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Continuing Professional Development

CPD for certification

When you hold a Geospatial Council Certification you are required to demonstrate your commitment to continuing professional development by accumulating at least 15 CPD points per financial year.

Points can be accrued from attendance at events like our conferences, seminars and webinars and at supporting partner events.  You may also be an active volunteer, or present at an event. Points may be gained from peer reviewing journal and conference papers or you may be part of the Geospatial Council mentoring program.

For full details, please see our CPD Policy.

Regulatory Boards

The Geospatial Council recognises the professional development requirements of jurisdictional registration/Licensing Boards. Where proof of Registration or License is supplied and the CPD requirements of that Regulator are at least equivalent to that of the Council Policy (i.e. minimum 15 points), no further proof of CPD compliance is required.

Such regulators include:
1. Board of Surveying & Spatial Information (NSW)
2. Surveyor-General ACT
3. Surveyors Registration Board of Victoria
4. Land Surveyors Licensing Board (WA)
5. New Zealand Cadastral Surveyors Licensing Board
6. South Australia Surveyors Board

For further detailed information on CPD please contact cpd@geospatialcouncil.org.au

External activities
If you are an external training organisation, seeking formal assessment of your learning activity to be eligible for GCA CPD points, don’t hesitate to email certification@geospatialcouncil.org.au

 

CPD for hydrography

The professional assessment and certification of hydrographic surveyors is conducted by the Australasian Hydrographic Surveyors Certification Panel (AHSCP). The CPD requirement for hydrographic surveyors certified by the AHSCP (whether they are Commission members or not) is 15 points annually, applicable from 01 July to 30 June each year.

While non-certified members have the ability to use the pro-rata rule as they are required to re-certify yearly, the applicant’s declaration, AHSCP Guidelines and certification certificate require that Certified Hydrographic Surveyors achieve the 15 CPD points by the end of each financial year (FY).

CPD Submission Requirements
Members of GCA: Provision of compliant CPD each financial year ending 30 June, will provide continued certification into the new financial year. For this reason, it is important that CPD records are updated before the submission deadline of 31 July.

Should a Certified Hydrographic Surveyor consider that they will not be able to obtain the required annual CPD points by 30 June, they should formally write to the Chair of the Hydrography Area of Practice requesting an extension in order to comply. The extension will not normally be greater than three (3) months from 30 June.

CPD returns are assessed at the end of July and non-compliant Certified Hydrographic Surveyors automatically lose certification in accordance with the rules and are removed from the list of Current Certified Hydrographic Surveyors.

Non-Members:
Non-members are required to re-certify each year through the AHSCP re-certification process.

Continuation of Certification
The Onus Lies with the Professional
As you would deal with a client’s contract with due diligence, so too you should deal with your own contract of certification.

There are three phases in the audit process for Members:

  1. 01 June (approx), initial notification – Call for CPD is distributed to all certified members
  2. 01 – 31 July – Opportunity for all members to update CPD records and capture activities conducted in June. Commence audit and if necessary, a warning notification is sent to those likely to be non-compliant. In this phase, you will be assisted in how to apply the CPD policy correctly and identifying appropriate CPD
  3. 01 August (approx) –The rules for certification are that Non-compliance is loss of certification, compliance is continuation. The list will be published to reflect current certifications.

While non-certified members have the ability to use the pro-rata rule as they are required to re-certify yearly, the applicant’s declaration, AHSCP Guidelines and certification certificate require that Certified Hydrographic Surveyors achieve the 15 CPD points by the end of each Financial Year (FY).

Method of CPD Submission
GCA members can submit their CPD points through the Member login to their dashboard.

Survey and Spatial New Zealand Members
S+SNZ will advise the Hydrography area of practice that the Certified Hydrographic Surveyor is still a Member and has achieved his/her CPD target in accordance with S+SNZ policy.

Hydrographic CPD Enquiries

If you have any queries on CPD for certified hydrographers, please contact hydro.cpd@geospatialcouncil.org.au.

BOSSI CPD

The Geospatial Council of Australia is one of five organisations ratified by the NSW Board of Surveying & Spatial Information (BOSSI) to undertake event assessments and issue CPD Point Summary Reports to Geospatial Council members and others. The other ratified organisations are the Institute of Surveyors NSW, Consulting Surveyors NSW, University of Newcastle and the Australian Institute of Mining Surveyors.

The BOSSI CPD Determination, which is the document outlining requirements for registered surveyors in NSW and ACT, changes slightly each year to incorporate required changes and updates. You need to stay up to date with the current version, available on the BOSSI website here.

If we have assessed one of our events to be eligible for BOSSI points, it will be listed in the event description (NOTE: not all Geospatial Council events are assessed). If you would like an event you are hosting or have attended to be assessed, please reach out to our Workforce Officer on cpd@geospatialcouncil.org.au.

For further information on how we handle assessment of events, or the requirements for requesting a CPD Summary Report and more, please review the Geospatial Council’s BOSSI CPD Policy.