I am pissed off. I also think I am perfectly justified in being pissed off because I just got bum rushed. I'm considerably unhappy. However, rather than sit here and fume about it, which is what I would normally do. That or smash something into a million pieces. Rather than do that I'm going to use this forum for what I originally intended it for. I'm going to rant. Someone is gonna get a chunk tore off of them.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan, or APEGS for short, is a pathetic, hollow, insignificant organization that needs to be tossed ass over tea kettle and have its collective house put into a new order. I just got the shaft. I have been employed in various jobs for a total of 52 months since I graduated. The legal stipulation is that you are supposed to have 48 months of work experience before you can apply for Professional Engineer status in Saskatchewan. I had that 48 months, plus another four months to boot. I should have been golden to apply for my P. Eng status. So I did.

A very nice girl phoned me this afternoon. She wanted to know if I was resubmitting the reports for the months that I had not been given credit for. Excuse me? Not given credit for? What the hell is that all about? Well, the last 16 months I'd submitted for, when I worked at Suncorp, had not been accepted by the APEGS committee that reviews engineer in training reports. Well, I kind of knew that, since I'd gotten a letter saying that my reports were deficient and a member of the review committee would like to meet to discuss them with me. I was NOT aware that they'd been rejected out of hand and I currently was getting NO credit for them. I expressed my flabbergasted condition, and that I'd met with a member of the committee, Ray Gerbrandt to be precise, and after that meeting he said I would get credit for some of it. But now my submission is in, and I currently have none.

Well this nice girl said she'd check into it, and after a few minutes called me back and said I got half, or 8.5 months worth of experience. I was prepared for that because I'd called Ray once to ask about the progress that was being made on my situation, and he'd said I could expect about half credit. I was supposed to get a letter and I never did so I wanted to force the issue. So I forced it and ended up getting royally screwed.

Turns out I only got about 75% credit for the 14 months I spent at Wheatheart. All I can say to that is WTF!?!?!?!?!?! The way this system is supposed to work, as I read it in the literature was, if you got no correspondence from APEGS then you were to assume that your experience had been approved. I got no correspondence regarding my Wheatheart experience. In fact, the only correspondence I've ever gotten from them was notices of my dues, literature on the annual general meeting and this one letter about Suncorp. Nothing about Wheatheart. So they screwed me out of 5 or 6 months, a full reporting period, and never said boo to me.

The nice girl at APEGS said I can contest the decision and I fully intend to. This is an outright crock because the work I did at Wheatheart was at least as valid as any other that I've done, and maybe more. I was designing, drawing, and aiding in manufacturing. What the hell could be more engineering experience related than that!?! I'm severely pissed about this. And the main target of my ire is this crap policy of sending no documentation. I'm getting seriously shafted in this situation because of the policy of sending no reply to an EIT about their experience. First of all, if they send me something saying, this or that is the reason we are rejecting part of your experience at Wheatheart, I could write a refutation then and there, when the experience is still fresh in my mind, and I'm still in contact with the people I knew there. Now its almost three years later. I've long since lost the report I wrote, and the notes I wrote it from. The engineer I was affliated with, in Swift Current, is no longer there and I don't know how to contact him. I'm sure I could get him to write me a letter backing me up fully on my experience. No, they send me nothing and I gotta scramble around years later to try and make a case.

I'm screwed from two angles on this. First of all, they rejected part of my experience at Wheatheart, and didn't tell me anything, so now I'm in a terrible situation to make a case saying that all the experience was worthwhile. I don't have my notes, I don't have my contacts, nothing is fresh. They've stacked the deck against me. And in the second case, they didn't tell me until now, so I've been making decisions, and planning my career on the assumption that I did have those 5 months. Which is an honest assumption to make because according to what they say, no news is good news. I got no news, there is no correspondence in my file with APEGS so apparently my experience was not good enough, but I was not important enough to be contacted about this deficiency. Ho hum, we'll just stick it to this guy, and when he gets to what he thinks is 48 months, we'lll laugh in his face and say, try again in 6 months.

