At the annual meeting of the International Engineering Alliance from June 18 to 23, 2017, in Anchorage, Alaska, delegates unanimously approved Pakistan’s—as represented by the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC)—application for signatory status in the Washington Accord, effective this year.
At the annual meeting of the International Engineering Alliance from June 18 to 23, 2017, in Anchorage, Alaska, delegates unanimously approved Pakistan’s—as represented by the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC)—application for signatory status in the Washington Accord, effective this year.
The Washington Accord is an international agreement between bodies responsible for accrediting engineering degree programs. The Accord outlines the mutual recognition, between the signatories, of accredited engineering degree programs, and it establishes and benchmarks the standard for professional engineering education across those bodies. As a full signatory, engineering programs accredited by the PEC will now be recognized by the other signatories as being substantially equivalent.
In addition to reviewing Pakistan’s application for signatory status, the IEA meeting served to launch IEA’s Global Reach Initiative, which aims to share information about the IEA and to interact with organizations interested in joining the IEA.
Meeting delegates also discussed governance issues, reviewed reports, and received presentations on possible future improvements to the IEA. An application from Chile for provisional membership was also reviewed but was not approved, though it may be resubmitted next year.
Engineers Canada was represented at the meeting by President Russ Kinghorn, MBA, FEC, P.Eng., Chair of the Accreditation Board, Wayne MacQuarrie, FEC, P.Eng., Executive Director of Engineers PEI, Jim Landrigan, P.Eng., Engineers Canada Vice-President, Governance and International Affairs, Kathryn Sutherland, LL.B., FEC, P.Eng., and Practice Lead, Accreditation Lynn Villeneuve, LL.B. Sutherland was elected Deputy Chair of the IPEA Agreement and is a new member of the IEA Governing Group.
The IEA includes seven international agreements governing mutual recognition of engineering qualifications and professional competence. The other four agreements cover recognition of equivalence at the practice level. Engineers Canada is a signatory of the Washington Accord (1989), the International Professional Engineering Agreement (IPEA) (1997) and the APEC Engineer agreement (2000).
The next meeting of the IEA will be in London, England on June 25-29, 2018, to coincide with Britain’s ‘Year of the Engineer.’
