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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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    Hi,


    Just realised something important about 4th edition I forgot to mention - one of the aims is to tone down the "innovation" part of CEng (in the examples, not in the standard itself) to make it clearer that "technical accountability for complex systems with significant levels of risk" is a valid criteria for CEng. This is really important in this debate - at present the focus on "innovation" appears to have led to a number of applicants for CEng being turned down and advised to apply for IEng. So actually yes, 4th edition could see a decline in IEng numbers - due to a corresponding increase in CEng numbers. 


    To clarify what I meant by "sign off", since this does seem to have caused confusion, I am not referring to "sign off against a standard". What I am referring to is being the final signatory when there is no standard to follow (or the standard says "it shall be sufficiently safe"!), where it's down to your professional judgement.


    Totally agree with Roy re maths. At the extreme end of this, quite a few of the engineers I'm currently helping through CEng applications are safety engineers, they are often taking huge levels of personal responsibility based on their engineering experience and judgement, but they're often not doing any calculations or mathematical analysis - and in fact they're not doing the design or implementation. Engineering's a very broad church. (I seem to remember that when I got my IEng and CEng in the mid '90s there were a lot of old school engineers who said you shouldn't be CEng MIEE - or maybe even just MIEE - if you didn't understand Maxwell's equations. I didn't then, and still don't. I've managed to successfully do a lot of highly innovative and safety critical analogue design without that knowledge!) Once again, this is why I would like to see a much wider range of assessors and interviewers to be confident that candidates are getting a peer review - remembering what the definition of "peer" is.


    Incidentally, I remember when I got my IEng (MIEEIE) in 1995ish the interview panel asked if I was planning to move to CEng, I probably said I was thinking about it, what I definitely remember was them saying that they were all using IEng as a way to get to CEng, which I found rather depressing.I couldn't see the point of it "just" being a stepping stone then, and certainly can't now.


    Oh, and Mehmood - I think it's generally safest to assume that no-one who posts on these forums has any influence over the IET at all ? Not entirely a joke, Roy for example was always clear that he posted as a member and volunteer not a staff member, equally any committee / council etc member would have to be very careful about mixing this "pub" talk with official IET business - and quite right too, we're a self selecting group who may well only represent a tiny minority of members who like grumbling on forums. I'm no great fan of rule by social media...


    Cheers,


    Andy
Reply
  • 0
    Hi,


    Just realised something important about 4th edition I forgot to mention - one of the aims is to tone down the "innovation" part of CEng (in the examples, not in the standard itself) to make it clearer that "technical accountability for complex systems with significant levels of risk" is a valid criteria for CEng. This is really important in this debate - at present the focus on "innovation" appears to have led to a number of applicants for CEng being turned down and advised to apply for IEng. So actually yes, 4th edition could see a decline in IEng numbers - due to a corresponding increase in CEng numbers. 


    To clarify what I meant by "sign off", since this does seem to have caused confusion, I am not referring to "sign off against a standard". What I am referring to is being the final signatory when there is no standard to follow (or the standard says "it shall be sufficiently safe"!), where it's down to your professional judgement.


    Totally agree with Roy re maths. At the extreme end of this, quite a few of the engineers I'm currently helping through CEng applications are safety engineers, they are often taking huge levels of personal responsibility based on their engineering experience and judgement, but they're often not doing any calculations or mathematical analysis - and in fact they're not doing the design or implementation. Engineering's a very broad church. (I seem to remember that when I got my IEng and CEng in the mid '90s there were a lot of old school engineers who said you shouldn't be CEng MIEE - or maybe even just MIEE - if you didn't understand Maxwell's equations. I didn't then, and still don't. I've managed to successfully do a lot of highly innovative and safety critical analogue design without that knowledge!) Once again, this is why I would like to see a much wider range of assessors and interviewers to be confident that candidates are getting a peer review - remembering what the definition of "peer" is.


    Incidentally, I remember when I got my IEng (MIEEIE) in 1995ish the interview panel asked if I was planning to move to CEng, I probably said I was thinking about it, what I definitely remember was them saying that they were all using IEng as a way to get to CEng, which I found rather depressing.I couldn't see the point of it "just" being a stepping stone then, and certainly can't now.


    Oh, and Mehmood - I think it's generally safest to assume that no-one who posts on these forums has any influence over the IET at all ? Not entirely a joke, Roy for example was always clear that he posted as a member and volunteer not a staff member, equally any committee / council etc member would have to be very careful about mixing this "pub" talk with official IET business - and quite right too, we're a self selecting group who may well only represent a tiny minority of members who like grumbling on forums. I'm no great fan of rule by social media...


    Cheers,


    Andy
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