Roy B,


I'll let you know!


Regarding "why now?", imagine that you are working in an organisation where, following a reorganisation, a number of senior-ish positions are suddenly redefined as having the requirement "should (or must?) be Chartered or working towards Chartership". It will focus the mind of those who've never previously considered it! As I understand it that's pretty much what has happened. Given that it's a very large engineering employer it'll be interesting to see if their next step is to say the same for IEng, I honestly wouldn't like to guess.


I tend to assume that the majority of engineers won't apply for professional registration unless they have to - which correlates with the fact that the vast majority are not professionally registered. I don't think this is a good thing (otherwise I wouldn't do the voluntary roles I do!) but pragmatically it is where we are.



Roy P,


Excellent post! I particularly liked "dispel any perception of elitism/ old boys club". UK-SPEC must be seen to be clearly relevant to real roles in engineering, and we must be clearly accepting people according to UKSPEC - not because we "like the look of them" or because they're engineering things the way we did 30-40 years ago.


If we want to have an "old person's club" we can use Fellowship for that!! And there's a serious point in there, as I keep banging on about, CEng describes a role or collection of roles in an organisation, and these are vanishingly unlikely to be the most senior roles (except in a very small engineering consultancy) - those go to the strategic, finance and business development positions. So let's push FIET as the "gold standard", the recognition that people have made a serious contribution to the world of engineering (because that's what it's about), whether they are EngTech, IEng, or CEng, and leave this other debate as the technical issue it should be. Some jobs need PRINCE2, some jobs need 6 sigma black belt, some jobs need CEng. No elitism should hang on that.


Cheers,


Andy

Roy B,


I'll let you know!


Regarding "why now?", imagine that you are working in an organisation where, following a reorganisation, a number of senior-ish positions are suddenly redefined as having the requirement "should (or must?) be Chartered or working towards Chartership". It will focus the mind of those who've never previously considered it! As I understand it that's pretty much what has happened. Given that it's a very large engineering employer it'll be interesting to see if their next step is to say the same for IEng, I honestly wouldn't like to guess.


I tend to assume that the majority of engineers won't apply for professional registration unless they have to - which correlates with the fact that the vast majority are not professionally registered. I don't think this is a good thing (otherwise I wouldn't do the voluntary roles I do!) but pragmatically it is where we are.



Roy P,


Excellent post! I particularly liked "dispel any perception of elitism/ old boys club". UK-SPEC must be seen to be clearly relevant to real roles in engineering, and we must be clearly accepting people according to UKSPEC - not because we "like the look of them" or because they're engineering things the way we did 30-40 years ago.


If we want to have an "old person's club" we can use Fellowship for that!! And there's a serious point in there, as I keep banging on about, CEng describes a role or collection of roles in an organisation, and these are vanishingly unlikely to be the most senior roles (except in a very small engineering consultancy) - those go to the strategic, finance and business development positions. So let's push FIET as the "gold standard", the recognition that people have made a serious contribution to the world of engineering (because that's what it's about), whether they are EngTech, IEng, or CEng, and leave this other debate as the technical issue it should be. Some jobs need PRINCE2, some jobs need 6 sigma black belt, some jobs need CEng. No elitism should hang on that.


Cheers,


Andy