The ASDSO Board of Directors approved an Issue Brief and Recommendation on Developing a Credentialing Program for a Dam Safety Engineering Specialist.
A longstanding issue is a perceived lack of training and proficiency in the fields required to manage dam engineering, dam safety and related management programs. Consultants, regulators, and owners need to meet a minimum standard of knowledge coupled with experience in their respective positions. The idea of establishing a credentialing or certification program within ASDSO to address this issue is raised frequently.
The paper summarizes the various certification concepts in practice today by associations, considers past efforts by ASDSO to define the problem, and provides a recommendation for the ASDSO leadership to consider.
After many formal and informal discussions and feedback sessions over several years, the ASDSO Board of Directors recommends the following actions:
- ASDSO will not pursue the establishment of a credential or certification program.
- ASDSO will continue to advocate for comprehensive training programs for the dam engineering profession.
- ASDSO will continue to advocate for accredited college and university programs to include dam safety engineering courses.
- ASDSO will continue to provide training courses to fulfill the objectives of the ASDSO Program of Study and will launch a program to establish topic-specific certificate tracks, using materials currently available through ASDSO’s technical training program.
- ASDSO will continue to provide education programs for dam owners and will launch a program to establish a dam owner training certificate track using materials currently available through the ASDSO Dam Owner Academy program.
- ASDSO will continue to build the ASDSO Dam Safety Toolbox web-based product, which is a repository for current guidelines and recommendations related to dam safety. The objective of this effort is to fill the educational gap that is the basis of this issue brief.
