What We Do

CENS has been the voice of the consulting engineering industry in Nova Scotia since 1973 when it was founded as the Nova Scotia Consulting Engineers Association. Its goals are to:

• maintain high professional standards in the consulting engineering industry;
  
• assist in promoting good business relations between consulting engineers and their clients;
  
• foster the interchange of professional, management and business experience among consulting engineers; and
  
• create employment and contribute to economic growth within Nova Scotia.
  
• CENS member firms account for approximately 85 percent of the consulting engineering activity in
• the province, making the organization the strongest in Canada on the basis of the percentage of industry employment it represents.
  

CENS is a business organization distinct from the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia (APENS), a professional regulatory body that deals with matters like licensing and discipline.

CENS membership includes engineering and related businesses. The Nova Scotia industry has approximately three times the percentage of "other professionals," 17 percent compared to the national average of six percent, because local firms have used traditional engineering roles as a foundation for substantial diversification. In addition, as economic conditions have improved, the percentage of professional engineers among CENS member firms has risen dramatically in only two years, from 32 percent in 1995 to 44 percent in 1997. The industry, looking positively into the future, has responded by hiring about 130 more engineers.

"Employment among Nova Scotia's consulting engineers has nearly doubled during the past 10 years to an estimated 1,120 people generating revenues in excess of $85 million. The consulting engineering industry also generates approximately $20 million in revenues from other related sources."

Services Offered

Services offered by consulting engineers fall into the following broad categories of core competencies and new growth areas:

• general services such as conducting feasibility studies, preparing detailed drawings, specifications and contract documents, and supervising construction;
  
• specialized services including design and development of equipment, environmental advice and design, material testing, software system development and project management;
  
• "turnkey" services such as Engineer, Procure, Construct, Manage (EPCM) projects involving a comprehensive packaging of services, or Build, Own, Operate, Transfer (BOOT) projects in which the bidder agrees to finance, build and operate the facility;
  
• procurement and specification of local goods and services thereby enabling growth for other Nova Scotian businesses;
  
• development of related revenue- generating business activities in areas such as information technology, telecommunications and geomatics.

View Our Code of Consulting Engineering Practice