Continuing Professional Development is an uninterrupted education process for professionals and technicians to adapt their career to the new requirements of the market, technology and career . The CPD applies for different traditional professional and technicians. The most important examples of professional careers are engineers, medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, administrators, and professors. In the case of skilled technicians, the most important examples are refrigeration technicians, drivers, and bricklayers.
The CPD has its origins in the interest of both the employers and employees. In the side of employers, they have the interest to improve the organization's processes, increase the revenues and adapt their processes to new technology and rules advances. In the side of employees to improve their salary benefits and adapt to new employments in the market. In the middle of employers and employees are the independent workers, which do not have an employer neither employee under his watch, but requiring new skills to his career or the economic sector where they work.
The CDP starts from the moment the professional or skilled worker decides to improve the conditions of his career by capacitation, coach support, and online support in all the development of his career. The CDP may apply for specialization in any area of the core career or two study complementary careers. An engineer may have a CDP with new skills in engineering as automated design, project management or robotics. A lawyer may develop a CDP with new skills in law as American Law Studies, International Law or Taxes. A medical doctor with a surgery major may develop a CDP with new skills in nanotechnology, biotechnology or Chinese Traditional Medicine.
How does it work?
The CDP requires a minimum quantity of hours a year or a three-year period where the professional will improve their knowledge and skills. The recommended strategies for the CPD are:
Professional Practice: The engineer acquires new knowledge and skills in a work environment, inside or outside the current job of the engineer. The professional practice guarantees a faster advance than other strategies. The professional practice may include a payment or economic benefit for the engineer .
Informal education: There is no formal institution that provides knowledge and experience to the engineer. The informal education includes self-directed study, conferences, industry trade shows, and workshops. This strategy is more difficult to track; the certificates, proof and attendance and other documents helps to measure the advance with this strategy.
Public, community and professional service: The participation of the engineer in the different organizations referred to his career.
Contributions to knowledge: The authoring and co-authoring in papers, journals, investigation documents, standards, codes, patents or another document.
Other Canadians professions in the CPD:
The medicine and law are two careers where the CPD has an important, even higher than the Engineering career, due to the high density of independent professionals and freelancers in the medicine and law.
In the case of medicine, the institution that promotes and support the CPD for all the medicine professionals is the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. They complement the CPD concept with the sentence "lifelong learning" telling to the members that the CPD is a process that never ends. The continuous learning is a process to be a medical doctor, a surgeon or a physician. The medicine professional must achieve a specific quantity of hours per year in CPD in a selected group of activities that the Royal Colleges selects every year. It is necessary that the Royal College give credit to a learning activity. The medicine, similar to Engineering uses different strategies for the CPD as professional practice, formal education, informal education, public service and investigation .
In the case of law, the institution that promotes and support the CPD for all the medicine professionals is the Law Society of Upper Canada (English Canada). The Canadian lawyers must achieve a minimum of twelve hours a year in a selection of activities credited by the Law Society. Three of the twelve hours must be on topics related to ethics, management and professional responsibility. The rest of the time could be used in other activities related to the career. According to the Law Society, it considers the CPD to enhance and maintain the skills and attitudes of its members in the practice of law and the provision of legal and paralegal services to the public .
Practice of CPD for engineers in other Canadian provinces
There are other engineer's organization in the other provinces of Canada but with fewer members and available activities. The mandatory or voluntary condition of the CPD is a condition that differentiates from one province to another.
The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientist of Alberta, Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia and the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientist of New Brunswick have a mandatory policy of CPD instead of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientist of British Columbia that has a voluntary policy of CPD. All of them require 240 hours of CPD over a three-year period .
Current practice of Professional Engineers Ontario
The CDP for the case of engineers in Ontario, Canada is supported by the Engineers Canada Organization and the Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO). The PEO has currently more than 73 thousand members from different universities in the province, Canada, and the world that is in different productive areas as oil, gas, manufacturing and technology information . The PEO has a voluntary program of CDP using as reference the Competency Based Assessment Program of Engineers Canada with the goal to improve the technical skills of its members adapting them to the new requirements of the industry. The Competency Based Assessment Program includes the core engineering competencies, guidelines and training materials. The basic requirement for a three year period is a CPD of minimum 240 hours.
Advantages of the CDP:
■ The CDP increase the commitment of the professional with its career improving knowledge and skills.
■ the employer get benefits in the medium and long term with their employees improving processes and increasing revenues.
Disadvantages of the CPD:
■ when the strategy of CPD is outside the organization like a university or institution, the company process may be affected by the return of the employee to work.
■ There are costs in the short term that the employer or employee must pay.
Reference List
Continuing Professional Development. (2014). CPD Requirements for Engineers in Canada. Obtenido de Continuing Professional Development: http://continuingprofessionaldevelopment.org/cpd-requirements-for-engineers-in-canada/
Engineers Canada. (2015). Competency-Based Assessment. Obtenido de Engineers Canada: http://www.engineerscanada.ca/competency-based-assessment
Professional Engineers Ontario. (2015). About PEO. Obtenido de Professional Engineers Ontario: http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php?ci_id=1792&la_id=1
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of . (2014). Continuing Professional Development and Lifelong Learning. Obtenido de Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of : http://www.royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/members/cpd
The Law Society of Upper Canada. (2014). Continuing Professional Development Requirement. Obtenido de The Law Society of Upper Canada: https://www.lsuc.on.ca/CPD-Requirement/
