Following four years of success in BC, Engineers Canada launched a pilot program in 2016 to expand the Organizational Quality Management (OQM) program to other provinces and territories. Seven companies, in five provinces outside of BC, now hold OQM certificates, with a number of other certifications pending.
Following four years of success in BC, Engineers Canada launched a pilot program in 2016 to expand the Organizational Quality Management (OQM) program to other provinces and territories. Seven companies, in five provinces outside of BC, now hold OQM certificates, with a number of other certifications pending.
APEGBC launched its voluntary OQM program in 2012 to improve the quality management practices of professional engineering at the organizational level. Professional engineers and geoscientists have a professional duty to be responsible and accountable for their engineering or geoscience work, and they remain the ones answerable for addressing quality management requirements of their work. Yet policies and procedures implemented by organizations have a direct impact on the practice of the professional engineers and geoscientists that they employ.
APEGBC established the OQM program to influence and guide these policies and procedures, and to promote the implementation and continual improvement of professional organizational quality management systems within organizations. To date, APEGBC has certified more than 200 organizations—with hundreds more pending—and over 1,000 individuals have been trained in OQM practices in more than 40 training sessions.
“What APEGBC has done in their province with the OQM program is of great benefit to organizations that employ engineers, to the individual engineers, and to the profession itself,” said Kim Allen, MBA, FCAE, FEC, P.Eng. “This is why Engineers Canada wants to build on the great work that they’ve done, and champion the OQM program at a national level, making it available to organizations from coast to coast to coast.”
In 2016, Engineers Canada launched a pilot program to expand OQM certification to organizations outside of B.C. Several organizations from multiple provinces signed up to demonstrate their commitment to quality management practices, and the first seven certifications outside of BC have now been presented.
“We are very pleased to have been the first organization in Ontario to receive OQM certification,” said Chris D. Roney, FEC, P.Eng., BDS, President and Senior Structural Engineer at Roney Engineering Ltd., a company based in Kingston, ON. “We found the process of applying for the OQM certification and ensuring that we met all the criteria to be extremely valuable for our firm.”
To successfully achieve OQM certification, organizations must demonstrate that they meet seven quality management requirements and obligations, as described in APEGBC’s OQM manual.
By completing the application process and becoming certified, organizations are directly supporting their engineers in meeting their professional obligations and gaining a competitive edge by responding to market demand for quality management systems.
As the program continues to expand nationally, Roney says, it will transform the standards of professional practice for individual engineers and organizations and thereby increase public trust.
“I feel strongly that this certification would provide a significant benefit to public welfare if engineering firms across Canada adopted this program,” Roney said. “It ensures that as employers, we’re helping our engineers and geoscientists meet their professional obligations to serve and protect public safety, the economy, and the natural environment.”
Engineers Canada has completed its pilot project and evaluated the opportunity to expand APEGBC's OQM Program into a national certification program available to any organization in the country employing professional engineers.
