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Value in IEng Registration

Afternoon all, just sitting behind a laptop screen pondering and found myself plotting course for my career progression and seemingly unlikely professional registration for CEng.

My current employer has encouraged that I achieve CEng registration (easier said than done) and any promotion to the next grade would be subject to attaining CEng. I'm wary of submitting my application for CEng due to not having an adequate level of education (I have a Bachelors degree only) and at my age there's little chance of me returning to university for further study. I'm employed as a senior engineer and acting principal engineer within a project I'm currently commissioned. I appreciate that working at a principal engineer level does not necessarily provide the evidence required to prove that my understanding and knowledge is at a MEng level.

Rewind a few years, I was reasonably proud of successful registration and to achieve IEng, however, to date I'm of the opinion that it has done little else other than measurement / benchmark of my competence and identify area's in which I need to strengthen. My employer (at the time of registration) did not professionally recognise IEng registration and from my own observations nor do other employers (that I've noticed). A cursory glance of job listings on LinkedIn, shall normally state a requirement for applicants to hold CEng registration or working towards CEng with no mention of IEng. There's an immense pressure to achieve Chartership and with failure to do so could be possibly observed as I'm either inadequate or not quite cutting the grade by a prospective or current employer.

Is there any value to the IEng registration other than a personal achievement and worth maintaining? I imagine the nervousness and apprehension about navigating the CEng route and the fear of failure that I'm not unique in this respect and other's may have a similar story? Not sure what I would wish to hear, but knowing of others that succeeded with a similar background and level of education would provide some encouragement.

Regards,

Allan.

Parents

0 Roy Bowdler over 4 years ago

Andy,
There is much in what you say that I agree with. I think we also share similar aims and principles.

We cannot change the past, which carries a lot of cultural “baggage” through issues such as inequality of opportunity, relative status or social class-based snobbery and inverted snobbery. It is however simply a fact that being IEng is to be excluded from control of “the profession” and to be widely regarded as “sub-standard” or “part-qualified”. Chartered Engineer is the “admission ticket” required.

The legacy of the IIE, makes The IET more respectful towards IEng, than most other parts of the “Engineering Establishment”. Nevertheless, only my inside knowledge of the IET would allow me to identify the only IEng in a senior management role and the numbers of new IEng fellows has dwindled to a handful since 2006.


Simply put, the world of professional engineering institutions affiliated to Engineering Council and the other stakeholder organisations, such as The Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineering Professors Council, Et Al, are run by and for Chartered Engineers. Some professional Institutions offer two subsidiary categories of professional recognition. In some cases, as equal “members”.

Research reports suggest than only a minority of those potentially eligible for Chartered Engineer choose to participate, with very low engagement in the subsidiary categories. The age profile of participants is also generally high, with the average age around 60 on the last figures I saw.

I would differentiate this rarefied world of “high status engineers”, from the rational actions of employers or customers, who have needs for someone with appropriate skills at a reasonable cost for the value added.

Some sectors of employment have senior influencers who are sympathetic towards, or even active within the “engineering establishment”. Others are indifferent, unconvinced or even actively hostile. It is rare in my experience to find somewhere that IEng is valued, unless the more senior people are CEng. There was a time when some sectors had senior leaders who were IEng and many more where senior leaders were former apprentices rather than university graduates, but most recognised correctly that being IEng just “didn’t cut it”.

HR is often blamed, but they mostly derive their understanding from senior engineers and/or engineering professional bodies.

The IET has certainly made progress in competence assessment, without diminishing the value of university degrees. However, we cannot change the world in which such qualifications are seen as the primary currency for “Professional Engineers” and that benchmark being a 4-year “scientific” degree. This or something very similar is likely to remain as the main pathway to CEng. I won’t pursue the detail as it isn’t relevant to IEng.


The situation is confused by having another type of professional in some countries called a “Technologist” (IEng in the UK), who is also a university graduate with a slightly shorter or more “applied” degree.
Except in situations where access to experience or further learning is restricted by virtue of the type of degree, all the evidence that I have seen is that the capabilities overlap to a large extent. A more academic/scientific preparation might optimise someone better for R&D/academia and more “applied” for implementation? So simply put, the binary distinction is artificial for most “mainstream” types of work.

I referred in my earlier post to graduates not wanting IEng and I have referred in this one to more senior people not wanting it either. In fact, in every situation where a person can compare themselves reasonably equally with a CEng (without self-delusion), then why accept the inferior status?

The typical threshold of CEng is a 4-year degree, 2 years training and 2 further years supervised experience. So why would an engineer with a combination of 8 years training experience and education, typically perhaps via an apprenticeship, who may be performing more effectively than the former full-time student, mark themselves as second best? The same applies at any subsequent age depending on the opportunities for learning, either experiential and /or in formal environments.

One of the widely held beliefs is that a CEng is a specialised expert consultant and this is true in many cases. However, there are many other types of roles being carried out from Technician to Strategic Management. Many “bank” CEng early in career as the “admission ticket”, before moving on and it is widely used as an honorific. I don’t personally find this objectionable in the slightest. Why should someone lose something that they earned, unless they abuse it?

A last point about the few places where IEng is strong. There are nearly all situations where responsibility is delegated and constrained relatively rigidly.

So, for example in the Armed Forces a SNCO or Junior Commissioned Officer, may not have the opportunity to exercise sufficient responsibility. It was also the case until very recently that a non-commissioned officer would not be allowed to become CEng, because such status was “reserved” for higher ranking commissioned officers. This ceiling has been broken by a few SNCOs. But we could not reasonably expect a higher-ranking officer to accept the lower status of IEng.

There are also some civilian sectors, seen by PEIs as “operational” rather than “design” led, where there is a perception that the type of work isn’t technically demanding enough to warrant CEng. So, to repeat the advice of a PEI to one of my reports, “you won’t get CEng working for a contractor move to a consultancy”.

To summarise

The current infrastructure is designed for and run by Chartered Engineers. The value of the subsidiary IEng category is whatever they choose to make it.

The IEng standard itself represents a capable professional engineer, who does not require supervision by a Chartered Engineer. It is similar to other types of chartered professionals, but must be presented as “sub-standard” to avoid “confusion” with CEng.

IEng was probably going to be renamed “Chartered Engineering Technologist” 20 years ago, but this annoyed some IEng who considered themselves “Engineers”. Furthermore, the distinction between an “Engineer and Technologist”, just seems like semantics to most practitioners in the UK and means nothing to the less informed. Chartered Engineers would also have endlessly banged-on about how they were “superior” to a Technologist.

The current value of IEng is limited and its primary distinguishing feature is actually a negative characteristic i.e. “not CEng”.

I think that there is merit in a benchmark short of CEng, but only if a requirement for everyone to pass through the same gate with structured progression in-career. Academic sorting pre-career just doesn’t work, but if academics hold sway then it is the only way that they can do it.

Nothing that we do should be about “dumbing down”. Our purpose is to raise standards. I strongly support academic institution/employer partnerships such as Degree Apprenticeships, which should provide the most optimum pathway to technical and managerial leadership for engineers.

I also have seen many Technicians perform to a high standard in Masters Degree programmes that reflect real engineering practice and offer admission to "mature students" based on career learning.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 4 years ago

Andy,
There is much in what you say that I agree with. I think we also share similar aims and principles.

We cannot change the past, which carries a lot of cultural “baggage” through issues such as inequality of opportunity, relative status or social class-based snobbery and inverted snobbery. It is however simply a fact that being IEng is to be excluded from control of “the profession” and to be widely regarded as “sub-standard” or “part-qualified”. Chartered Engineer is the “admission ticket” required.

The legacy of the IIE, makes The IET more respectful towards IEng, than most other parts of the “Engineering Establishment”. Nevertheless, only my inside knowledge of the IET would allow me to identify the only IEng in a senior management role and the numbers of new IEng fellows has dwindled to a handful since 2006.


Simply put, the world of professional engineering institutions affiliated to Engineering Council and the other stakeholder organisations, such as The Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineering Professors Council, Et Al, are run by and for Chartered Engineers. Some professional Institutions offer two subsidiary categories of professional recognition. In some cases, as equal “members”.

Research reports suggest than only a minority of those potentially eligible for Chartered Engineer choose to participate, with very low engagement in the subsidiary categories. The age profile of participants is also generally high, with the average age around 60 on the last figures I saw.

I would differentiate this rarefied world of “high status engineers”, from the rational actions of employers or customers, who have needs for someone with appropriate skills at a reasonable cost for the value added.

Some sectors of employment have senior influencers who are sympathetic towards, or even active within the “engineering establishment”. Others are indifferent, unconvinced or even actively hostile. It is rare in my experience to find somewhere that IEng is valued, unless the more senior people are CEng. There was a time when some sectors had senior leaders who were IEng and many more where senior leaders were former apprentices rather than university graduates, but most recognised correctly that being IEng just “didn’t cut it”.

HR is often blamed, but they mostly derive their understanding from senior engineers and/or engineering professional bodies.

The IET has certainly made progress in competence assessment, without diminishing the value of university degrees. However, we cannot change the world in which such qualifications are seen as the primary currency for “Professional Engineers” and that benchmark being a 4-year “scientific” degree. This or something very similar is likely to remain as the main pathway to CEng. I won’t pursue the detail as it isn’t relevant to IEng.


The situation is confused by having another type of professional in some countries called a “Technologist” (IEng in the UK), who is also a university graduate with a slightly shorter or more “applied” degree.
Except in situations where access to experience or further learning is restricted by virtue of the type of degree, all the evidence that I have seen is that the capabilities overlap to a large extent. A more academic/scientific preparation might optimise someone better for R&D/academia and more “applied” for implementation? So simply put, the binary distinction is artificial for most “mainstream” types of work.

I referred in my earlier post to graduates not wanting IEng and I have referred in this one to more senior people not wanting it either. In fact, in every situation where a person can compare themselves reasonably equally with a CEng (without self-delusion), then why accept the inferior status?

The typical threshold of CEng is a 4-year degree, 2 years training and 2 further years supervised experience. So why would an engineer with a combination of 8 years training experience and education, typically perhaps via an apprenticeship, who may be performing more effectively than the former full-time student, mark themselves as second best? The same applies at any subsequent age depending on the opportunities for learning, either experiential and /or in formal environments.

One of the widely held beliefs is that a CEng is a specialised expert consultant and this is true in many cases. However, there are many other types of roles being carried out from Technician to Strategic Management. Many “bank” CEng early in career as the “admission ticket”, before moving on and it is widely used as an honorific. I don’t personally find this objectionable in the slightest. Why should someone lose something that they earned, unless they abuse it?

A last point about the few places where IEng is strong. There are nearly all situations where responsibility is delegated and constrained relatively rigidly.

So, for example in the Armed Forces a SNCO or Junior Commissioned Officer, may not have the opportunity to exercise sufficient responsibility. It was also the case until very recently that a non-commissioned officer would not be allowed to become CEng, because such status was “reserved” for higher ranking commissioned officers. This ceiling has been broken by a few SNCOs. But we could not reasonably expect a higher-ranking officer to accept the lower status of IEng.

There are also some civilian sectors, seen by PEIs as “operational” rather than “design” led, where there is a perception that the type of work isn’t technically demanding enough to warrant CEng. So, to repeat the advice of a PEI to one of my reports, “you won’t get CEng working for a contractor move to a consultancy”.

To summarise

The current infrastructure is designed for and run by Chartered Engineers. The value of the subsidiary IEng category is whatever they choose to make it.

The IEng standard itself represents a capable professional engineer, who does not require supervision by a Chartered Engineer. It is similar to other types of chartered professionals, but must be presented as “sub-standard” to avoid “confusion” with CEng.

IEng was probably going to be renamed “Chartered Engineering Technologist” 20 years ago, but this annoyed some IEng who considered themselves “Engineers”. Furthermore, the distinction between an “Engineer and Technologist”, just seems like semantics to most practitioners in the UK and means nothing to the less informed. Chartered Engineers would also have endlessly banged-on about how they were “superior” to a Technologist.

The current value of IEng is limited and its primary distinguishing feature is actually a negative characteristic i.e. “not CEng”.

I think that there is merit in a benchmark short of CEng, but only if a requirement for everyone to pass through the same gate with structured progression in-career. Academic sorting pre-career just doesn’t work, but if academics hold sway then it is the only way that they can do it.

Nothing that we do should be about “dumbing down”. Our purpose is to raise standards. I strongly support academic institution/employer partnerships such as Degree Apprenticeships, which should provide the most optimum pathway to technical and managerial leadership for engineers.

I also have seen many Technicians perform to a high standard in Masters Degree programmes that reflect real engineering practice and offer admission to "mature students" based on career learning.
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