Message From Our President and LEO

Our goal at Technical Safety BC is to provide reliable, transparent, and effective safety oversight. This past year, we collectively faced a variety of challenges, including inflation, a slowdown in the construction sector, and ongoing extreme weather events. We have worked tirelessly to balance our commitment to keep fees as low as possible while also making the required investments in new technologies, our people, and ultimately the delivery of important services that build trust and confidence in the safety system.

We continued to invest in initiatives that improve processes, making it easier for you to interact and transact with us. For instance, our new certification platform has reduced the wait time between submitting a certification application and booking an exam from 10.5 days at the start of 2023 to 2.4 days at the end of the year. In 2024, we will introduce a new licensing system that will simplify this process for our clients, and we will begin work on transforming processes and tools for permits and assessments.

As part of our risk-based oversight model, we continue to focus on using data to assess risk more effectively, prioritize areas that require immediate attention, and develop strategies to influence better outcomes in the future. We use data to look for new or reoccurring trends that may pose a risk to the technologies we regulate, and to the people who trust the equipment to work safely.

Data also informs how we assess safety system risks related to the ongoing impacts of the climate crisis. In 2023, of the 59 incident investigation reports we published, extreme weather or emerging technologies contributed to the cause of 9 of those incidents. We are committed to helping the safety system adapt as climate-related issues and new technologies evolve.

We strive to work alongside Indigenous people, organizations, and Nations to ensure that our safety system is accessible to Indigenous people and reflective of Indigenous priorities and contexts. As part of this commitment, we are continuing to make internal and external changes necessary for us to grow into a trusted safety ally to Indigenous people and communities.

You can read more about the work we do in our Annual Report, and for our clients and partners, I hope you have already seen positive results of our efforts in many of these areas.

Our incident investigations ensure we apply the learnings from past incidents to prevent future occurrences. For example, our Kamloops ammonia incident report resulted in code changes that dictate requirements for the safe decommissioning and documentation of refrigeration systems. This year, our findings from multiple investigations involving fires in certain types of elevators indicated that while the manufacturer had recognized the issue, not all the affected components were being addressed proactively. To reduce the risk of more fires occurring, we issued a Safety Order specific to this type of incident.

We also worked with Vancouver Coastal Health to generate awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide (CO) exposure and to help people recognize the symptoms of this silent killer. CO is one the Top 5 Safety Risks we identified in 2023.

I am inspired by the hard work, ingenuity, and resilience shown over the course of this past year. I sincerely appreciate every member of our Technical Safety BC team, and all of you, our clients, and partners. Your collective commitment to the safety system demonstrates what we can achieve when we prioritize safety as a shared responsibility.

Phil Gothe
President & Lead Executive Officer