Hi Jack,

I'm similar to others on this thread, did my degree part time and I was a lucky one that could do day release over 4 years with an HNC behind me in the good old days when part time degrees were in the hundreds of pounds per year not the thousands they are now!

Funnily enough, I have been doing some research on degree content (Level 7 / MSc) in this area, as I think in the UK we are lacking in terms of breath in the currently available courses that sufficiently cover automation / OT / C&I / I&C which are now deemed as I have read from certain employers as a critical competency / trade !

Don't get me wrong I think in terms of competency building completing an E&E BEng(Hons) degree is the right thing to do but you will need to top it up for sure.

Check this out from the states https://www.careeronestop.org/competencymodel/competency-models/automation.aspx

When you look at Tier 5 I believe our degrees lack that breath. You only need to look at Senior C&I Engineering jobs and the current degrees don't go into enough detail on 5.4 to 5.6. Also note 5.7 being Ind 4.0 will start to become popular as MES/ERM integration is driven harder and harder and some degrees might do a bit in this space although using virtual instruments is a bit of a stretch in my opinion.

To truly get the competency that most industry needs I think you will need either short courses from ISA or EIT to supplement any degree to ensure you have the required skill set. Also with the tie up between machinery safety / functional safety and cyber security (5.5 to 5.6) these competencies are going to be minimum standard whether it be product engineering or systems engineering.  

This is the frustrating thing when it comes to apprenticeships as mentioned, where there is a clear employer demand. With all the trailblazer groups, the IfATE quango at the helm and all these others involved in technical education to ensure L&D delivers for employers, the only viable degree apprenticeship as you are considering Level 6/7 that "sort of matched" the automation competency model was known as PA7 https://www.gambica.org.uk/static/uploaded/5c245446-3874-4933-9c9453628417f388.pdf . 

This has completely failed with not a single entrant onto the apprenticeship because it was never marketed correctly, was too complex to deliver and still in opinion had those gaps I identified above. So all that levy money has gone up in a puff of smoke! this is money you could have used if the apprenticeship standard delivered for what you needed without you putting your hand in your pocket working with your employer.

On a slightly brighter side, there is another Level 6 standard CTSE https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/apprenticeship-standards/control-technical-support-engineer-v1-0 but again I think this will fall foul of the same issue with PA7, plus it again has larger gaps than PA7 did compared to the Automation Competency model.

So with all that my advice would be:

Complete an E&E BEng Honours - make sure its on here https://www.engc.org.uk/education-skills/course-search/accredited-course-search/ although for Chartered eventually you will need further learning. Clearly you need part time and something like this would fit, I  imagine https://www.mmu.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/beng-electrical-and-electronic-engineering "this was the one I did"

Look at the professional certificate courses at EIT to supplement   https://www.eit.edu.au/?post_type=courses&s=&study-areas[]=industrial-automation-instrumentation-and-process-control

& also look at ISA CAP and their certificate programmes https://www.isa.org/certification/cap & https://www.isa.org/certification/certificate-programs

Then to wrap it all up use something like Career Manager to manage you IPD and CPD using the automation competency model as your goals with activities either from the degree modules or the top up self paced courses I identified. By doing this you will ensure you get real value from the learning as opposed to ticking boxes making you a really strong automation professional.

Lastly this is going to be an investment, it wont be cheap both in time and money but that should make you more determined to do the best you possibly can to get the pay back from that investment.

Best of Luck

Lee  

Lee Grierson said:

Complete an E&E BEng Honours - make sure its on here https://www.engc.org.uk/education-skills/course-search/accredited-course-search/ although for Chartered eventually you will need further learning.

I'm not sure the OP is still around (but let us know if you are Jack!) but just to lob in my usual bugbear - personally, as a PRA, I'd only advise worrying about accredited courses if you have a choice of two otherwise identical courses, one of which is accredited and one isn't. Generally I'd suggest putting that decision way below the others of where is it, does it cover the subjects I'm interested in, do the timings work for me, etc etc etc.

You don't need an accredited course to get CEng / IEng, it just makes the application process very very sightly easier - so marginal you wouldn't even notice. (To be honest when helping applicants with their applications I don't even bother checking now whether their degree was accredited or not - it makes no difference to how we write the application.) Far, far more important to find the course that suits you! 

