Future Enhancements to the Qualification Program for Ontario’s Building Practitioners

This discussion paper outlines opportunities for change and includes questions to obtain your input on potential new approaches to enhance the ministry’s Qualification Program for building practitioners.

The Building Code, 2012 is a regulation under the Building Code Act, 1992, that is implemented and enforced by Ontario’s municipalities and a variety of building industry stakeholders. Over the years, Ontario’s Building Code has become an increasingly complex and sophisticated regulation. It is imperative that Building Code knowledge and how it is assessed keeps pace with these changes, to ensure that public safety in the design and construction of buildings is upheld.

Ontario’s building officials and other stakeholders in the sector have raised the need for more support from the ministry to improve its ability to understand, implement, and enforce the Building Code. Understanding this and acknowledging the low exam pass rates experienced by candidates, the ministry recently retained a consultant to help examine the Qualification Program for building practitioners (which includes building officials, designers, septic installers and Registered Code Agencies). A broad spectrum of building industry stakeholders engaged in this review process and programs in other jurisdictions were assessed to identify potential changes for Ontario’s current program model. The findings from this review suggest that changes to the program would support a fairer assessment a candidates’ knowledge, improve examination success, help maintain practitioners maintain knowledge of the Building Code, and build long-term capacity within the industry to further improve public safety.

Building on this review, we are interested in your thoughts on actions we can take on the following: operational changes within the current program framework; and design changes that could create a new framework for the Qualification Program.

Public consultation is an important part of developing legislation, regulations and policy in Ontario. By providing your feedback on this consultation paper, you can help the ministry with its next steps to enhance its Qualification Program; a program that currently includes over 7,000 building practitioners across the province.

Please refer to the attached Discussion Paper to review questions related to the six operational and design changes being proposed.

Your input will help inform future enhancements to the program that could be implemented both in the short- and longer-term.