The more I think about this, the more pissed off I'm getting. They really did stick it to me, and it seems like spite. Why the hell would you reject part of someone's report, and not tell them? If your policy is to not contact a member unless there is a problem, then don't contact them when there is a problem, what does that seem to say? Oh sorry, you're not important enough to talk to about the serious details of your career. We're just going to shaft you and not say anything.

Right now I am beginning a quest. My quest is to have this policy changed. They can't keep doing this. The cloak and dagger secrecy that permeates much of the APEGS heirachy has to disappear. And it has to go away now. I just got screwed big time. This is a momumental setback for my career because I essentially pitched myself in April as being on the cusp of being a P. Eng. Now they tell me I'm miles away. Something like this can not be allowed to continue. What the hell is the reason for not sending an engineer notice about their experience report? I think they reason that is given is, to keep adminitration costs down. Administration costs of $1.00 a year for stamps? Okay, $2.00 a year if you count the envelope, the paper the letter is written on and the ink necessary to print the letter and envelope. For $2.00 an engineer, a year, we can't send a letter? Add it to my god damn exorbitant fees and let's do this right! I'm tired of this! I think the real reason is, the people doing the reviewing don't want to get called on the carpet for their decisions regarding people's experience. They'd rather the situation exist where no one is in a position to complain until they've forgotten the job that is in question. That can't happen. I won't let this happen to another person. I will see this changed, if its not already in the works. I won't rest until they have to send out a letter stipulating whether your experience is approved, rejected, or for what reason its rejected.

I got screwed again by these sons of bitches in that they didn't bother to call into question my time at Suncorp until I'd submitted 16 months worth of reports. That's 2 full ones and 2/3 of a third one. 16 months was sitting on the committee table, undecided. That's almost a year and a half of my career that they hadn't deemed important enough to review, and get back to me on. For Christ sake, if this experience wasn't acceptable after 6 months, they had an obligation, as dutiful engineers, to tell me this! Then I can re-evaluate my career and either accept my situation, or move on to a new position. I lose 8 months of experience at Suncorp, because they weren't duly dilligent in informing me about the state of my career. I wonder if I can sue them for negligence?

I lose over a year worth of experience, as it sits now because of the APEGS review committee. 5 months from Wheatheart because they rejected experience and didn't tell me. 8 months from Suncorp because they waited a year before contacting me about the applicability of the experience. In either situation, had they informed me about what they were doing, I might have done something different. I might have wrote a new, better report, got a corroborating report from a fellow engineer, or changed jobs to something that was more applicable. Now I sit here at this point, with nearly all of my options gone. I can't even direct my irritation at anyone, because they sit behind their veil of secrecy, and never send you anything that would identify them.

I'm going to change this. I swear I am going to change this. First I'm going to get back at least the experience from Wheatheart. That was perfectly valid experience and they're not cheating me out of it. I will try to track down Bret Watson, the engineer in Swift Current that I worked with during that time. He wasn't a mentor, as I wasn't in APEGS yet, but had I continued in that job he would have been one. If I can find him, I'm sure he'll back me up on the experience. He told me once of his own battles with APEGS so I'm sure he'll be on my side. I may even take a run at getting another 4 months out of them for my Suncorp experience. I never recieved any documentation from them about the applicability of my experience. I submitted two full reports and was told nothing. Surely they can't be allowed to sit on a person's reports that long, and not do anything? There needs to be some accountability on their part. I'll give up the last four months, and write those off. But considering they accepted two reports and never contacted me, maybe I can squeeze them.

Second, I'm going to change the process. As soon as I can figure how how, I'm going to petition for changes to the EIT program inside APEGS. EIT's have to be given progress reports. A new engineer has to know how he is doing, from the standpoint of the association. They need to be kept aware of their progress, and be told if their experience is being rejected. They deserve the right to dispute the committee's findings. This would also serve the important purpose of keeping the committee focused and dedicated. A situation would not be allowed to develop where reports went unreviewed for a year or more. It would also make the committee accountable. If they were forced to make their decisions in the open, and not behind a veil of secrecy, maybe they wouldn't be so prone to sluggishness. I vow to make sure these things are changed.

I am now exhausted. Thanks for listening.