Founded in 1972 to ‘promote the proper care and preservation of Canada's cultural heritage and to advance the practice, science and technology of conservation', the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) has established itself as a leader in the field. But in the 33 years since 1972, there has been little turnover in staff. As a result the age profile shows a heavy weighting towards older staff members. Currently CCI employs 21 conservators, five conservation advisors and 19 conservation scientists. About 25 per cent of the professional conservation staff are expected to retire within the next 10 years, and there is some concern that the experience, expertise and knowledge developed during the past 30 years is at risk. From 2000 to 2004 there have been a few retirements – one senior scientist and three experienced conservators have left. This process is expected to accelerate. Competencies are a way of characterizing the knowledge, skill, ability and behaviour that an employee applies in performing his/her work. Competency development was seen as a way to capture the behavioural characteristics of staff members who are excellent performers. This was considered useful as a guide to identifying suitable candidates as younger replacement professionals are interviewed in the hiring process. However, competencies are also useful in that they may help current staff members to improve their own performance and in addition they are perhaps useful outside CCI in that they define what it takes to be a good conservation professional as seen by a major conservation organization. They were thus developed in the larger context of a revised human resources plan for the Institute.