Is Car Maintenance CPD?

Could be CPD for the EngTech level?

How would you report the time 30 min CPD?

Seems very very interesting...

Hi guys,


Cheers for the answers. I have a clearer understanding of what constitutes CPD now.


Yours Sincerely,

Mitchell

I'm just going to add my two penn'orth even if Mitchell is sorted - as I'll bet others have wondered this.


Personally I think it's a about the "P": the question is whether what you've learned has added to your professional knowledge, understanding and skills, which is the point of CPD after all. So, although I've been adding to my woodworking skills quite a lot this year I wouldn't personally count that as CPD as it's unlikely that they're skills that will help in my professional role (although never say never!) However, my visit to a school last week to talk about engineering I could possibly count as CPD because it's all helpful communication skills which do come in useful in the day job.


When I was an early career engineer I did learn a lot of fault finding skills from mending my own cars, and in the process discovered why it is a really silly idea to use a lump of metal which will inevitably rust as common negative return point for a 12V system, both of which certainly did come in useful in the day job.


So I'd qualify Maurice's post a bit - it has to be up to you, but the guideline is - has it made you a better (or at least slightly wider skilled) professional engineer? If in doubt, try this question: is there an area of UK spec which you're a bit weak on for your current role OR for a potential future role which doing what ever you did will help with? If so, it's CPD.


People get really hung up on CPD, which is a shame since it's actually really easy for the vast majority of engineers to capture many, many hours of it - if you learn something new relating to your professional life from a conversation at the coffee machine, or from reading a document, or from working on a slightly different project gives you CPD. For my work, if I could be bothered to write it all down I could probably capture something like 10 hours every week!


(It gets much easier as you get older - when you're younger there are two categories of information: stuff you already know, and stuff that's irrelevant. As you get older and more experienced you realise just how much you don't know that is important and useful, which makes it much easier to find new interesting stuff to learn all the time  Oh dear, I'm turning into my dad...)


Cheers, Andy

Just to add my two cents worth to Andy' reply.


The professional part of CPD is all about the knowledge and experience you gain, that's useful enough to aim for professional registration, but more importantly, get you a better paid job.


After all, there's your amateur who's takes a keen and professional approach to their hobby, e.g Astronomy; and then there's your professional engineer who does it for the money.


CPD is about the enhancement of knowledge for the paid engineer.


And now for, a fist full of dollars more. 

If everyone did their CPDs online, year in, year out; then it stands to reason that the IET is investing a lot in technology - data servers and storage devices- either in house or rental.


Which ever way, it is certainly an expensive investment. And of course, anything that's expensive at a recurring rate will mean someone will have to foot the annual bill. Guess who that is? Or guess who's annual subscription fees are going up?


There are CEng and IEng registered engineers (in addition to other members) who have resigned or are thinking of resigning from the IET and EC, because they either cannot keep up with the annual subscription charges, or cannot see the justification for the annual rises.


Registered engineers doing their annual CPD earn the same as non-registered engineers. Doing your CPD is ultimately both a waste of time and resources. But in the words of one of Elvis Presley's song: "wise men say, only fools rush in" to madcap ideas. 

An interesting view as ever  A few points of disagreement:

Doing your CPD is ultimately both a waste of time and resources.

I assume (or hope) you mean "logging your CPD on the IET system" rather than doing?


Back to the main point, the IET's pretty clear that it's up to members whether they use the online system or not, if they do use it it will be kept up as it's obviously a useful service and hence worth the money, if they don't it'll get dropped. So that's ok! There's no problem with members keeping their CPD by using their own Excel spreadsheet, writing with a quill pen in a leather bound notebook with vellum pages (assuming they're not vegan), engraving it on stone slabs, or what ever they want.


But the big problem is that historically the majority of engineers have kept no record at all, mea culpa (I keep saying that!). It's pretty awful that we say that the PEIs keep a register of professional engineers when the only evidence they actually have that those engineers are still competent is that they keep paying their fees and any misdemeanours haven't yet been found out such that they get thrown out! To really add value to industry the PEIs should absolutely be ensuring that those registered on their books are still competent, and didn't give up engineering and start running a sweet shop as soon as they got their CEng. Hence, although I seem to be a bit of a lone voice here (because everyone hates doing it), I think without evidence of CPD then professional registration statuses are pretty worthless.


So much though I am against the IET investing in computing power per se (I'm not worried about the fees, they're still ridiculously cheap compared to other professions, but our overall global use of computing power does seem to be becoming a non-negligible factor in climate change*), I think this is quite a good use of it.


