• Agreeing objectives and work plans with teams and individuals

• • Reinforcing team commitment to professional standards

• • Leading and supporting team and individual development

• • Assessing team and individual performance, and providing feedback

• • Seeking input from other teams or specialists where needed and managing the relationship •

• Providing specialist knowledge, guidance and input in your specialism to engineering teams, engineers, customers, management and relevant stakeholders

• • Developing and delivering a teaching module at Masters level, or leading a University research programme

If you don't do anything that could be described as “management”, then C3 is tricky.  It's the reason that I gave up on CEng and applied for IEng instead.

The bit you've quoted is a list of examples; you don't actually have to do any of those specific things.

But to be a CEng, you really need to manage something.  Managing a project would do, even if you don't have a big staff working for you.  Are you in charge of something?

I guess you need to look at the and/or options.

C3 can be satisfied by demonstrating involvement in staff training, staff recruitment, STEMS work and projects etc.  Are you involved in hosting graduate placements or other rotational training programs?  Do you run internal training, perhaps as informal as lunch time tutorials, tool box talks etc.  All adds up to C3.  And as for managing staff, you can also be a technical lead with responsibility for delivery of a technical program. No direct staff responsibilities but responsible for delivery of the goal. 

Thank you so much for your in-depth responses

From these responses alone, I can see several instances where I meet the criteria!

I have delivered several engineering projects in my work place where I have had to manage:

• Costs
• Time scales
• Risks
• Procurement
• Work to be carried out by external departments

Although I have no direct reports I believe I have plenty of material to meet the requirement for C3. I also make suggestions my colleagues on how to achieve their professional registration which may count towards C3. 

In your opinions, do you believe this would be enough to meet the criteria? 

FusionControlEng: 

In your opinions, do you believe this would be enough to meet the criteria? 

This is a tricky question as you are asking for opinions based on sketchy information. However, I personally would go as far as to say ‘very probably’. The competence is “Lead teams and develop staff to meet changing technical and managerial needs” so if you are delivering the projects there will almost certainly be changing needs that have to be managed. I would also say that providing suggestions to colleagues on how to achieve professional registration is an example of developing staff to meet technical/managerial needs (provided the advice was appropriate and correct).

One further thing that I would suggest is it would be worth requesting help from a PRA (Professional Registration Adviser - look in the Professional Registration area of the IET website) as there may be other areas of UK-SPEC where you have many examples but haven't realised it. A PRA can talk you through the requirements and ensure you understand what is being sought.

I wish you success with your application.

If I were doing it today, “Providing specialist knowledge, guidance and input in your specialism to engineering teams, engineers, customers, management and relevant stakeholders” would be the nearest option for me, working as I do in a consultancy of two engineers.

The way I often put it to candidates (acting as a PRA) is “how do you make sure that other people understand and carry out your technical decisions”. So you may well not be managing them - possibly the majority of engineers work in matrix management organisations where the line manager, project manager, and technical authority are three different people, or as Alex says are consultants  - but if you make a technical decision there will be activities you need to do to make sure that it is carried out correctly. Explaining it, possibly visiting site to check things are being done correctly, requesting feedback from tests or trials etc. Providing technical mentorship to junior staff - even if they work for another department or another company - is part of this too (and is just a good thing to do anyway). All this can be your C3 competence.

What you need to show is that you don't just take a technical decision and rely on “the organisation” to make it happen. (Or indeed just do everything yourself.) A key part of being a CEng is taking the responsibility to manage that technical decision through to delivery. Oh, and also to consider what happens afterwards (feedback, lessons learned etc). To my mind this is what the C competences are trying to ensure is in place.

Cheers,

Andy

Thank you all again for you feedback! I have also sought advice from a PRA and have come up with the following for C3 for my role

• During the development and implementation of the serial to Ethernet solution of the Remote interface, I coordinated and sought input from members of the organisation to speed up development and reach the end goal of commissioning the system. These individuals and their roles in the project were as follows:
  • Electronics Graduate – Rolled out my modification to the PLC ladder programmes, this enabled me to concentrate my efforts on administerial and design aspects of the project. This also gave the graduate a grounding knowledge of PLC programming which is required in a control and instrumentation environment. I provided the graduate with feedback on what they did well, potential future pitfalls and what they can improve on. [C3]
  • IT Technician – Terminated the ends of the Ethernet cables into a managed switch. I needed to advise on how this should be done such as leaving a free cable for testing and debugging purposes. [C3]
  • IT Engineers – I organised various meetings with the organisation’s IT department to get input on the best practice on integrating the Remote Interface into the JET’s OT (Operation Technology) system. This involved delivering a system that is Robust, secure and in line with the organisations IT policy. [B2, C1, C2, C3]

I realised that C3 is as much about seeking professional advice as it is about providing professional advice. I always find it hard to strike the balance between not writing too much whilst not being tenuous. I have still to show this to the PRA to get their feedback