How does the CPD Policy change affect you?
In October 2013, The Engineering Council announced an aspiration that by January 2017 all Professional Engineering Institutions will have introduced a policy of random reviewing of Professionally Active Registrants’ CPD Returns. You may have seen from recent promotion that the IET’s Board of Trustees have now agreed that the IET should meet this aspiration, and are extending it as a benefit to all IET members.
The IET recognises a number of activities as counting toward your CPD including: Training Courses, Work Experience, Academic study, Volunteering, attending Events and Self-Study – these were explored in a bit more depth in our CPD Elements blog series.
What has changed?
If you are a member of the IET, then you have already committed to keeping your knowledge and skills up-to-date through planned professional development as part of the IET’s rules of conduct. The only change, therefore, is that from January 2017, you may be chosen to have your previous year’s records reviewed.
How is the IET supporting me in this process?
In 2014, we piloted a voluntary CPD monitoring scheme to give members a taste of how the process will work. By opting in before 2017, you get a chance to get into the practice of CPD recording as well as helping us to shape our guidance and support as you undertake the process. You can update your CPD records at any time quickly and easily using IET Career Manager and from 2015 you’ll be able to submit your returns via Career Manager too.
I am a retired Member; does the new CPD Policy apply to me too?
For CPD purposes, we prefer the term professionally active member to retired member because we appreciate that even after retiring many members provide valuable services to the IET and other PEIs through volunteering.A Professionally Active Member is one who is employed fully or part time in engineering or a related field, or acting as a volunteer in the IET or other Professional Engineering Institution (PEI) and the requirement is for 30 hours of CPD per year.
Those who are retired or no longer professionally active (either temporarily due to, for example, maternity leave, long term illness, unemployment etc or through longer term personal situations) need only undertake 10 hours of CPD per year; a figure easily achievable by reading E&T magazine on a regular basis or watching a few keynote lectures on the newly revamped iet.tv. If that is not possible due to ill health or any other reason, the member just needs to include the reasons in their annual CPD declaration in Career Manager. We have no wish to drive away valued members whose personal situation does not allow them to complete the recommended CPD hours, and will deal with these sensitively at the time of each review.
If you’re still undecided on whether to opt in early and start gaining the benefits of CPD, you can see how other members approach CPD or e-mail us at: cpd@theiet.org for more information about how the scheme works.