Yes, the Council of the Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association has set a budget for both the development and delivery of these courses. The amount is not being made publicly available at this time but it is expected to be in-line with what post-secondary educational institutions provide for the delivery of courses.
 

The Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association is seeking a commitment from the successful proponent to deliver these courses year after year. There has been no decision made on whether the ALSA would be expecting a five or ten-year commitment.

3. What are the selection criteria or scoring elements that will be used by ALSA Council in making a selection of the successful proponent?
The ALSA has not established a formal scoring/weighting system for this RFP process. The Council of the Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association will be giving the strongest consideration to proposals that demonstrate originality, a commitment to land surveying education, the ability to deliver what is being proposed and, of course, cost.

4. Is there an existing preference for the in-person, remote, or hybrid delivery of these courses? If so what is that preference and is it the same for all 6 courses?
It is expected that the course delivery would primarily be online. It is the ALSA’s hope that online delivery will encourage more applicants to pursue a career as a land surveyor.

5. What is ALSA’s expectation of ownership of IP for the resources, webinars, and materials, etc., that will be developed for these 6 courses? Does IP remain with the provider or with ALSA? May the provider use the same or similar resources for the delivery of courses with other cadastral survey regulators across Canada? Is ALSA seeking to become only a non-exclusive licensed user of these resources?
Note: While there are six competencies, the ALSA has assumed, for example, that the code of ethics and professional communications competencies would be combined into one course and that the survey-specific competencies would be combined into one or two courses.

The competencies are specific to Alberta and the Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association although there is a great deal of overlap with other land surveyor regulators across Canada.

The Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association expects the provider would be able to use the same or similar resources for the delivery of other courses.

At the same time, if the provider is no longer the “ALSA’s official provider of land surveying education to applicants for registration,” then the ALSA expects to have access to the resources developed while the provider did offer land surveying education to applicants.

An agreement between the ALSA and the provider would outline the intellectual property rights.

6. Is there an expectation that ALSA will make the courses developed by the successful provider available to other cadastral land surveyor regulators in Canada, or to other professional regulators in Alberta?
The competencies outlined in the RFP are specific to land surveying in Alberta. The ALSA believes this course model is the future of land surveying education and training in Canada and would be willing to discuss sharing it with other land surveying regulators in Canada. However, the courses cannot be made generic that applicants do not learn Alberta-specific and ALSA-specific competencies.

7. Will an individual Applicant for registration to become a licensed member of ALSA take these courses (and pay for them) directly from the provider of these courses, or from ALSA? If the latter, is the budget that is expected in reply to these RFPs to be fixed (irrespective of the # of subscribers), or a sliding scale, in which the number of subscribers is but one factor?
It is expected that the applicant pay the provider directly for the courses. It is expected that the budget be fixed (regardless of the number of subscribers) and any residual could potentially go back to future educational development.

The ALSA expects the number of people taking the courses to be relatively small (see answer below) and is anticipating that it will need to subsidize the cost of the courses in order to keep prices reasonable to attract students and keep the quality of the education high.

8. How many candidates are expected to take each of these 6 courses in each of the next 5 years? If a forecast study that projects numbers has been concluded, may we see that please?
The Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association is forecasting 5-10 candidates to take each course each year – based on the assumption that 5-10 people enter into articles in Alberta each year. (See note above.) It is hoped that the number will grow once candidates learn about this new delivery model and realize that they will be able to become licensed sooner and will have more help in place to support their learning.

9. Will land surveyors in training (formerly articling pupils) be able to provide evidence of experience instead of taking a course?
It is the Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association’s intent that land surveyors in training who already have “satisfactory” experience in “evidence evaluation” and “standard practice for surveys and plans” would be exempted from having to take those courses but they would still be required to pass the examination for that competency.

10. We are not familiar with all the ethical situations that might face a land surveyor. How would we be able to educate students on this?
The Alberta Land Surveyors’ Association would provide subject matter experts to offer real-world situations and examples to help with the development of the courses.

11. Question 7 states "It is expected that the applicant pay the provider directly for the courses. It is expected that the budget be fixed (regardless of the number of subscribers) and any residual could potentially go back to future educational development.". Is the intent here that an applicant taking the course will pay the course provider directly, and that that fee will be fixed across multiple years regardless of the number of applicants?
It is the ALSA’s intention that the fee be fixed across multiple years and that the fee be reviewed on a regular basis.

12. Question 5 states that it is assumed that code of ethics and professional communications constitutes one course, and that the evaluation of evidence / measurement science / standard practice would be "one or two" courses. At the same time, the RFP states that "the first course" would be available in Jan 2026. Is there an expectation for when subsequent courses will be required given that all articled students would be expected to follow the same pathway prior to completing their qualifying exams?
People in this process would not be articled students. The ALSA is moving away from articling as a requirement to become registered as an Alberta Land Surveyor and moving toward these courses instead. The ALSA would like to see subsequent courses be available shortly after the first course. Based on your background and expertise, what do you think is a reasonable timeframe?

13. Given that the Manual of Standard Practice may change annually, is there an expectation on a timeline for updating training material? Similarly, given that Land Titles and Crown Land disposition requirements can change at any time, is there a requirement for continual update of the training material as these requirements are updated?
Yes, it is expected the training material would be updated on a regular basis. The training material would not necessarily need to be made every time there is a change to the Manual of Standard Practice but would depend upon the significance of the amendments.

14. For Course 1A, it states that the material will be created in conjunction with a working group of subject matter experts. Is the ALSA responsible for sourcing and providing the SME's and are they volunteers? Is there a mechanism for the education provider to ensure timely participation from the SME's to ensure timelines are met?
Some proponents may have extensive contacts in the land surveying profession and prefer to work with their own subject matter experts. Others may wish to work with SMEs facilitated by the ALSA. Any proposal needs to identify any assumptions or expectations made about working with subject matter experts.

15. Who will be responsible for vetting that the information provided in training is correct? Course 1A suggests the registration committee will review the final exam, but this is not a requirement in any of the other courses.
The Registration Committee.

16. Does the ALSA have any website portal, gateway, site or capacity to host training materials or is this the responsibility of the training provider?
No, the ALSA does not.

17. For Course 1C, there is reference to a "three part seminar" that articling students will need to attend. Does this mean that competencies 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 must be provided as separate modules, but within a single course?
The ALSA had considered a “three-part seminar” as the best way to address the competencies referenced above. However if, based on your expertise and background in education, you feel that there is a better way for applicants to learn these competencies, the ALSA is open to those ideas and they should be included in the proposal.

18. The first RFP is broken down into 1A, 1B, and 1C courses, but the competencies are labeled 1, 2, and 4. Is there one set of competencies missing, or was this simply an numbering error. The second RFP has 2A and 2B only, so in total are we dealing with five or six sets of competencies?
Competency #3 is “acts, regulations and standards.” The Registration Committee will examine applicants on this competency; no course is required.