• APEGBC Professional Practice Guidelines
• APEGBC Practice Related Documents
• Guidelines from Other Associations
• Request for Consideration of Other Guidelines

APEGBC Professional Practice Guidelines

The Following Guidelines are in Adobe PDF format.
A printable List of APEGBC Guidelines is available for download.

APEGBC Practice Related Documents

• Bulletin: H - Professional Liability Insurance
• Bulletin: H-1 - General Outline of a Typical Professional Liability Insurance Program
• Bulletin: H-2 - Choosing a Professional Liability Insurer
• *AIBC/APEGBC Practice Note 16:  Professional Design and Field Review by Supporting Registered Professionals (including Model Schedules S-B and S-C)
• Bulletin: K: BCBC - Letters of Assurance in the BC Building Code and Due Diligence*
  *Note: For projects requiring the submission of LOAs under the VBB please refer to the LOA in the VBB.
• Bulletin: I - Use of Seal
• Professional Renewal Task Force Report
• Shop Drawings
• Guidelines on Intellectual Property

Guidelines from Other Associations

• Listing of Guidelines from Other Jurisdictions
• Infraguide Best Practice Report - Decision Making and Investment Planning: Selecting a Professional Consultant
• Engineers Canada National Guidelines on Environment and Sustainability

Request for Consideration of Other Guidelines

As part of its mandate to consider issues of relevance to members who provide consulting engineering and geoscience services to the public, APEGBC's Consulting Practice Committee (CPC) reviews engineering or geoscience guidelines for consistency with Association Bylaws and issues that affect the practices of consulting engineers and geoscientists in BC. Such guidelines establish, among other things, the minimum scope of services on a project, and define the roles and responsibilities of involved stakeholders.

The CPC occasionally receives requests to develop additional guidelines for specialized engineering or geoscience projects. While the need to establish benchmarks for professional engineering/geoscience excellence is recognized, the development of highly specialized guidelines requires significant resources (including professional expertise, time and administrative support), and may not be justified because of their applicability to only a small subset of APEGBC members.

As an alternative, the CPC has conducted a search of guidelines currently available through APEGBC, other provincial and territorial engineering/geoscience associations, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) and the Canadian Council of Professional Geosicentists (CCPG). It must be noted that those guidelines issued by a particular engineering or geoscience jurisdiction are only approved for use in the province or territory in which they are published. Such guidelines however, may be of specific interest to members who are registered to practice in other jurisdictions in Canada.

Documents identified as being issued by the CCPE are published so as to achieve coordination among its constituent member associations. Such documents are an expression of general guiding principles which have a broad basis of consensus, while recognizing and supporting the autonomy of each constituent association to administer its engineering act. CCPE's documents enunciate the principles of an issue but leave the detailed applications, policies, practices and exceptions to the judgment of the constituent associations. Except for National Instrument 43-101 and 51-101 those documents referenced as being available through CCPG are advisory only and are provided for information and guidance only. The legislated mandate to regulate the profession of geoscience in Canada is only provided to the provincial or territorial professional association having the relevant authority. National Instruments 43-101 and 651-101 are applicable for use by registered engineering and geoscience practitioners in all Canadian provinces and territories.

APEGBC recognizes that at times members may wish to recommend the suitability of a particular guideline for use by APEGBC members. Rather than creating new APEGBC guidelines, it may be possible to adopt or modify specialty guidelines developed by engineering and geoscience associations in other jurisdictions. Should there be a reasonable demand for a guideline currently not in place in BC but in use in another engineering or geoscience jurisdiction in Canada, the CPC will review the guideline to determine its potential suitability for use by BC members.

The following procedure is to be followed for sourcing specialized engineering or geoscience guidelines:

1. Review the list of guidelines available through the web link.

2. If a guideline from outside BC is available, contact APEGBC to request a review of the document. Please include the following information in your request:

• Your name and company
• Your phone and email contact information
• Relevant affiliations with other professional organizations (as it pertains to the guideline)
• Title and description of the guideline
• The reason(s) for your request

3. If a reasonable demand for a guideline is requested from various members, the CPC will investigate and review the guideline to determine it's suitability for use by members of APEGBC. If appropriate, CPC will then make a recommendation for APEGBC to adopt the guideline for use by our members.

4. If a guideline is required but does not exist on the list, contact APEGBC, describing the need for the guideline, including:

• Information requested in item 2 above plus
• Any previous research/development of the guideline, if you have already undertaken preliminary investigations
• Any proposed contributions of time, resources or funding which you have available to assist APEGBC.

5. The CPC will evaluate the request. Depending on the results of a needs assessment and the resources required to develop a new guideline, the CPC will consider whether or not to initiate the development of the guideline, using existing guidelines produced by APEGBC as a model.

Further information regarding sourcing specialized engineering or geoscience guidelines can be obtained by contacting Peter Mitchell, P.Eng., Associate Director, Professional Practice, at 604-412-4853 (toll free at 1-888-430-8035 ext 228) or by email at pmitchell@apeg.bc.ca .

September 2005