Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a mandatory continuing program for

engineers that requires each association to have a voluntary continuing professional

development program, which advertises continuing professional development (CPD) activities to
help members acquire new knowledge, skills and experience. CPD activities include a wide
range of activities, including professional practise, formal courses and informal study. [1] With
new technologies emerging every day with new theories, software and hardware it is crucial for
professionals to stay up to date. For the sake of public safety and to keep professional engineers
competent in the job market I stand for Mandatory Continuing professional development (CPD)
programs for Engineers in Ontario.
PEO adopted a modified version of the program used by APEGA (Association of
professional engineers and geoscientists of Alberta) and formed a task force to ensure Continuing
professional development, competence and quality assurance to develop recommendations for a
PEO CPD program. [2] The task force is trying to come up with a system that would look at all
the license holder and how they practise their profession. They are recommending guidelines of
CPD program based on principles like: CPD program shall improve the regulation of
professional engineering for the public interest, A CPD program will be tied to the engineering
services provided by each practitioner and the necessary skills and knowledge to perform them;
A PEO CPD program must ensure only that practitioners maintain a level of knowledge and skill
that safeguards the public ; A PEO CPD program must recognize practitioners diverse needs and
resources. [2] The task force recommended three levels of requirements and they are: nonpractising that includes professional module and ethics, regulations and legal section of practise,
practising that includes professional module and self-directed technical study program based on
the practitioners field of practise or specialist that includes everything same for practising level
plus additional technical study program. [2]
In current time most of the licensed professions such as doctors, lawyers, accountants and
teachers are required to do continuing professional development including architects. [3]
Whereas Ontario and British Columbia two of Canadas largest provinces which together has
40% of the total engineers yet does not consider CPD as mandatory. For engineers in the Yukon
and Northwest Territories CPD program is also not compulsory.[3] When Justice Belanger
reported the inquiry into the collapse of the roof at the Algo mall in Elliot Lake, the
commissioner suggested that PEO should have an arrangement of obligatory continuing

education for its members in order to prevent this type of incident.[3] Alberta, Nova Scotia and
New Brunswick have Association of professional engineers and Geoscientists having 66000,
6000 and 5500 members respectively.[5] Engineers Canada provides guidance on CPD and the
associations set the CPD requirements such PDH with various type of weightings. Alberta is seen
as the exemplary and many associations got inspired by Alberta to start mandatory programs.[3]
The CPD model of Alberta allows members to get credit for hours in six categories, professional
practise, formal activities, informal activity, participation, presentations and contributions to
knowledge that will be discussed in detail below.[1] Alberta also has an option of self-declaring
or non-practising that means member can opt out of the program if they are not currently
practising engineering.[3] Michael Neth, director of registration at APEGA explains: If
someone isnt able to keep up with their CPD, then they can self-declare as non-practising. And
that takes away the obligation for them to keep up with their CPD. [3] Notably, he adds: It
allows them to continue to use the title Professional Engineer or Professional Geoscientist. They
remain bound by the Code of Ethics and all of the obligations of the profession in terms of
professional conduct. But they are indicating to the profession and to the public that they arent
practising. [3] Reports show about 4.5% of APEGA members are currently opting out of the
program mainly because many licensed engineers go to different work fields and are not
interested to participate in CPD programs. [3] Even The association of engineers and
geoscientists of British Columbia are making exemptions such as reducing CPD requirement in
the case of health issues, or disability or parental leave. [3]
CPD involves professional development activities to maintain competence. The six
classifications of professional development activities are professional practise, formal activity,
self-directed activity, participations, presentations, and contributions to knowledge. [1]
Professional practise involves getting PDH credit for hours of professional practise i.e. in Alberta
APEGGA allows one hour of PDH credit for 15 hours of professional practise allowing
maximum 50 PDH per year. [1] PDH is one contact hour of learning and CEU is 10 contact
hours of learning. [1] It can also be an option to automatically give credit for professional
practise and reduce other CPD requirements. [1] CPD should have formal activity such as formal
courses, workshops and in house instructions. CPD programs can be offered by universities,
colleges, technical societies or any educational program. [1] Self-directed activities involves
attending conferences, seminars, technical presentations which can also enhance a professionals