Thanks,

Andy

Lee Grierson said:

Complete an E&E BEng Honours - make sure its on here https://www.engc.org.uk/education-skills/course-search/accredited-course-search/ although for Chartered eventually you will need further learning.

I'm not sure the OP is still around (but let us know if you are Jack!) but just to lob in my usual bugbear - personally, as a PRA, I'd only advise worrying about accredited courses if you have a choice of two otherwise identical courses, one of which is accredited and one isn't. Generally I'd suggest putting that decision way below the others of where is it, does it cover the subjects I'm interested in, do the timings work for me, etc etc etc.

You don't need an accredited course to get CEng / IEng, it just makes the application process very very sightly easier - so marginal you wouldn't even notice. (To be honest when helping applicants with their applications I don't even bother checking now whether their degree was accredited or not - it makes no difference to how we write the application.) Far, far more important to find the course that suits you! 

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Andy, I thought you might mention the point about the relevance of accredited degrees where a person is seeking professional registration,  but my point is that basically most if not all Level 6 courses miss important areas in automation competency, so to make things as easy as possible, he might as well pick a degree that is accredited, because he will have to "top-up" anyway, assuming professional recognition is part of his development plan. "assume it is, with him being here" 

In fact another reason the PA7 apprenticeship standard had issues was because the MSc at Lancaster was NOT accredited by any PEI and that degree was as close to those automation competencies as anyone I could find, but IfATE would not allow an EPAO to be assigned to the apprenticeship standard to effectively pass any candidates due to that reason.

For me, fundamentally though, we need to make all these activities in building competency easier. I accept a level of flexibility enables diversity and inclusivity but for most of us we just want to the know the path not have 20 different paths because life's complicated enough.

Anyway If Jack is still about, finding the "course that suits you" will still require you to determine those domains or subject areas you feel will satisfy  those ichy feet towards suitable "academic study and further learning"  and basically you'll need to do more that any UK degree currently offers, which is why I direct you to ISA or those professional certificates from EIT in Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) as a means of further learning and filling those core competency gaps. 

This implies that accreditation means very little, which would make one question why we bother with it at all.

Without some form of external validation how do professional bodies have any guarantee over the content or standard of a qualification? 

 11kv 

In answer to your first point, many universities do ask themselves exactly that! I believe my local university dropped out of the accreditation programme some years ago as the feedback from their graduates was that it wasn't adding any value.

In answer to your second point, and this is only my personal view (but from my experience as a PRA), CEng and IEng aren't typically based on what the applicant studied and learned in their degree (if they did one), but are based on what technical knowledge they've actually demonstrated in the workplace. The challenge for the assessors is determining that from a 5 page application and a 45 minute interview. If the applicant has qualifications they might help make that assessment easier - the assessors may not have to dig so deeply to find the evidence they need to demonstrate that the applicant technically understands their subject. However, particularly for CEng, since very very few applicants actually have the "exemplar" qualification of an accredited Masters, the assessors are really experienced at determining from the evidence presented to them whether the applicant understands their subject, and not having to base it on the qualification.

(And to me it also makes pragmatic sense - how many of us who've been working for 10-20 years, a typical point for applying for registration, are actually using more than a small fraction of what we learned in our degree?)

So on your second point, the answer is that if the degree is non-accredited, or if there is no degree, then the assessors will look for slightly (or for a non-graduate, much) more evidence that the candidate has gained appropriate technical knowledge, whether through their studies or work based. But it's a very small part of the application evidence, what's far more important than where they've got their knowledge from is whether they have demonstrated in their work that they have got it, and that they can demonstrate it. If I was to quantify it, I would suggest that at absolute worst case there may be an extra day's work for the applicant in adding additional evidence for Competence A. My point is that compared to potentially spending three-four years doing the "wrong" degree (one that you don't enjoy so much, or, as Lee puts very well, doesn't deliver the skills that employers want in the field you are interested in) it would be disproportionate for applicants to choose the accredited degree to save that one day of work on their application.

To turn this point around - if, in the worst case, we were to say that clearly excellent engineers are not allowed to be IEng / CEng because of a degree choice they made at the age of 17, irrespective of their track record since, I'd hope we'd agree that would be at best a bit daft.

I guess one caveat I would add is that if employers are looking for an accredited degree then it would be worth preferring one, that should be clear from a job search. I can't say I've ever come across them asking for it though.

 Lee Grierson 

Absolutely on your other points, I didn't intend that my very specific point should detract from those. 

Thanks,

Andy