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this page | Your APGO office setup and team Oliver Bonham, P.Geo. - Executive Director/Registrar 
With change the order of the day everywhere, things have been no different
at APGO and this past summer saw further, much needed, rationalization.
But now that the association has started to settle into a steady state
as a fully operational regulator, I thought it would be of interest
to the membership to learn something about our administrative structure
and to be introduced to the members of the APGO team. The APGO rents a 1900 sq ft office space at 67 Yonge, one of Toronto's older and still affordable office buildings in the downtown core. Our rent is partially offset by a sublet of a portion of the space to Gold Quest Mining Corp, a small Central America focused gold exploration company administered by Jim Stephenson, P.Eng., Q.C. Jim is one of the four public members who sit on APGO council and is also a member on several of APGO's committees. The sublet arrangement allows for much better use of the ample space we have; together with GoldQuest, we share the use of a small meeting room. The APGO team now comprises 3 staff (including myself) and a volunteer in Toronto, and a FedNor funded youth intern in Timmins, working out of a small satellite office provided by the City of Timmins. We outsource IT support, bookkeeping, and website and graphics services. Melinda Semkiw, as Director of Registration, handles all elements of Member and Certificate of Authorization applications, maintains the register and attends to all member services, including certificates, the PPE exam and membership renewals. Despite the fact that the throughput of new applications is now nothing like what it was a year ago, there continues to be much to be done in assisting applicants whose files remain incomplete or have been deferred, and in managing the process of ensuring that all practitioners complete the PPE exam. Melinda is also our in-house database expert and does a mammoth job of maintaining the electronic records and in making sure that we all know how to make the most of the database and its many capabilities. More recently her duties have shifted to enforcement and compliance - an important public duty that the Association must fulfill, over and above registration and the maintenance of the register. Under the Act, the APGO must ensure that the public are adequately protected by verifying that all who are practising professional geoscience in Ontario are appropriately licensed. Anne Charanduk, APGO's Office Assistant, handles all in-coming and out-going correspondence, all general inquiries, and ensures that all changes in members contact details are captured and kept up-to-date. Anne also looks after all our files, including the hard copy member files. This is quite a task when you consider that all application material and correspondence to and from all registrants must be retained in an orderly fashion. She also provides many valuable services as an administrative assistance and is our tireless proofreader extraordinaire! Anne is now also much involved in assisting Council, the Executive Committee and APGO's numerous committees and in acting as recording secretary. Crystal Spekking recently joined APGO as our Communications Officer - Northern Ontario, for a one year term under a youth internship program sponsored by FedNor and the City of Timmins. Working from a small satellite office in Timmins, Crystal provides information, about the APGO and the regulation of the profession of geoscience in Ontario - to the public, practitioners in geoscience, and both providers and users of geoscience services in the north. She is also the mastermind behind the desktop publishing that goes into this newsletter. Her skills in this regard are a huge asset to the association, as I think you will agree. Having an office in Timmins allows the association to better serve its many members residing and practising geoscience throughout northern Ontario. Crystal is available to make presentations to groups about the impact of the Professional Geoscientists Act, 2000 on users of geoscience services throughout the north. If you are based in Timmins, or just happen to be passing through, please stop by the office at 272 Third Avenue., phone 705-360-6171 or e-mail cspekking@apgo.net . APGO is also involved with the Toronto School Board's high school student cooperative career and education program, and we currently have grade 11 student volunteer, Jamie Cudeo, from Monarch Park Collegiate coming into the office four afternoons a week. This is a win-win situation that allows Jamie to get some valuable first time on-the-job experience in a professional office environment and, at the same time, provides APGO with much needed extra help with filing, labeling, data inputting, etc. For those of you interested in the technology side, APGO uses ACT database software for both its member, and enforcement and compliance databases. ACT is a highly versatile contact management database, which not only interfaces very effectively with Word, Excel and other applications, but also maintains a full tracking log of all field changes and all outgoing correspondence items attributable to a member's record. Our bookkeeping is done using Quick Books; Quick Books is also now used for all APGO invoicing and for managing the accounts payable function. If you have not been by to visit your APGO office yet, please feel free to drop by, and say "hello" and meet your team. |
For
more information on APGO, please contact info@apgo.net
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