CEng for BS Engineering degree holders with 6 years of experience

Question

Dear All I have BS Engineering degree in electronics along with that I have one international publication published in IEEE. In engineering profession I have 6+ years of experience in construction industry. as Electrical Engineer, Senior Electrical Engineer, Construction Manager Electrical. My area of interest and experience is in Design, Implementation, testing and analysis. Please advise me can I apply for CEng in light of above achievements. I have design and 3 major projects and I am qualify for all 5 UK Spec Competences.

davidwalker2 · Accepted Answer

Hello Muhammad, 
 From the information you provide and your profile it is not possible to say if you would be successful in an application for CEng, but you are clearly on the way to professional registration and could well have have gained sufficient experience and competence to be registered. The process of applying is relatively straightforward but does need a fair amount of time and effort. You will need to be a Member of the IET (MIET) to apply so that is the initial step. 
 Firstly, your qualification. To meet the underpinning knowledge and experience you will need a formal qualification as defined in UKSpec, but broadly, an accredited UK Masters Degree, or a Bachelors degree with further learning to the equivalent of a Masters. The further learning might be in the form of formal qualifications or the equivalent knowledge gained by work based experience. If your degree was not gained in the UK then there are Washington Accord equivalents. You are not very specific about the BS degree you have, but the IET have expert staff that can advise. 
 Secondly, read the CEng part of UKSpec in detail, matching your experience to each of the 17 sub-competences, finding projects or roles that you have been responsible for that match the examples in UKSpec. It is important when you write these down that you emphasise your personal contribution, use &ldquo;I was responsible for&rdquo; not &ldquo;we ensured that&rdquo;. Annotate the paragraphs of your application with which competence you believe it demonstrates. 
 The best way to record your experience is to use Career Manager, which can also be used to submit your application. When you have gathered together your information, ask Professional Registration at the IET to nominate a Professional Registration Advisor for your application. This is a volunteer with considerable experience in helping applicants present their best case, and will be in contact with you to advise on the content, presentation, clarity and generally make sure that your application provides the right information to have a smooth passage and present your best case. 
 I hope that this helps, 
 David

Andy Millar · Answer

Just to expand on a couple of points in David's excellent post: 
 Firstly, don't get too worried about your degree, the main point to demonstrate is that your current employment role is at "CEng level" and that you are showing the required competences for such a role. The only relevance of your type of degree is the amount of evidence you have to show for your technical competence - I think it's almost better to approach it the other way around: an accredited degree can be taken in lieu of other evidence on the technical side. But you don't actually need any sort of degree for CEng - over the last few years I'd guess about a quarter or even a third of the applicants I've helped through CEng have no degree at all. 
 And you may want to talk to an IET Mentor (or a PRA) now as they can talk you through the process. It's not practical to give much individual advice on this forum, because there's so much to look at in each case (some of which you may not want to expose on a public forum). Some PRAs only want to look at near complete applications, others are happy to help at earlier stages, but an IET mentor will always be happy to help at an earlier stage - the theory is that a Mentor helps make sure you have all the right experience, and the a PRA helps you draft the final application. 
 Some engineers achieve CEng 5 years (or less?) after graduation, some 30 years after graduation! 
 Good luck, 
 Andy

Alasdair Anderson · Answer

... and I was going through a candidates presentation for CEng interview last week and he is older than me so must be more than 40 years since graduation. 
 One thing not mentioned by either David or Andy is that you can use the self-assessment tool to check how strongly you comply with all of the 17 sub-competences and this will give you a good indication of whether you are ready to apply for CEng, but again taking Andy's point, discuss the self-assessment with a PRA for a second opinion. A good one will be a good basis for a subsequent CEng Application. 
 Very best wishes, 
 Alasdair

CEng for BS Engineering degree holders with 6 years of experience

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