New moniker for the Plumbing Industry Advisory Council

June 9, 2017 | By HPAC Magazine

The Canadian Institute of Plumbing & Heating (CIPH) has announced that its board has voted to change the name of the Plumbing Industry Advisory Council to the Plumbing and Mechanical Advisory Council (P&MAC). In a media release CIPH noted that the Council has evolved over the years to incorporate more mechanical, heating and energy aspects along with plumbing issues as we address policy alignment, harmonization, timely automatic adoption of model codes, and North American Regulatory cooperation.

“The new name the Plumbing and Mechanical Advisory Council (P&MAC) reflects a better scope of the Council’s work as it has evolved over the last decade to include plumbing, heating, hydronics, wastewater and mechanical systems particularly their interactions in policy, codes and regulations,” reported CIPH Chairman Bill Palamar.

With anticipated federal policy changes regarding Climate Change the Council decided to further reflect the policy development and technical support work with a name change to add in the mechanical aspects to further enhance and represent CIPH members’ interests.

“P&MAC has become a critical Council within CIPH as the go-to industry organization for critical input, analysis, consultation and commentary on emerging policy, codes and regulations. Natural Resources Canada, the National Research Council, and other key federal and provincial departments have become key allies to CIPH and the change allows us to better serve the industry and the government,” reported Kevin Ernst, P&MAC chairman.

Backgrounder

The Plumbing Mechanical Advisory Council (PMAC) is a council within CIPH that promotes uniformity in Canadian plumbing codes, regulations and standards. Its purpose is:

To promote uniformity in Canadian plumbing codes, regulations and standards.
To ensure that any deviations from uniformity are necessary.
To inform, educate and lobby as necessary to achieve uniformity.
To maintain a working liaison with standards writing organizations, certification organizations, code writing bodies, inspection authorities and government ministries.
To serve as a technical advisory committee in the evaluation and development of plumbing codes and regulations, standards, certification to standards and interpretation of plumbing codes.
To evaluate and provide comment and/or technical advice as necessary regarding proposed changes to regulations which affect product.

History

The Plumbing Mechanical Advisory Council was created in August 1970 to provide the industry source of technical information and viewpoints to CSA International, and ultimately to the Chief Plumbing Inspectors and code writers who make up the Canadian Advisory Council on Plumbing.