It has once again been an extremely busy past six months on the SBOA front. Your Association continues to work towards many goals and new initiatives.
Keeping in mind all our objectives, it is important for this Association to continue to seek out new roles to support our industry and strive for consistent code application in the Province. And that we continue to play a leading role in the advancement of skills and education for our members.
In the spirit of our objectives, the board of Directors has endeavored to take on an ambitious new initiative.
Through partnership with a Saskatchewan educational institute, we will begin development of a new voluntary Saskatchewan Certification Program for Building Officials. It is in the very early stages, but I can tell you that the structure of what that program will look like is already complete.
What’s important about this initiative is what it will mean for you.
The main goal of pursuing this is so that Building Officials have an alternative route to achieve a Building Officials license. The three pillars of competence are education, experience, and examination. The SBOA Certification Program will envelop these three pillars. We will create a credible, rigorous, relevant, well-maintained program and demonstrate that it delivers more qualified Building Officials, and Building Officials with a higher level of competence.
Through relationships with key partners, and demonstrating the program’s ability to deliver, we will do what it takes to get Building Officials recognized through this program.
This is a huge undertaking, but we are committed to it. We can no longer wait for changes to what we have. Training and certifying of Building Officials cannot lie with Government. We must lead the way.
In addition to this exciting new initiative, we continued to deliver education and professional development opportunities for our members. We once again delivered our winter training program in Regina. Our new executive secretary has been busy helping us get our record keeping centralized to help ensure continuity of SBOA business. Our policy consultant has been very busy writing and overhauling SBOA policies which is an extremely important project for us.
And last, but not least, the Conference team put together yet another great, informative conference for all of us in Humboldt.
We have some work ahead, but I promise you that the SBOA will continue to be the industry leader in Saskatchewan for providing training, skill development, and professional development opportunities for Building Officials, and many other stakeholders.
We will continue to work towards our Association’s objectives, and to help our members be better Building Officials!
Sincerely,
Chris Gates, LBO3, A.Sc.T., CRBO
President SBOA