knowledge. Participation includes activities that discusses new ideas and technologies that are
beneficial to the practitioners career and public welfare. [1] Contributions to knowledge is what
the name suggests. It includes giving back to the society in the mean of writing journal papers,
patents, books, codes and so many other things that you have learned and can benefit the society
or professionals who are interested.[1] Overall CPDs professional development activities allows
all licensed engineers to participate in the society, getting involved with learning new techniques,
making new discoveries and always getting knowledge on a regular basis because there is no
limit to knowledge and one simply cannot finish learning everything and one simply are not
well-rounded in terms of knowledge, skills etc. Whenever we talk about CPD we often ignore the
fact that this is just not a regulatory program that costs money to be part of or to be practising as
professionals. We are talking about a profession that makes life and death decisions for public.
Hence as other professions such Law and medicine since we call engineering a profession we
need to make sure we keep our standards high and make dramatic impacts on peoples life. CPD
requires professionals to report their CPD activities annually and this is when their license is
renewed. [1] The practitioner submits a statement listing all the activities in the past year. Then
the CPD auditing committee audits the activities to decide whether a particular practitioners
license will be renewed or not. [1]
The idea of CPD is all Professional engineers should participate in various learning
activities and report these activities to their associations annually. [1] It is extremely important
all licensed and practising engineers makes themselves up to date and competent enough to be on
the market. A bachelors degree is often compared to a radioactive mineral that decays over time.
[1] Engineering is a high tech discipline where any kind of advance in technologies, theories or
knowledge related to the specific field of engineering results in whole different kind of solutions.
The knowledge earned from bachelor degree is just the beginning of finding solutions and
making peoples life better. Therefore, to keep our skills up to date and maintain our career
momentum it is needless to say professional engineers should continuously develop their skills
and knowledge. [1]
An additional reason of making CPD a mandatory program for Professional engineers in
Ontario is to bring every professional up to date with their skills to overcome problems that
arises as time changes. There was a survey that was conducted among engineers and scientists to
identify important skills that are necessary for a successful career. 30% said negotiation skills,

27% said business skills and 20% said personal management skills are the top skills that is
required to make anyone in a profession successful. [1] Undergraduate engineering and
geoscience curriculum dont teach us all the skills needed to in our professional field therefore
CPD programs can help graduates and professionals to get up to date with their skills and
knowledge to find solutions to both open and closed ended problems. Non-technical skills
include communication. Interpersonal skills, project management, problem solving, management
and business related skills. [1] Technical skills are hazardous materials management,
environmental regulations, codes and standards, and regulatory compliance etc. [1] In
engineering school students take few courses that help build their non-technical skills but many
courses to build a strong foundation on problem-solving and other codes and standards. The topic
of global warming for example is comparatively very new and with the raise in awareness of
global warming any professional engineers are now required to prepare environmental
assessment of any project, product or services that was not done 10 years ago. The key point here
is that with changing time many newer problems would come up that requires all professionals to
modernise themselves to be capable of approaching the problems with solid knowledge. When
professionals are not regulated by programs such as CPD it gives them an option not to do so.
But often if an engineering professional is in a work field he/she is most likely to be exposed to
these new and complex problems. Since the safety of public is a huge concern, professionals not
updating themselves would often cause them to make reasonable assumptions which would be a
major failure for the society if the assumptions come out as false.
Continuing development program has many advantages such as ensuring all the licensed
engineers sustain a high standard level of knowledge and skills that is required for the
safeguarding of public. [3] Continuing development program also helps practitioners to shape
their educational knowledge that would help them keep the momentum in their career by
reaching their goals and be successful. [1] Professional engineering services have a huge impact
on the public. But nowadays mostly engineering jobs are not about being concern for public
responsibility. All professional are given the title of professional so that they dedicate some of
their time in his/her career development annually and maintain their license therefore ensuring
the maximum safety precautions to do better for the public rather than harm.[1] Since
professionals giving service to the public therefore public should have the right to expect
engineers are up to date within their field and know that they will be enforced to make correct

