Don Knutson, President — It has been a busy 5 months since we last met in North Battleford:
In December I attended a meeting of the Public Safety Review Committee. All of our concerns had been put forward and plans were set to go forward. The concerns we brought were basically the three resolutions that the membership voted on in Humboldt regarding training, mentorship and oversight of Building Officials. Addressing those concerns formed part of the outcome of the PSRC. The PSRC committee felt the next step would be to form sub-committees to look at the individual pieces of the public safety review. It was logical that the Building Standards arm of Corrections, Public Safety and Policing would take the lead on forming a committee to look at what could or should be done to meet the concerns of the PSRC report regarding building safety. Bill Hawkins has sent out an invitation to the SBOA to provide three members to sit on an adhoc committee to look at Amendments to the Uniform Building and Accessibility Regulations specifically the area of training and licensing. With support from the executive I asked: Norm Kindred, Doug Mulhall and Chad Freeland if they could sit on the committee. Norm was one of the leading voices bringing the resolutions forward, Doug Mulhall is a former president and education chair of the association and Chad Freeland is of course the current education chair of the association. I am confi dent that these three men will provide excellent representation for our association at this table.
In January the association put on another one week training session which was supported by our members. Unfortunately we messed up a little on getting out the registration forms. We will get those forms out earlier next time. We put the training on in January because we assume it is the slowest time of the year for most of us, but some may we run into municipal budget issues. In my case the human resources department pays for the training with previous year’s training budget provided I get the registration in before New Years.
We held an executive meeting in Saskatoon; while most of it was routine one thing that did spill out at that meeting was a report on an initiative by Chad Freeland and his education committee who are working very diligently on pursuing improved training programs. I am encouraged to see that we are moving forward with an improved relationship with South East Regional College and developing training programs that can be recognized for licensing of Building Officials.
As part of our initiative to raise our profile with the public, Dale Wagner and I attended the SUMA conference in Regina. CPS&P were good enough to provide space for us at their booth so that we could meet municipal leaders and show them who we are and what we do. While I was not able to go to the SARM conference we were represented there as well by Bill Hawkins and Paul Cook who were good enough to set up our display system.
Just two weeks ago I attended ACBOA meetings in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The ACBOA group continues to work at a national and international level to promote our profession. The National Certification program is an extension of that promotion initiative. National certification raises the certified Building Official to a nationally recognized status; it gives the Building Official a universally accepted profile. Currently in Canada we have 875 persons certified and of those 489 have achieved CRBO status. While the 875 is estimated to only represent about 10 percent of the total number of building officials in Canada it was nice to see that in Saskatchewan 25% of our members have applied for and received some level of certification. It is my hope that someday certification will become an accepted credential by all provinces.
Next fall we are going to Kindersley, as far as I know this will be the first time the SBOA gets to visit that part of the province, you may have to bring your shotguns to take in some goose hunting. It will be election time again next fall, if any of you are interested in running for any position on the executive; I encourage you to put your name forward to Lloyd Weyland in Humboldt who has again accepted the role of nomination chair.
Finally I am glad to see so many members here in my home town. I hope you enjoy the few days you have here and I know you will find lots of reasons to come back and visit us again.
Please remember this is your SBOA if you have any concerns please bring them to myself or any of the executive.