Is Car Maintenance CPD?

Hi Maurice,


Just catching up on your post, that's an interesting point about the value of formal CPD capture for early career engineers. I totally agree, and again thinking about measuring outcomes it is, of course, much harder for early career engineers to demonstrate significant outcomes. Therefore showing that they are on the way to achieving them - by taking every development opportunity possible, in and out of work - becomes vital. As you say, post-fact reflection adds a lot of value here: "I learned in my own time how to produce database in Access, which allowed me to update one that the company was using for document control, allowing it to incorporate our new change record system and saving the cost of bringing in an outside consultant". Or (true story from my past) "I have been carrying out car maintenance on my mk III Escort and (old style) Mini. I have recently started maintaining my newer Toyota Corolla (this was in 1990), and have noticed that this car is designed to allow considerably easier access for maintenance, which in turn has made me consider whether we are making enough consideration about how we design our products not just for manufacture, but also for serviceability throughout their life".


I absolutely loathed working on the Escort and Mini. Sadly at the time I couldn't afford not to...and actually I did learn a lot.


Cheers,


Andy

Hi Maurice,


Just catching up on your post, that's an interesting point about the value of formal CPD capture for early career engineers. I totally agree, and again thinking about measuring outcomes it is, of course, much harder for early career engineers to demonstrate significant outcomes. Therefore showing that they are on the way to achieving them - by taking every development opportunity possible, in and out of work - becomes vital. As you say, post-fact reflection adds a lot of value here: "I learned in my own time how to produce database in Access, which allowed me to update one that the company was using for document control, allowing it to incorporate our new change record system and saving the cost of bringing in an outside consultant". Or (true story from my past) "I have been carrying out car maintenance on my mk III Escort and (old style) Mini. I have recently started maintaining my newer Toyota Corolla (this was in 1990), and have noticed that this car is designed to allow considerably easier access for maintenance, which in turn has made me consider whether we are making enough consideration about how we design our products not just for manufacture, but also for serviceability throughout their life".


I absolutely loathed working on the Escort and Mini. Sadly at the time I couldn't afford not to...and actually I did learn a lot.


Cheers,


Andy