Practice Guidelines Being Developed in Response to Mount Polley Recommendations

APEGBC is moving ahead on work to help improve dam safety in BC. Following the release of the Report on Mount Polley Tailings Storage Facility Breach on January 30, APEGBC initiated work on a key recommendation in the report to develop professional practice guidelines for dam site characterization assessments. The guidelines will outline the standard of care and professional obligations professional engineers and geoscientists must uphold when conducting these assessments, and will define the roles and responsibilities of the various participants and stakeholders involved in this process.

Four senior technical experts are leading this work, including Dirk van Zyl, P.Eng., who participated on the independent expert engineering investigation and review panel that authored the Mount Polley report. His co-authors will be Dr. Brent Ward, P.Geo.; Harvey McLeod, P.Eng./P.Geo.;  and Andy Small, P.Eng.

The guidelines will undergo review by a task force comprising expert engineers and geoscientists; staff from the Ministries of Energy and Mines and Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations; and representatives from the Canadian Dam Association.

“Our government is committed to ensuring that all of the independent panel’s recommendations are implemented and we support the action that APEGBC is taking,” said Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett. “Developing new guidelines for professional engineers and geoscientists to follow when conducting dam site characterizations is an important part of learning from this serious incident and making sure it never happens again.”

The guidelines will complement existing practice standards APEGBC has defined for professional engineers and geoscientists involved in dam-related work, including APEGBC’s Guidelines for Legislated Dam Safety Reviews in BC.

The guidelines are scheduled to be released in March 2016, and APEGBC will be conducting training sessions later that spring.
 
APEGBC professional practice guidelines can be found online at apeg.bc.ca/guidelines.