3 months supervisor report

Last week after the holidays I had my first Supervisor Meeting for my APC.

For those unfamiliar with the APC training, a Supervisor and Counsellor are appointed at the beginning of the training. They are normally a chartered surveyor. My Supervisor is the Business Unit Director in my company, whom I normally call him my Boss, Colin. My appointed Counsellor is a Director at our head office down South, Mark.

In the APC training, the Supervisor Meeting is held every three months and the Counsellor Meeting is held every six months.

During the meeting, the Supervisor will check the diary and provide any advice and check if the candidate has reached an acceptable level for each competency.

Since I don’t work in the company’s office, going into the office provides an opportunity to catch up with Colin as well.

Anyways, I can’t believe I forgotten to bring my notebook/notepad to jot down what we had discussed, especially things that require improvement. Note of advice: remember to bring your note book for jotting down notes!

So now I have to re-cap mentally or going through the documents to re-call what action is required by me.

Overall, I was advised that I should elaborate more on my diary entry.

For instance if I was at a meeting, I should write down key points or issues and the outcome of the meeting. Although it does seemed like a little more work, it also provides a little memory jog say, when I go for my APC Interview I can see that I have such and such experience and I knew what I did or say few months down the road, I can read what I have written, after all, I always say, ‘I can’t remember everything!’.

The RICS requires candidate to jot down in the diary against the selected technical competencies. I have six core competencies and two optional competencies to complete. Each of my entry in the diary should not log less than half a day and only one competency can be logged against each entry. So it is important how we fill in the diary to reflect what we understand of the competency.

There are also ten mandatory competencies to achieve. Although it is not required by the RICS to record the mandatory competencies, Colin and I have agreed that I should write a short report to reflect what I have done to prove that I have achieved each of the competencies. The report also serves as a means of gauging what else I need to do to improve and achieve other levels of the competency.

This also extends to what I have learnt during any of the CPDs - Continue Professional Development that I have attended.

I was also advised on putting in some of the documents I worked on as Appendices for reference.

For the mandatory competencies, Colin also gave me a CD of documents relevant to our business to study and write a short report on. So that’s some reading and writing for me.

During the first meeting, I printed my three months diary entries, mandatory achievement record, technical achievement, professional development record and supervisor’s progress report, which are all available on the RICS website.

I have also brought along the competency achievement planner and date planner which Colin and I have agreed prior to starting the APC training. The competency planner serves as a guide for us to know what competencies has to be completed by when, and the date planner is a prompter for me to meet the target dates that has been set at the initial stage.

Overall, I think the first meeting went rather well. I’ve learnt quite a lot and what is expected to be completed or prepared of. I also feel that a lot of things if we find that can help along the journey, such as notes, printouts, or even writing a mini report, we can prepare it and use it as part of the appendix. Although the diary is not submitted to RICS for assessment, it does provide a source of information and reference for us.

For my next meeting, I will need to improve, prepare and complete all that we have discussed. I will also need to complete my APC Project Summary which I have completed half way.