Time to Knock IEng on the Head

Hi Peter,

Just wondering what you're thinking of here? In the UK at least I can't see any way for the majority of "implementation" engineers (don't get hung up on that word, best I could think of in a coffee break!) to show third party recognition of their professional status.


As I've said many times before on these forums, but here goes again, I find that employers in certain industries find they need to justify the competence of their engineers who take final sign-off responsibility for risky projects, so they grudgingly support CEng. For the rest of their workforce they believe they can make their own judgment of competence; and, frankly, often believe (rightly or wrongly) that they can do this better than the institutions.


Personally I completely disagree with this attitude - when I was recruiting I would have loved to see candidates coming through with IEng and EngTech, with that evidence that someone has considered whether they approach their work professionally. The only way I can think of to start changing this attitude is to lobby government to ensure that at least for publicly (or semi-publicly) funded contracts a strong preference will be given to companies that ensure all their technical staff are registered at the appropriate level. As part of the quality assurance programme. And that will increase the gene pool for private industry to call on; again when I was recruiting there was no point calling for IEng / EngTech because there's so few out there - chicken-and-egg.


Cheers,


Andy 

Hi Peter,

Just wondering what you're thinking of here? In the UK at least I can't see any way for the majority of "implementation" engineers (don't get hung up on that word, best I could think of in a coffee break!) to show third party recognition of their professional status.


As I've said many times before on these forums, but here goes again, I find that employers in certain industries find they need to justify the competence of their engineers who take final sign-off responsibility for risky projects, so they grudgingly support CEng. For the rest of their workforce they believe they can make their own judgment of competence; and, frankly, often believe (rightly or wrongly) that they can do this better than the institutions.


Personally I completely disagree with this attitude - when I was recruiting I would have loved to see candidates coming through with IEng and EngTech, with that evidence that someone has considered whether they approach their work professionally. The only way I can think of to start changing this attitude is to lobby government to ensure that at least for publicly (or semi-publicly) funded contracts a strong preference will be given to companies that ensure all their technical staff are registered at the appropriate level. As part of the quality assurance programme. And that will increase the gene pool for private industry to call on; again when I was recruiting there was no point calling for IEng / EngTech because there's so few out there - chicken-and-egg.


Cheers,


Andy