Oh, and I don't see CPD as increasing earning power, I see it as not losing it. The world keeps changing, so if you're not changing with it you become of less value - perhaps not running to stand still, but certainly walking to stand still, and running to get ahead!


But apart from those points I 100% agree with your post


Cheers, Andy


* Don't get me started on Bitcoin mining. Subject for another thread...

Missed one:

Registered engineers doing their annual CPD earn the same as non-registered engineers.

Absolutely true. But companies responsible for mission-critical systems can (in principle) use their engineers professional registration as evidence of competence, which means that it is an advantage for those companies to support their staff being professionally registered, which makes staff already professionally registered attractive to those companies. (This is why I have never personally paid any fees to the IEE/IET, my employers have always done it.) So it doesn't increase pay, but it does increase employability.


But if the PEIs don't get their acts seriously together about CPD then the consequence will be that people like me, who are assessing the competence of companies' staff, will be thinking ever more seriously about whether professional registration is really telling us anything useful.


P.S. Anyway, both members and non-members regularly do scramble to find evidence of CPD. It's that bit at the end of the CV we struggle with in job applications where we all wonder which courses we did when. Now if only we'd kept a nice record somewhere online where we could find it at a moment's notice

Edited for the fact that my laptop deleted a part of what I had originally typed!


Andy,

As so often, full agreement with you on all points.  I would add a little more though. It is damned hard work keeping up the online system - it is hugely demanding.  I did have a valiant attempt to engage with it at the end of last year and early this year, however, it was such hard work, so time consuming, that I stalled.  I think it's also worth noting that, to a large extent, much of what I did was retrospective for what my CPD activity had been, rather than forward planning (I did do a little of that, but little is the operative word).  


Having said that, dealing firstly with your point that, for the IET to truly demonstrate that it is keeping up engineering standards, there should be a form of demonstration that engineers are at least maintaining their competence, or furthering it, and if there is no record, how can they do that? Taking that in combination with my point about the retrospective nature of what I did, then maybe that could be an optional approach available - a simple log of CPD undertaken, rather than the rest of the "paraphernalia" inherent in the online system?  And yes, for that, I would frankly prefer to simply log it either in a spreadsheet, or just in my calendar and provide a summary at regular intervals of what I've entered in my calendar.


However, I think that is all well and good for a well established engineer of middle to advanced years (I'm in the latter category).  This is where Andy's previous post does touch on the issues - it certainly does become easier as you get older, and the reason for that is that you already have a wide spectrum of skills and experience which, providing you keep using them, are automatically maintained, so new CPD very much revolves around keeping pace with changing technology, or changing approaches to old problems, or simply the things that occur whilst in the midst of doing your job.  Andy is also right that it also embraces activities with others from which you learn - my role as PRI very much falls into that category as I learn from those who come for interview, but also, I have found that putting thought into how well somebody else does their job often prompts some inward reflection on how well you are doing your job - I've often found that a useful tool for self appraisal. On a similar note, I also find that teaching/presenting/advising others on engineering issues causes you to think carefully about what you are telling them and often causes a review of your own understanding as a necessary precursor. I have often found the "penny dropping" on something I thought I understood fully, but suddenly realise a new level of understanding from the very act of preparing it for presentation to others. 


So, the point of all this is that CPD tends to arise naturally, as Andy rightly pointed out, in the course of your day to day life, either in your job or in volunteering or professional support activity. As an example, taking another point made previously by (I think) Andy (though it could have been Roy Bowdler) in the more "senior" segment of my practice, I undertake a role that is usually expected to be broad and shallow rather than narrow and deep.  So, I had developed a fairly good understanding at high level of the most obvious technological development relevant to me - IP technology.  But then I discovered that I ended up between two different interfacing designers who were disagreeing with each other about the right approach and needed to give consideration to which one was "right" (by which I mean the best solution).  Furthermore, when the organisation that performs network integration came to do the work, day after day they came back with a lack of success - "we have not been able to bring it under management" - and each time raised a tweak required to overcome it.  My reaction - why on earth didn't I know this previously?! I got so frustrated with this that I decided it was no longer sufficient to be broad and shallow, that I needed deep too - hence I am now self-studying for CCNA, the Cisco basic accreditation.  I know I've posted this previously, as Mehmood responded about it, but in this context, my point is that issues arising at work drove the decision to do this.  I didn't get to it from an annual (or other interval) reflection of my development needs. My reflection is as simple as "do I have the understanding to do the work I have to do". 


So, for me and others in my position (which clearly includes Andy, and probably many others of you) recording what I've done (not forgetting the many quite small things that Andy mentioned arise during the natural course of your engineering activity) would be sufficient, and providing a summary of this to the IET would demonstrate what needs demonstrating. 


