Report on “Distinguished Service Award” to Dato’ Ahmad Fuad Embi (Vice President of MSO) & ECI International Committee Meeting: San Diego, California.

• By Administrator
• March 05, 2018

Present:

1.      Robert Anderson                                                      Chairman (ECI Executive Director)

2.      Francisco Urueta                                                       Co-chair International Comm.  (Mexico)

3.      John Black                                                                    ECI Finance

4.      Andrew Macleod                                                        IECA (Australasia) President

5.      Michael Frankcombe                                                 IECA (Australasia) Director

6.      Mathew Graham                                                        ECI Canada Affiliate

7.      Melissa McKinney                                                      ECI Asst. Exec Director

8.      Lori Moore                                                                        ECI Secretariat

9.      Jaime Ambriz                                                                   ECI Marketing

10.  Marvin Greer                                                                  ECI Reviews and Exams

11.  John Petersen                                                                  ECI past President

12.  Ahmad Fuad Embi                                                         MSO (ECI Malaysia Affiliate)

13.   Shelly Enders                                                                  ECI Canada Affiliate - Executive

 

 

1.0  Introductions

ECI executive Director, Rob Anderson (RA) chaired the meeting. Everyone introduced themselves and RA proceeded to give the latest developments in ECI. Many of the old committee members in ECI have left due to “mismanagement problems” at ECI which apparently are still being corrected. There is now a completely new team at ECI headed by RA.  (See Appendix 1.)

Although there are some 16,000 professionals registered with ECI, about 5,000 are considered to have “left” ECI mainly due to PDH problems. This is considered an “erosion rate” of about 20%, and addressing this is an ongoing problem.

ECI has spent about US$300,000 developing a new system to enable them to provide on-line applications for internationals. But affiliates including Malaysia can continue to vet through their applicants manually, as normal.

Michael Frankcombe from IECA Australia is helping out with the metrication of ECI exams for International registrants.

 

2.0 International Affiliate Reports

Australia reports that it has developed 6 comprehensive manuals on Erosion and Sediment control some time ago and is willing to share them. In Australia, the ECI affiliate is through their IECA (Australasia) body which has an established organization based in Melbourne since 1994. This organization covers New Zealand as well.

Canada has about 300 registrants to date. It is still having problems reaching out to provincial governments to build into their legislation a provision for ESCP as what the Americans have. They also have an on-going tussle with CISEC in Canada, which is being promoted by the Toronto Regional Control Authority (TRCA), which disparages ECI for some reason. Shelly Enders is the paid executive managing their organization and she uses a software called “Growthzone” to manage everything about their members, from updating subscriptions to PDUs to news infos.

The Malaysian report is in Appendix 2.

 

2.0  ECI Awards

After 3 years of it being mooted, ECI finally agreed on a list of recipients for “Lifetime Achievement Award” and “Distinguished Service Award”. The awardees are shown in Appendix 3.  Lifetime Achievement Awards were given to pioneers and founders of CPESC who have contributed a great deal over their lifetime. Distinguished Service Awards were given to those who have contributed substantially to ECI and the profession over the years.

Dato’ Ahmad Fuad Embi (Vice President of MSO) is one of the recipients of the “Distinguished Service Award” for his years of dedication in promoting and championing ESCP in Malaysia.

The Awards were given out at a dinner function at the Kimpton Palomar Hotel, San Diego Saturday 21 Oct 2017. About 50 guests attended the function, comprising of award winners, their families and ECI staff.

Australia and Malaysia were the only internationals in the list, with the rest being Americans. This is an honour as even Canada, which were affiliates much earlier than Malaysia, were not represented.    

 

 

APPENDIX 1

Latest developments in ECI

“ECI is the largest professional certification organization in the environmental field of stormwater with over 16,000 professionals certified over the past 40 years. It is also the only international certification body which provides an accreditation compliant program administering five certification programs that have been vetted through by hundreds of people (including practitioners, regulators, academic personnel, engineers and attorneys) to ensure the certifications represent national and international standards. ECI certifications are not intended to represent state and regional issues. Rather they are intended to certify individuals possess the knowledge and skills, as well as the ethical obligation, to work at a local or regional level to solve complex water quality issues. ECI professional certifications require extensive knowledge and experience, as well as continuing education to ensure that certified individuals stay current with changing industry technology. ECI Certifications should not be confused with certificates of training programs.” (Text from ECI website).

At the Board of Directors meeting Aug 29, 2017 in Washington, Robert Anderson was retained as the Executive Director. Francisco Urueta from Mexico was appointed as the Co-Chairman of the International Committee. The Board noted that ECI has completed a three year transition period and has grown considerably over the last 2 years especially. It now has 5 certification programs administered over the whole United States and 20 other countries in the world. The latest program announced is the CPISM certification (Certified Professional in Industrial Stormwater Management) which should be useful to professional engineers dealing with wastewater in Malaysia. It is also noteworthy that the Program chairman for CPSWQ is a Malaysian: Ngiam Kee-Hwee who is a senior manager at Walmart.

The Assistant Executive Director is Ms Melissa McKinney who will manage the day-to-day affairs of ECI. She was previously the Operations Manager, and usually is the one who communicates with me on any issues with our MSO, although Rob Anderson also emails on what are considered policy matters (e.g. the 2016 suspension of MSO certification programs).

The Program Manager is Marvin Greer who is in charge of Reviews and Exams, and is the person who is changing the present US version of CPESC to the Malaysian version, as well as the Metric version which will be offered to international candidates soon.

The marketing Coordinator is Jaime Ambriz, who is in charge of marketing strategies and approach as well as the outreach program. He will be the relevant person when we start our awareness program to other South-east Asian countries next year.

 

APPENDIX 2

 

Status of International Organizations: Malaysia (MSO).

1. Registrants

MSO presently has 362 registrants: 190 CPESC, 164 CESSWI and 8 CPSWQ out of a total of 537 members.

2. Agreement with ECI

The first agreement between MSO and ECI was signed July 21, 2013 due to be renewed in 2016. The second agreement has been drafted and is being finalized by both parties.

3. ECI Certification Exams

ECI has appointed a Malaysian Proctor (Azman Abu Bakar) for the first time, in 2017. MSO is continuing with a schedule of 2 exams for CPESC, 2 for CESSWI, a year, as was done for previous years. This year an exam for CPSWQ has also been slotted for the year end.

Latest developments:

i)                    It is anticipated that the next exams for CPESC and CESSWI slotted for Dec 2017 will be held in electronic version i.e. online, without the need for exam question papers and answers.

ii)                  It is also anticipated that there will be questions on “Malaysian Rules and Regulations” for the first time, as compared to all previous exams where the “Rules and Regulations” part only covered US Rules and Regs. This is because the Malaysian R&R written chapter and exam questions have been finalized and agreed upon by both parties a few months ago.

iii)                MSO is scheduled to host a workshop to introduce the ECI certification system to other countries in the region (South East Asia), subject to approval of the funding. This is expected to kick-start a more systematic approach to Erosion and Sediment control in the region.

    APPENDIX 3.

     – ECI Award Recipients 2017.