In the News
New Professionals
by Stephanie Sparks
Everybody dreams of being their own boss, but to regulate your own profession? That’s the making of a dream career. It’s certainly a dream come true for the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET). In June, ASET announced that the Alberta government granted it the right to self-regulate, after 20 years of talking about it.
“It really came down to serious discussions four years ago,” says Barry Cavanaugh, ASET’s CEO. “It’s been serious a number of times, but we’ve never been able to make any progress.”
Now the association has the right to self-regulate and permit its members to practice without professional engineers’ supervision. ASET has more than 17,000 members.
“Legislation needed to recognize what was happening in the workplace. Albeit under supervision, senior engineering technologists were doing fairly serious engineering and would often have a P.Eng. to approve it. The truth was that they demonstrated that they didn’t need supervision.”
When the serious discussions began, both ASET and the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) recognized the need for more qualified professionals in the workforce.
Under its new designation, ASET will “operate like any other profession essentially,” explains Cavanaugh. Because the association is responsible for upholding its already very high ethical and practice standards, it will insist members continue with professional development and education. ASET also reserves the right to discipline delinquent members and decide whether or not to allow others the right to practice.
“With respect to the P.Tech. (Eng.), the new designation, that’ll be governed by a joint board with APEGGA and ASET,” he says. “We’ll be making certain that the people who are practising engineering independently are qualified to do that.”
With Alberta associations taking the first steps forward, other provinces are eager to do the same. Cavanaugh says that the Applied Science Technologists and Technicians of British Columbia are “aggressively” following Alberta’s example, “which makes a great deal of sense if you think about the mobility between the provinces…. What helped Alberta to go first was essentially the fact that the government here has always been open to innovation and to taking leadership when it comes to the professions.”
Follow Alberta Venture On: