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Value in IEng Registration

Allan Rowan
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. 

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  • 0
    Hi Roy,


    But what you're describing is not my understanding and experience of UKSpec? (It may be how some assessors see it, but that's another problem.) What's absolutely critical is the opening paragraph of the the CEng section, as Colin Sellers keeps trying to emphasise at the Registration and Standards Conference:  "Successful application of the knowledge to deliver innovative products and services and/or take technical responsibility for complex engineering systems". It shouldn't and must not matter how you got there, PhD or GCSE maths, skilled artisan or ten left thumbs, if you are currently demonstrably competent to sign off the technical argument for (say) a new nuclear power station you should be capable of achieving CEng. If you're a competent project manager who supervised the implementation of that power station, but would not feel comfortable (or be considered appropriate) to stand up in court following a major incident and defend why you signed off the technical argument then IEng is probably more appropriate. In the end when you work through UKSpec it's pretty much as simple as that. In my mind CEng is just about whether you are competent and happy to be held publicly and personally accountable for signing off the use of high risk technology (WITHOUT of course saying "well my staff told me it was ok"!).


    Ok, there's lots of challenges in how we (as a society) decide who we are happy to have finally signing off our power stations, railways, weapons systems etc, which is where these tweaks come in. (You can see how the argument goes that someone signing off serious installations should be well qualified, but we know in practice it's more complicated than that.) But the odd thing is that generally in practice the horse comes before the cart, Fred Bloggs Innovative Nuclear Power Solutions decides to appoint Chris Doe as their chief engineer, and because of that Chris Doe's CEng application flies through (again irrespective of their background). It's not perhaps the way it's supposed to work, it could be argued that we should be identifying Chris as competent to be CEng so that FBINPS know it's ok to appoint them. But since it's well nigh impossible for us to do that, based on a few pages of details and a 45 minute interview, it tends to happen the other way around. 



    Final general thought (not about Roy's post) - if individual engineers want status I suggest they go for FIET! That IS about status, whereas IEng and CEng (and actually EngTech) are about responsibility and accountability.


    Cheers,


    Andy
Reply
  • 0
    Hi Roy,


    But what you're describing is not my understanding and experience of UKSpec? (It may be how some assessors see it, but that's another problem.) What's absolutely critical is the opening paragraph of the the CEng section, as Colin Sellers keeps trying to emphasise at the Registration and Standards Conference:  "Successful application of the knowledge to deliver innovative products and services and/or take technical responsibility for complex engineering systems". It shouldn't and must not matter how you got there, PhD or GCSE maths, skilled artisan or ten left thumbs, if you are currently demonstrably competent to sign off the technical argument for (say) a new nuclear power station you should be capable of achieving CEng. If you're a competent project manager who supervised the implementation of that power station, but would not feel comfortable (or be considered appropriate) to stand up in court following a major incident and defend why you signed off the technical argument then IEng is probably more appropriate. In the end when you work through UKSpec it's pretty much as simple as that. In my mind CEng is just about whether you are competent and happy to be held publicly and personally accountable for signing off the use of high risk technology (WITHOUT of course saying "well my staff told me it was ok"!).


    Ok, there's lots of challenges in how we (as a society) decide who we are happy to have finally signing off our power stations, railways, weapons systems etc, which is where these tweaks come in. (You can see how the argument goes that someone signing off serious installations should be well qualified, but we know in practice it's more complicated than that.) But the odd thing is that generally in practice the horse comes before the cart, Fred Bloggs Innovative Nuclear Power Solutions decides to appoint Chris Doe as their chief engineer, and because of that Chris Doe's CEng application flies through (again irrespective of their background). It's not perhaps the way it's supposed to work, it could be argued that we should be identifying Chris as competent to be CEng so that FBINPS know it's ok to appoint them. But since it's well nigh impossible for us to do that, based on a few pages of details and a 45 minute interview, it tends to happen the other way around. 



    Final general thought (not about Roy's post) - if individual engineers want status I suggest they go for FIET! That IS about status, whereas IEng and CEng (and actually EngTech) are about responsibility and accountability.


    Cheers,


    Andy
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