Enhancing professional competence of geodetic surveyors in Europe

Citation

Plimmer, F. (2001), "Enhancing professional competence of geodetic surveyors in Europe", Property Management, Vol. 19 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2001.11319aaa.001

Enhancing professional competence of geodetic surveyors in Europe

Enhancing professional competence of geodetic surveyors in Europe

On 3 November 2000, a joint seminar was held by the Comité de Liaison des Géomètres Européens (CLGE) and the Fédération International des Géomètres (FIG) in association with the Department of Geodesy at the University of Technology at Delft in The Netherlands. The aim of the seminar was to develop a suitable framework for the surveying profession in Europe as a basis for enhancing professional competence and in the light of the principle of mutual recognition of professional qualifications which has been established in law at a European level.

The general EU Directive on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications established the concept of a bac + 3 (BSc) level of higher education as a basic criteria for the exchange of professionals between EU member states. This concept of mutual recognition and the legal framework imposed by the EU's Directive has resulted in some difficulties at national level. The EU Directive is currently under review but the host organisations recognise that the broad principles on which mutual recognition should be based are:

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  transparency (specifically of the procedures within the process of mutual recognition);

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  justification (in terms of the need for any national restrictions imposed); and

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  proportionality (to ensure equivalent standards).

The aim of the seminar was to develop an understanding of professional education between the delegates and their national surveying organisations based on these principles and to discuss relevant issues for surveying education for the profession in Europe. The presentations and the debate focused on:

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  threshold standards for professional competence (how to compare and assess professional competence in different areas of surveying);

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  the issue of a core syllabus (the "input" versus the "output" approach); and

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  models for curricula content (considering the various structures of curricula content between different countries).

The seminar is part of an ongoing process of investigation and debate within both the CLGE and FIG. In 1998, FIG established a task force on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications and the CLGE established a working party on a core syllabus for geodetic surveyors. FIG and CLGE decided to collaborate on the project early in 2000, and CLGE awarded two research grants to provide:

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  the evidence and arguments to stimulate improvement of curricula, in order to assist the convergence of standards across Europe; and

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  information to assist the determination of equivalence of qualifications to facilitate the mobility of surveying professionals between European countries.

Specifically, the intention of this seminar was to widen the debate among the academic surveying community in Europe and to elicit their opinions and ideas.

Jointly chaired by the CLGE President, Paddy Prendergast and the Chair of the FIG Task Force on Mutual Recognition, Professor Stig Enemark, 45 delegates from 20 European countries heard the presentations and contributed to the subsequent debate.

Paddy Prendergast discussed some of the main influences on surveying education, which include the changing commercial environment and the intensive application of technology in surveying. He stated that surveying education in Europe is still focused on national markets, and that changes are needed to prepare for new international markets at regional and global levels. CLGE has been involved in research into the varied nature of surveying within Europe, as demonstrated by the Allan Report (http://www.ge.ucl.ac.uk/clge/allan_report/). The aim of this CLGE initiative was to enhance educational standards in Europe by providing assistance to countries with less well-developed curricula.

Stig Enemark described the seminar as paving the way for professional competence in Europe, which is a goal shared by both the CLGE and FIG. He discussed the changes in the profession within Europe and in employment patterns, and the recent shifts in the emphasis within curricula on different aspects of the syllabus, with the increasing importance in Denmark of planning and land management as compared to cadastral work. In such a dynamic professional environment, the educational base must be flexible to reflect with this and future changes and we should therefore be educating our graduates to deal with change through a process of life-long learning.

