To satisfy my own curiosity, I recently compared my declared CPD hours with the average CPD hours. For an equivalent Membership Type and EC Type, the average number of CPD hours was 113; however in comparison, the hours I had declared was a paltry 36. I sign up for the seminars and in-house training sessions where my availability allows. My question, borne out of curiosity; what is everyone else doing (which I'm not) to achieve an average of 113 hours within their declared CPD?
Can I suggest a different approach to CPD than that which is commonly taken (and which leads to questions similar to this being asked)? The purpose of CPD is NOT to get CPD "points". The purpose of CPD is so that you stay employable and trustworthy as a professional engineer. When you look at it that way around it either becomes much easier to find CPD you are doing all the time - or to identify that you are at risk of redundancy in the future (I'm being deadly serious here) because your knowledge is drifting out of date, and hence to decide what you need to do about it.
That's the whole reason CPD became part of UKSPEC, and hence a professional institute membership and registration requirement, we don't want people calling themselves engineers who are out of date with current practice in their field.
Think about it that way, and you can start to realise that if you are staying employable then you will have been keeping your CPD up to date, and it then "just" becomes a matter of thinking back over the past year and think what you learned new and how you learned it. (Many, possibly most, engineers will be achieving way over 113 hours a year.) And if you didn't, then maybe you have bigger issues to worry about than whether the IET will give you a slap on the wrist!
As my message above, I think the key is to keep it in proportion, you don't have to have learned earth-shatteringly new stuff, just new (or updated or just refreshed) to you. What problem did you have to solve which you hadn't had to solve before. Which bit of technology are you using this year that you didn't use last year. And don't forget this includes management issues, working with other staff, dealing with a client in a slightly different sector, and of course having to comply with an update to a standard or legislation.
I'll admit I hate CPD certificates with a passion (oh dear, I think the heat might be getting to me!), if I'm interviewing someone for a job I don't really want to know how many seminars they've dozed through in the last year, but if instead they've worked out some new tricks in a programming language that's made a product more reliable then I'm very interested - that's someone actively doing CPD. (Of course if they can show something they actually learned from a seminar then that's CPD, but for me the evidence is what they learned, not the certificate.)
Off to my workshop now for this afternoon's CPD (it's my day off) working out how to mend a 1970s Stylophone...volunteering at a Repair Cafe once a month gives me 48 hours CPD a year by itself - I certainly didn't know how mend rattan chairs this time last year!
Can I suggest a different approach to CPD than that which is commonly taken (and which leads to questions similar to this being asked)? The purpose of CPD is NOT to get CPD "points". The purpose of CPD is so that you stay employable and trustworthy as a professional engineer. When you look at it that way around it either becomes much easier to find CPD you are doing all the time - or to identify that you are at risk of redundancy in the future (I'm being deadly serious here) because your knowledge is drifting out of date, and hence to decide what you need to do about it.
That's the whole reason CPD became part of UKSPEC, and hence a professional institute membership and registration requirement, we don't want people calling themselves engineers who are out of date with current practice in their field.
Think about it that way, and you can start to realise that if you are staying employable then you will have been keeping your CPD up to date, and it then "just" becomes a matter of thinking back over the past year and think what you learned new and how you learned it. (Many, possibly most, engineers will be achieving way over 113 hours a year.) And if you didn't, then maybe you have bigger issues to worry about than whether the IET will give you a slap on the wrist!
As my message above, I think the key is to keep it in proportion, you don't have to have learned earth-shatteringly new stuff, just new (or updated or just refreshed) to you. What problem did you have to solve which you hadn't had to solve before. Which bit of technology are you using this year that you didn't use last year. And don't forget this includes management issues, working with other staff, dealing with a client in a slightly different sector, and of course having to comply with an update to a standard or legislation.
I'll admit I hate CPD certificates with a passion (oh dear, I think the heat might be getting to me!), if I'm interviewing someone for a job I don't really want to know how many seminars they've dozed through in the last year, but if instead they've worked out some new tricks in a programming language that's made a product more reliable then I'm very interested - that's someone actively doing CPD. (Of course if they can show something they actually learned from a seminar then that's CPD, but for me the evidence is what they learned, not the certificate.)
Off to my workshop now for this afternoon's CPD (it's my day off) working out how to mend a 1970s Stylophone...volunteering at a Repair Cafe once a month gives me 48 hours CPD a year by itself - I certainly didn't know how mend rattan chairs this time last year!
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