Incorporated Engineer (IEng) UK vs Engineering Technologist (ET) Pakistan

Mehmood,


Your posting about IQ is really interesting. There's two further issues - some areas of engineering require huge levels of "trained" diligence and knowledge of previous best practice, and some require the sort of complete new imagination this suggests. (Not necessarily exactly IQ: as an occasional member of Mensa, when I can be bothered to pay my fees, I'm very well aware that IQ measures a pretty narrow and specific type of problem solving ability. This is absolutely relevant to engineering innovation - or at least, problem solving - but certainly isn't the whole story.)


For me this is the centre of the challenge that is currently being faced over who should be eligible for CEng - "safe and experienced and steady" or "imaginative and innovative (and steady!)". My personal view is either. After all, my job (and interest) is to encourage innovation in safety critical environments, and we need both types at senior levels - working together and respecting each other - to achieve this.


Back when I were a lad the guideline used to be that if you worked hard you got a 2.2, if you were brilliant you got a 2.1, and if you worked hard and were brilliant you got a 1st. I'm not sure how much that still applies - but I do 100% agree that it is much harder than many would suggest to correlate with absolute certainty that "spark" (call it IQ or whatever) with any particular qualification level.


And I could not agree with you more about continue learning. This is an odd thing, it seems to be related to attitude rather than ability. Some people decide that they've worked to graduation and that's it, they've finished studying. Others, irrespective of their underlying formal education, are just fascinated by what's around them and keep learning. I - at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man - don't see how you can be an effective engineer with that first attitude. I would love to see CPD tightened up as a really stringent requirement for maintaining professional registration, at any level. (As discussed elsewhere, not CPD through turning up to, and sleeping through an IET seminar, but often just through doing different things in the day job, talking to peers about what they're doing, etc etc etc)


How we measure and evaluate any of this remains the big challenge...


Cheers,


Andy

Mehmood,


Your posting about IQ is really interesting. There's two further issues - some areas of engineering require huge levels of "trained" diligence and knowledge of previous best practice, and some require the sort of complete new imagination this suggests. (Not necessarily exactly IQ: as an occasional member of Mensa, when I can be bothered to pay my fees, I'm very well aware that IQ measures a pretty narrow and specific type of problem solving ability. This is absolutely relevant to engineering innovation - or at least, problem solving - but certainly isn't the whole story.)


For me this is the centre of the challenge that is currently being faced over who should be eligible for CEng - "safe and experienced and steady" or "imaginative and innovative (and steady!)". My personal view is either. After all, my job (and interest) is to encourage innovation in safety critical environments, and we need both types at senior levels - working together and respecting each other - to achieve this.


Back when I were a lad the guideline used to be that if you worked hard you got a 2.2, if you were brilliant you got a 2.1, and if you worked hard and were brilliant you got a 1st. I'm not sure how much that still applies - but I do 100% agree that it is much harder than many would suggest to correlate with absolute certainty that "spark" (call it IQ or whatever) with any particular qualification level.


And I could not agree with you more about continue learning. This is an odd thing, it seems to be related to attitude rather than ability. Some people decide that they've worked to graduation and that's it, they've finished studying. Others, irrespective of their underlying formal education, are just fascinated by what's around them and keep learning. I - at the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man - don't see how you can be an effective engineer with that first attitude. I would love to see CPD tightened up as a really stringent requirement for maintaining professional registration, at any level. (As discussed elsewhere, not CPD through turning up to, and sleeping through an IET seminar, but often just through doing different things in the day job, talking to peers about what they're doing, etc etc etc)


How we measure and evaluate any of this remains the big challenge...


Cheers,


Andy