Dr Frances Plimmer from the University of Glamorgan gave a presentation which outlined the methodology which is applied by the EU Directive to the process of achieving the mutual recognition of professional qualifications. She explained that the Directive does not directly affect employment or the process of licensing surveyors; it only gives surveyors from another EU country the right to have their professional qualifications treated as equivalent to those acquired by the nationals from any other EU country. There is a process by which the designated organisations in each EU country are required to identify each profession in terms of professional activities and, if applicants can match those professional activities, either in terms of academic qualification or professional experience, then they cannot be discriminated against joining the organisation or being recognised as a professional surveyor by that organisation on the grounds of inadequate qualifications. The process of becoming "qualified" varies throughout Europe. In some countries, it is merely by holding an academic qualification that a surveyor is "qualified", although to undertake certain surveying tasks, it is also necessary to become licensed, a process often controlled by the state. In other countries, there are sub-state private organisations which regulate both education and professional qualifications. Delegates agreed to contribute further detailed information, so that one of the outcomes of the research will be to identify and publicise the different national models for becoming a "qualified" surveyor in Europe in order to improve the understanding of the processes and therefore enable appropriate organisations to administer the terms of the mutual recognition directive effectively.

Rob Ledger from The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors described the project to identify to a core syllabus for geodetic surveyors which has as its aim to raise the baseline quality of surveying education; and to improve the mobility of surveyors in practice. He outlined the problems of listing common subjects in all EU universities to create a core syllabus, as follows:

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  there are problems to do with market diversity and cultures. Course content is based on market requirements and academic institutions are concerned to equip students to meet market needs;

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  the definition of a "geodetic surveyor" does not always reflect the nature and activities of "surveying" in a given market;

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  professional work varies in different countries and the inter-professional boundaries are also different and this reflects the way professions have developed over time in different European countries, for historical reasons.

For all of these reasons, course content is different, but areas of commonality of issues are also evident. There is an input/output debate, with the "input" basis concentrating on topics and hours studied; whereas the "output" focused on the competencies of the graduates who leave universities. Professional course assessment models ranged from self-assessment to accreditation. However, regardless of academic and professional concerns, it is the market which will decide if a particular university’s graduates have the necessary competencies to do surveying, and therefore, ultimately, the market demands dictate content and standards.

The inter-relationship between education, industry, profession and government is very different throughout Europe and all this diversity has an implication for a core syllabus. Can core subjects be defined? Could a core syllabus be defined? The working group which considered these issues identified the areas in common for traditional Land Surveying as well as some similarities between groupings of some EU countries. The importance of an evolving curricula which reflects the evolving professional marketplace and professional practice was recognised and the group accepted that curricula should be dynamic rather than static to reflect market evolution.

He concluded that commonality does not exist across Europe, that the profession needs to understand competency models. To improve the overall standard of education and for this to continue to evolve, we need to understand and provide information on different models, which have been successful in meeting evolving market needs.

Professor Hans Mattsson from the Stockholm Technical University began by describing the evolution of the Swedish land surveyor. He posed the question: should universities be behind the market, parallel to the market or ahead of the market? He concluded that universities should be ahead of the market and that courses should therefore reflect on past trends and attempt to predict the skills required for the future. His research has compared the university course structures in Sweden, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Ireland on the basis of subject content and hours studied. He identified some European countries, which have a "broad" surveying profession )e.g. Germany, France and the Nordic countries), while others have a more "narrow" profession. He identified the dichotomy of a narrow education and a broad profession and discussed how professional education could be changed and who should guide such changes. He also discussed the consequences if universities are too slow to react to changes in the profession.

Professor Mattsson considered that the differences in university curricula provide a valuable source of information for universities to learn from each other and to expand and develop the professional education they offer. He concluded that with communication within Europe being so readily accessible to all, it ought to be relatively simple, but nonetheless challenging to develop academic teaching networks for surveying schools in parallel with professional networks.

It seems evident from the debate at the seminar that "the only constant is change" and that, as surveyors involved in professional education, we must continue to ensure that our graduates are educated for a changing profession in a changing market. It is important to provide future surveyors with the necessary professional education and training and the administrative procedures to work anywhere in Europe. However, we have enormous diversity which can be a great strength to our profession and, while we need to communicate and understand this diversity and perhaps learn from each other's experiences, we still need to recognise that, at present, we educate our graduates for a range of professional activities which are evolving to meet the challenges of the marketplace. While our marketplace is, currently, Europe, there is a clear indication from the World Trade Organisation, that the marketplace will soon be global. The importance of diversity in the nature of the professional skills offered by surveyors in solving property-related issues is crucial, as is the importance of high standards in the services they provide.

Frances Plimmer