So, there’s great similarity but also some differences, and philosophically the two bodies do overlap. What’s the major issue facing the professions today? GE Maintaining the public trust in us to do our job. Although I say maintaining the public trust, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think the public knows who APEGA is, what we do, or why we do it. We’re really going to have to let the public know more about us, so we can earn that trust. You’ve been clear that 2020, APEGA’s centennial year, represents an opportunity for the association to be more visible than ever before. Could you expand on that? GE I think our centennial is really about making sure the APEGA brand is known and understood. Our self-regulating organization makes Alberta strong, safe, and secure, and that’s something that we have been doing for 100 years. We need to put that APEGA brand out there so the public knows who we are, what we do, and why we do it. We want people to know just how much professional engineers and geoscientists have been building that Alberta. That’s our brand.

12 | PEG SUMMER 2019

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