decisions through the Professional Engineers act regulated by PEO. [3] In our rapidly changing
fields continuing education is necessary to keep professionals competent enough to stay on the
market and provide their services. [1] In the profession of medicine CPD helps doctors be
familiar with the latest developments in medicine and to be able to provide the [patients those
new services in the safest manner. [4] Doctors in the fields of anaesthesia, critical care, and pain
must be familiar with the latest discoveries in these rapidly changing topics.[4] With new
techniques and drugs that improve patients outcomes doctors community strive to keep
themselves up to date though CPD. As new innovations and practises are coming it is vital that
doctors are up to date. This will lead to improves outcomes for patients. [4] Likewise Engineers
should also be monitored by mandatory programs like CPD to ensure public safety, making more
professional engineers career successful and most importantly distributing knowledge to the
community.
One of the disadvantages of continuing professional development are expensive costs.
The cost of these programs does seem like a money making scheme for many professionals. It is
forcing all the licensed engineers to pay for these expensive courses to keep their license. [2]
Since PEO has its own set of code of ethics and regulations then why create an exact copy of it
but just naming it differently. [2] Another good question that arises is if all the licensed engineers
are enforced by PEO then arent they automatically considered to be up to date for the
requirement of their job? What are the needs of these programs then if a professional engineer
needs to invest their time and energy to perform their job better to be more specific updating
themselves? The large annual cost and time commitment that is mandatory for this CPD program
would cause many professionals to drop their registration. [2] Another reason why CPD might
not be useful is all professional engineers practise in different disciplines and technical
associations such as IEEE, ASME provide courses to the engineers in their area of practise. [2]
Therefore if professionals are required to acquire certain knowledge in certain areas demanded
for their job they can easily take it from these associations. Therefore, PEO should not make
CPD as a requirement for maintaining an engineers license. As far as the Elliot Lake inquiry
goes many didnt see how enforcing CPD onto professional engineers would have changed the
result of that event. PEO has its own to scrutinise candidates and discipline if needed. [2] So
CPD might not do anything to avoid the incompetent engineer who was to blame for the event.

Moreover, according to outliers CPD programs can be optional but not mandatory for
professional engineers. [2]
To conclude Mandatory professional development is what the public expects and
requires of our professional engineers, continued Dave Chalcroft, P. Eng. of Calgary. Dave
states: P. Eng.s must be current in practices that affect public safety; provincial legislation
requires our provincial professional associations to license only those individuals who are
competent to practise; and (last but not least) mandatory professional development is the way
to ensure every licence holder remains competent through his or her career. [3] Large number of
public thinks that it is mandatory for licensed engineers to demonstrate that they are competent
and educating themselves on regular basis but however when it is not what they assume it is
often very shocking to them. [3] Overall since engineers creates structure and systems that
people rely on we better make sure that they are safe. [3] We need to keep publics trust by
staying updated with our skills and by well informed about technologies and knowledge which
defines engineers as professionals at the first place. [3]

REFERENCES
1. G. Andrews, Canadian professional engineering and geoscience: practice and ethics,
4th ed. Toronto: Nelson Education, 2009, pp. 59-69.
2. "Mandatory continuing professional development - How will it impact you?", Society
Notes, 2015.
3. B. Parsons, "Keeping Up: Mandatory Continuing Professional Development
Programs - Canadian Consulting Engineer", Canadianconsultingengineer.com, 2015.
[Online]. Available: http://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/features/keepingup-mandatory-continuing-professional-development-programs/. [Accessed: 02- Feb2016].
4. J. Langton, "The importance of continuing professional development in medicine |
OUPblog", OUPblog, 2015. [Online]. Available:
http://blog.oup.com/2015/05/continuing-professional-development-medicine/.
[Accessed: 01- Feb- 2016].
5. C. Development, "CPD requirements for engineers in Canada", Continuing
Professional Development, 2012. [Online]. Available:
http://continuingprofessionaldevelopment.org/cpd-requirements-for-engineers-incanada/. [Accessed: 01- Feb- 2016].