Time to create a new professional registration for Engineering Technologists

Hi Simon,


The "management" issue does confuse a lot of candidates unfortunately. You certainly do not have to manage staff or projects to be CEng, although you do have to take personal responsibility for aspects of them. To take it to an extreme, you can't just design a system and say "it's nothing to do with me whether it works or not, or whether it's implemented correctly or not". You are expected to be somewhat proactive in making sure your intentions are carried out - even if they are not carried out by people working for you.


It's for reasons such as this that I would recommend for the majority of candidates that they approach a PRA (we don't cost anything and we're very friendly ). You could compare it to getting a degree, I'm sure that theoretically it is possible to pass a degree by getting the module specs from the university and taking the exams, but it's much much easier with lecturers and tutors!


On your final point, it's a question of how does anyone know - looking from outside - that you know what you are doing. Again, using the university example, it is perfectly possible to gain degree level knowledge without going to university. But then if an employer, for example, needs to know that you've got that knowledge they need to do a whole load of tests on you every time you change job - how much easier if you just had a single piece of paper to show that an accredited third party had already tested you on this! Which is why we have degree certificates. So similarly with professional registration. I assess companies for their competence - including staff competences - for my job. The staff involved don't want to be interviewed by people like me every time they work on a new project, they want a single certificate that gives some evidence that they are professionally competent (just as their degree certificate says that they were - once upon a time - technically competent).


Of course none of this is perfect, but it all helps.


Cheers, Andy

Hi Simon,


The "management" issue does confuse a lot of candidates unfortunately. You certainly do not have to manage staff or projects to be CEng, although you do have to take personal responsibility for aspects of them. To take it to an extreme, you can't just design a system and say "it's nothing to do with me whether it works or not, or whether it's implemented correctly or not". You are expected to be somewhat proactive in making sure your intentions are carried out - even if they are not carried out by people working for you.


It's for reasons such as this that I would recommend for the majority of candidates that they approach a PRA (we don't cost anything and we're very friendly ). You could compare it to getting a degree, I'm sure that theoretically it is possible to pass a degree by getting the module specs from the university and taking the exams, but it's much much easier with lecturers and tutors!


On your final point, it's a question of how does anyone know - looking from outside - that you know what you are doing. Again, using the university example, it is perfectly possible to gain degree level knowledge without going to university. But then if an employer, for example, needs to know that you've got that knowledge they need to do a whole load of tests on you every time you change job - how much easier if you just had a single piece of paper to show that an accredited third party had already tested you on this! Which is why we have degree certificates. So similarly with professional registration. I assess companies for their competence - including staff competences - for my job. The staff involved don't want to be interviewed by people like me every time they work on a new project, they want a single certificate that gives some evidence that they are professionally competent (just as their degree certificate says that they were - once upon a time - technically competent).


Of course none of this is perfect, but it all helps.


Cheers, Andy