by Brian Robertson, B.A., LL.B.

President, Diligent Security Training and Consulting Inc

www.diligenttraining.ca

Companies who were hoping to find out this month whether or not they had been awarded the contract to deliver standardized testing services as part of the mandatory training requirements that are to be brought in under the Private Security and Investigative Services Act (PSISA) have recently been notified that the Province’s original RFP has been cancelled and that a new RFP will be issued within the next few weeks.  As a consequence of this development, the Province’s anticipated target for implementation of standardized testing will now be pushed back from around the end of this year to sometime in the middle of 2010.

The original RFP, which was issued in late May, called for a successful contract services vendor to be selected by sometime in September, and for testing services to be up and running by the end of December.  With a new RFP slated to come out between now and the middle of October, it is unlikely that testing will now be implemented anytime prior to May or June, if then.  The Private Security and Investigative Services Branch (PSISB) is expected to make some kind of formal notification to industry stakeholders over the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the Province’s contract with test development company Castle Worldwide proceeds on schedule.  The first test forms are being piloted this month, and subject matter experts from the industry have been invited to participate in standard setting workshops – for the purpose of making recommendations regarding pass marks for the two tests (one for security guards and one for private investigators) – on the last 2 days of September.

It is as yet unknown what effect this most recent setback – the additional  delay in the process of selecting an outside company to administer the standardized testing process – will have on any plans the Province may have had to publish the new Training and Testing Regulation which it is in the process of finalizing the wording for.  In June of this year the PSISB circulated a draft regulation for comment by industry stakeholders.

Tags: Private Security and Investigative Services Act, Security Training

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 9:17 am and is filed under Security Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.