A Busy 2016
The year started with requests for seminars in the East and Central Canada.
DFS activities continued at a great pace in 2016. A request from Manitoba for a custom designed seminar on overall quality management allowed Ben Novak to introduce a “Quality Matrix” to the local association. The workshop/seminar was
prepared with the participation of the local training committee.
Workshops
Andy Steeves led workshops on “How Consulting Engineers Make Money” to YP groups in Ottawa in April and Kitchener-Waterloo in November. A full-day set of seminars for ACEC-NL is planned in St. John’s in April of 2017.
More recently John Boyd was invited to present a talk on “Sustainability” to senior
engineering students at the University of New Brunswick in
November. Andy introduced John to a crowd of approximately 120
students and faculty. His talk was well-received.
University Activity
Andy continued his involvement at UNB as Engineer-in-Residence where he mentored student groups on their senior design projects and provided lectures on engineering management and business practices.
Ben also recently gave a short pro bono seminar on career
planning, based partly in the DFS “career planning” module, to a
group of graduating engineering students at Carlton University in
Ottawa. More activity with graduates is expected.
The China Program
John Ritchie and former partner John Boyd were both busy with the FIDIC China
Project, which resulted in some 500 Chinese engineers being
awarded the title of “FIDIC Consulting Engineer” after completing
intensive seminars covering the ‘FIDIC Body of Knowledge’,
essentially the content of the FIDIC Guide to Practice and the
series of standard contracts offered by the international body.
You may recall that both Robin Crouch and Ben were involved in
the complete re-editing recently. FIDIC is the acronym for the International Federation of Consulting Engineers.
The YPMTP (FIDIC) Program
Robin and Andy continued their roles in the ‘Young Professionals
Management Training Program’ sponsored by FIDIC. This year the
program involved a series of webinars and online workshops as
well as an intensive face-to-face series of lectures and a major
project held in Marrakech, Morocco. Ben was involved in its
development and delivery for the nine previous years.
The ACEC White Paper
Following our presentation of the White Paper on Training to ACEC
(Canadian association of consulting engineering companies), we
also expect developments in the webinar field. The study, led by
Ben, identified cost of attendance for seminars, both on actual
fees and time involved in travel, is an issue. This favors on-
line delivery. An initial module may be based on our custom (for
Canadian firms) prepared Integrity Management module.
Plans
Plans call for Business Sessions to be proposed, for an
international audience of young professionals and others in the design industries. This has been in initiated by a preliminary proposal includung an overview of the FIDIC Guide to Practice. It is noted that there is significant interest in business principles among young professionals and professionals entering the consulting industry, to build a career. This interest extends to understanding the financial model of a consulting operation, including project control and management, as well as human resources practices and eventual ownership. Keep reading our blog for developments.
Design Firm Seminars 