However, where I think the online system - or something else that achieves the same thing - comes in is at earlier stages in your career where development is a much more operative word.  You may have already attained a basic level (which you presumably have if you're a member, and most definitely have if you are registered at any level), but this is where Mehmood's comment about improving earnings comes in - if you are at that earlier career stage, you want to aim to progress.  This doesn't necessarily arise naturally out of the work that you do - it may do, but there's no certainty of it.  And unless you force yourself into a process where you do review where you are, what you've achieved, what you want to achieve and consciously think about what you need to do to achieve it, then you can end up drifting around, or not making any progress at all - or at the very least, not as much as you owe to yourself. In this situation, having a regular process which focuses you on doing this review and making a specific plan for your CPD is a useful discipline for self-improvement.  Some may manage this naturally without needing such a process (and that will be because they are doing it unconsciously all of the time anyway) but I don't believe that's true of many, and there is a risk of lacking focus, in which case a system that forces that discipline is very useful.  


For many employees, this takes place already jointly with their employers in the form of annual reviews/one to ones, etc.  It doesn't generally happen for those who work as contractors. But even even those who do this as part of their employers' systems, some employers do it better than others.  If they do it well, it is not enforced by the employer, it is simply the employer facilitating the employee to develop their own needs, goals and plan for action.  However, too many either only give this lip service, or they use it as an opportunity to inflict their preconceived plan on the individual - and it isn't necessarily the best plan for the individual. Worse still, in some cases, it is no more than a mechanism for controlling salary reviews! 


So, after all of this, for those who are at this stage in their career, I think the question has to be "is there already a workable and acceptable regular review system in place which meets their individual needs?" If the answer is yes, it should be sufficient to submit the record of that process.  If not, then the individual needs another mechanism, and they may be able to implement their own - but need to do a little reading to identify the key components - "where am I now?" What have I done well, what not so well?  Where do I want to go next?  What do I need to do to do so?  This is where the IET online tool could come in.   It's there as a service to members, they can use it, or they can look at it, understand the process, and implement their own system based on that process.

Hi Roy,


Totally agree, a few other thoughts...


Taking the "counting hours" to an extreme: attending an IET event, sleeping or chatting through it, and then picking up a CPD certificate is NOT CPD. I say extreme, but I have seen this happen over and over again. We, as a profession, need to be clearer that CPD is about outcomes not process. An hour reading (say) New Scientist and being genuinely enthused and inspired by one or two articles in it is valuable, just turning up to and ignoring a LN event is not. "Ah, but how do you measure it?" - it's called management! You cannot measure people's development in the same very simple numerical way that you can measure (say) the voltage on a charging battery, but a good manager will know when someone's value to the organisation has increased.


Which also emphasises the point that management CPD is not only relevant, but is absolutely vital for any engineers who are likely to end up supervising other engineers!


On similar lines: in any reasonably run company CPD will get measured, but not using IET tools. The engineer that insists on doing the same job the same way year after year  - "that's what I do, that's what I'm trained to do, that's what you pay me for" - will find themselves the first one out of the door come a round of redundancies. A company full of those engineers (and I've seen a few) is heading for bankruptcy. I'm certainly no fan of "new is always better", but the engineering world is always developing and no company or organisation can afford to ignore it - at the very least their staff need to understand what the competition is doing and why. So to really understand what makes good CPD an excellent start is to talk to the engineering leaders at successful innovating companies and find out how they spot their staff who are developing - and how they support their staff who are struggling to develop.


From my point of view (others may disagree) if an engineer bounds into the office talking knowledgeably in equal measure about artificial intelligence, 5G, the music being premiered at the Proms, how the Albert Hall acoustics were adapted to manage it, the reasons for the increased (or slower) ball speeds at Wimbledon, the way those speeds are measured, and the problems they're having maintaining their car then as an employer I wouldn't bother asking them for CPD certificates. Alternatively if an engineer needs coercion to attend a training course for a piece of software which they've hitherto refused to use ("because I haven't been trained on it") then again I won't bother asking to see their CPD certificate - I want to see them actually using the software!


Of course how we manage this as an external organisation, who can only afford to take a brief sample of such engineers' development, is much harder. But measuring random hours is not the answer. The CMI take a different approach which I rather like, they randomly pick Chartered Managers a few years after accreditation and ask them to provide evidence of what new things they have achieved in their work. So measuring real outcomes. But I do appreciate that many engineers find themselves (accidentally or deliberately) in positions where they may not often have opportunities to put new skills into practice.


This is really getting quite interesting...


Cheers,


Andy