Is Car Maintenance CPD?

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

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