The RICS places a great deal of importance on ensuring that its members remain competent professionals throughout their careers. It regards undertaking continuing professional development (CPD) as important in terms of safeguarding professional standards, as well as valuable for individuals.
The RICS holds CPD events and many firms have their own internal training programmes for their graduates. But it is unusual for companies to put on CPD events for an external audience. Business rates specialist CVS did just this in September, holding the first of what it hopes to be regular free CPD events open to all.
The event exceeded their expectations in terms of numbers, with 40 attendees. Guest speaker Paul Sanderson, president of the International Property Tax Institute, who has worked at the Valuation Office, spoke about rating systems in the UK and other parts of the world. At the end of the evening, CVS issued those attending with CPD certificates for two hours’ attendance.
Sanderson covered various aspects of property tax systems including unit of assessment, basis of value, frequency of revaluations, tax rate setting, exemptions, reliefs and the appeal systems, comparing the UK with other jurisdictions around the world. He says: “This gave a broader perspective, raising issues that people may not usually think about.”
CVS chose the topic because of recent debate about business rates and comparisons made with other countries. The company may not be a specialist CPD provider, but as a practitioner with an insight into topics that people may find interesting, the firm’s managing director Mark Rigby thought it would be useful to give an international perspective. He was pleased with the amount of audience feedback, saying: “There was a good 30 minutes of questions following the talk.”
So why put on an public event for free? Rigby says: “We specialise in business rates rather than act as a general practice and through this focus we have become leading specialists. As RICS members we felt it was right to hold a CPD event, leading to more in the future, to show that we are professional, ethical and care about professional standards.”
He adds: “You are only as good as the advice you give day to day and through this event we can equip our own staff and communicate trends and perspectives across a greater platform.”
Although rival firms attended, he sees the benefits of knowledge dissemination through transparency as far outweighing any possible competitive advantage that others may gain through attending.
And, as a firm CPD advocate, he says: “What is clear is that if you stand still, you are going to go backwards, as everything changes so radically and quickly. You have got to keep up to speed.”
Sanderson adds: “It is important that busy people make the time to step back and look at things objectively and keep up to date with issues.” And the advantage, as well as a marketing exercise, is that these events provide bite-size knowledge chunks that cater to a target audience – offering something more focused, rather than a one-day event, he says.
The event went down well with attendee Rupert Boheimer, partner – head of rating, at Ask-re The Property People. He says: “I thought it was well organised and Paul Sanderson was a pleasure to listen to. It was an interesting, relevant subject – more so than those covered at other CPD events. It was a good idea for CVS to put on this event and the timing, from 5.30pm-7.30pm, was good too.”
How the RICS ensures its CPD requirements are fit for purpose
The RICS has done a lot of work with its members and other professional bodies over recent years to ensure that their CPD requirements are fit for purpose on a global platform. They launched a new set of CPD requirements for members at the beginning of 2013 stipulating that:
• all RICS members must undertake a minimum of 20 hours CPD each calendar year (January to December);
• of the 20 hours, at least 10 hours must be formal CPD; the remainder can be informal CPD (see below);
• all RICS members must maintain a current understanding of RICS professional and ethical standards during a rolling three-year period. Any learning undertaken to meet this requirement may count as formal CPD;
• all RICS members must record their CPD activity online.
Formal CPD does not necessarily need to be paid-for courses, nor provided by the RICS. It looks for activity that has ?a clear learning objective and outcome – for example, undertaking online learning, or attending seminars or conferences where there is a clear learning outcome around a technical subject.
Unlike informal CPD, formal CPD is structured and involves planning and consideration. Learning is then applied to the member’s professional role. Informal CPD, conversely, might not be planned. It may, for example, come in the form of on-the-job learning through coaching, or by enhancing skills and knowledge through reading relevant technical journals and guidance.
The deadline for RICS members to record their CPD activity for 2013 is 31 December.
What do the big players do to foster CPD?
We asked a selection of large agencies about whether they ran CPD courses for an external or an internal audience. The responses varied, but most tended to fall into the internal camp. While the benefits of external events may include establishing a stronger position as experts and building better client relationships, there are negatives too: where an organisation has its own unique, training programme, holding an external event isn’t viewed as a benefit.
Philip King, APC manager, Cushman & Wakefield: “First, C&W provides their grads with seminars geared to their APC training that count towards their requirement of 48 hours per 12 months. These are sometimes opened up to clients’ APC trainees but never more widely – this would impact on the benefits of C&W’s unique training programme. Second, most departments provide client, or potential client, seminars or similar events open to a wider audience that would count towards the CPD requirement of at least 20 hours.
Nigel Randall, director, Deloitte Real Estate: “At DRE we put on various events such as seminars, lectures, professional briefings, crane surveys, etc. Some of these are internal only but many are open to external guests as well. From my experience, while those events would qualify for CPD to internal and external attendees, we do not generally have any arrangement whereby we issue formal certificates or similar documents to confirm that they are formally CPD-accredited events. CPD is generally self-certifying.”
JLL spokesperson: “We don’t offer these externally.”
DTZ spokesperson: “We don’t currently hold any external CPD events.”
