The firm
About the Firm
Who the firm is, what it is registered to do, what it is competent in, and how it manages professional practice and field safety.
Fluvial Engineering Inc. is a Canadian-owned firm with a Permit to Practice geoscience through the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) and Engineers and Geoscientists BC.
Our firm maintains a commitment to public safety, environmental compatibility, and professional practice.
Integrating our custom sensors and software into geoscientific methodologies offers a digital framework for examining the intersections of water, terrain, and infrastructure.
The firm, in the register
- Legal name
- Fluvial Engineering Inc.
- Incorporation
- Alberta, with extra-provincial registration in British Columbia
- Responsible member
- William Shulba, P.Geo.
- Corporate office
- Sherwood Park, Alberta
- Satellite office
- British Columbia
Permits to Practice
- Alberta
- Permit to Practice geoscience — Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA)
- British Columbia
- Permit to Practice — Engineers and Geoscientists BC
- Responsible member
- William Shulba, P.Geo. — Responsible Member with APEGA and Member Responsible with Engineers and Geoscientists BC. The permits attach to him, and the professional responsibility for work issued under them rests with him.
Areas of competence
A permit authorises a firm to practise; competence is what it may practise in. The firm's work sits within four standing fields, and every engagement falls under one or two of them. Work outside them is declined or carried with a subconsultant who holds the competence for it.
- Watershed Geoscience
- Scientific assessment of climate, terrain, and land cover with emphasis on the factors governing flood generation, peak-flow behaviour, water balance, and wetland hydrology.
- Groundwater Hydrology
- Investigation of subsurface water systems through analysis of aquifer geometry, material properties, recharge mechanisms, and interaction with surface environments.
- Terrain Analysis
- Integration of terrain analytics with geological interpretation to evaluate stability, surface processes, sediment pathways, and topographic controls governing outcomes.
- Infrastructure Technology
- Use of integrated spatial, hydrologic, and geoscientific datasets to inform infrastructure siting, risk mitigation, and environmental compatibility within natural and working landscapes.
The services delivered within these fields, and the sectors they are delivered into, are set out in Services and Sectors.
Professional Practice Management Plan
Both regulators require a firm holding a Permit to Practice to maintain a Professional Practice Management Plan. APEGA defines it as the corporate policies, procedures, and systems by which a permit holder maintains appropriate standards of professional practice; Engineers and Geoscientists BC requires the plan to document how the firm meets its ethics, quality management, and continuing education obligations. It is the document a regulator asks for in a practice audit, and the firm's plan is written to be answered from.
- Areas of practice
- The geoscience disciplines the firm accepts work in, and the limits it works within.
- Quality management
- How work is planned, checked, and reviewed before it is issued, and the standards it is measured against.
- Authentication
- The responsible member authenticates only deliverables he has personally reviewed and accepted as meeting professional standards, whatever the workflow by which they were prepared.
- Records and chain of custody
- Documentation standards, record-keeping, and retention, and the custody of a deliverable from its input data through to issue.
- Continuing professional development
- The obligations that attach to registration, and the tracking that evidences them.
- Conflict of interest
- Disclosure procedures applied at engagement and revisited as a project develops.
- Subconsultants and partners
- How work carried out by others is engaged, reviewed, and brought under the firm's authentication.
- Field operations
- Field protocols, and the health and safety provisions that bear on project work. Set out in full under Health and safety below.
- Insurance
- The firm's coverage arrangements.
- Review
- The plan is reviewed annually, and updated whenever the firm's regulatory standing, practice scope, or operational structure materially changes.
Health and safety
Field work is carried out on active construction sites, at drilling and pumping programs, along resource roads, and in and beside watercourses. The firm maintains its own health and safety program governing how that work is planned, staffed, and carried out.
The program is internal to the firm. Fluvial Engineering Inc. does not hold third-party safety certification. Work on a client's site is carried out under the site operator's requirements alongside the firm's own procedures, and the firm takes part in the orientations, permits, and controls the operator has in place.
The health and safety program
- Health and safety policy
- Issued by the firm and reviewed by the responsible member.
- Hazard assessment
- Completed before field work begins and revised on site when conditions, weather, or the scope of work change.
- Field procedures
- Written for the conditions this practice works in: work near and in water, supervision of drilling and pumping programs, travel on resource roads, remote and lone work, and wildlife encounters.
- Records
- Hazard assessments, site orientations, and any incident reporting are retained with the project file.
Statutory and professional obligations
- Alberta
- Occupational health and safety is governed by the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulation and code.
- British Columbia
- Occupational health and safety is governed by the Workers Compensation Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, administered by WorkSafeBC.
- Professional
- Work is carried out under the firm's Permits to Practice. The duty to hold paramount the safety of the public is a condition of registration in both provinces and rests with the responsible member.
The Professional Practice Management Plan, the health and safety policy, and the firm's field procedures are provided to clients and regulators on request. Work is carried out under the firm's Permits to Practice. Nothing published on this site constitutes a professional opinion; opinions are issued only in sealed deliverables. Contact the firm.