we’ve agreed that we’re going to have a na-tional
designation; we’re hopeful to have a
national exam by the end of this year.”
Jackie Manuel is the chief executive of-ficer
for the Newfoundland and Labrador
Construction Safety Association. Having
worked in the construction sector for 12
years, she has seen the idea of a national
designation come up before, only to have it
fall by the wayside.
“Talk of standardizing has been happen-ing
for a long time,” Manuel says. “Each
provincial program became sort of stand-alone
over time, which wasn’t good. Over
the last couple of years, there’s been a re-surgence
in trying to create a high nation-al
standard for everyone. We need to all
be on the same page so that each province
and territory can serve and respond to the
needs of their members.”
Up until this point, there had been an
agreement between provinces that each
would recognize the safety designations
of the others. But recognition does not
FEATURE
necessarily mean equivalency in skills and
knowledge. So as companies and individual
workers moved from province to province
for work (as they often do in construc-tion),
there was found to be a discrepancy
between standards of certification. Some
provinces had a certification exam; some
didn’t. Some provinces would allow a per-son
with the designation to have it for life,
much like a university degree, whereas oth-ers
would require workers to participate
in continuing education to maintain their
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“We’ve agreed that we’re going to have a
national designation; we’re hopeful to have
a national exam by the end of this year.”
– Steve Wallace, Senior Program Consultant and Special Projects,
Heavy Construction Safety Association of Saskatchewan
saskheavy.ca | Quarter 2 2016 | Think BIG 35
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