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BEng to CEng registraiton

Hello,

I recently graduated from Lancaster University with a BEng honours degree while working full time as an electrical technician in 2016.

My experience from high school includes working as an electrician from 2007 to 2014 and an electrical technician from 2014 to 2016. I also worked as an electrician in Australia in 2017.

I recently joined a engineering consultancy in February 2018 and they are keen for their graduates to go for chartership after 4 years, however im worried i will not be able to achieve this goal as i am not educated up to MEng level. Would the next steps for me be applying for Engtech then IEng and finally CEng registration? It is really confusing as people are telling me i need to go back to University, but i cannot really afford this option while working full time also.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated with what steps to do next for me to achieve CEng status.

Thanks

Ben

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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Ben, may I first of apologise for any conflicting muddle of impressions that you may have gained from different sources.

You have developed your career, seemingly after leaving school you became a skilled technician and then through that vocation began to realise that you had an aptitude for a more academic approach and an appetite for technical and/or managerial leadership. I’m assuming that your Degree was an accredited one, but even if it wasn’t. I don’t think that you need to embark on further academic study right now. You just simply need to commit to being the best that you can be and adding value to your employer. I would anticipate that your employer has read UK-SPEC and that so have you. It gives examples in the (second column) of the sorts of things you might expect to see in an Chartered Engineer. So whatever the timescales, you need opportunities to practice these attributes, sometimes many times over with gradually increasing degrees of challenge and responsibility. This is similar to learning how to become a skilled Electrician/Technician but the skills are different and the intellectual challenges more demanding, hence the additional education and/or work-based learning expected.

This could be a very long post indeed, if I described in depth why things are so muddled.

For many years the pathway to Chartered Engineer for most people was to complete a reputable engineering degree, gain employment as a “Graduate Trainee Engineer”, often being posted round different departments for 2 years, be promoted to a “junior” Engineer then over the next 2 years grow further responsible experience under supervision, before with your employer's support applying for CEng. This remains the “normal” pattern in many sectors, endorsed by professional institutions such as IET, IMechE and ICE. Some employers are happy with a longer timescale, but some institutions and some employers strongly encourage the 4 year target timescale. The IET has tended to be fairly relaxed “come when you are ready”, anything less than 4-5 years post-graduation is exceptional, but you had plenty of work experience before your degree.

A problem was introduced in the noughties because Engineering Council decided that degrees accredited for Chartered Engineer should be 4 years long like an MEng instead of 3 like a BEng (full-time pathway). Therefore, they required Professional Institutions to demand evidence of “further learning to masters level” from aspirant Chartered Engineers holding Bachelors Degrees. Some employers committed to the “CEng model” reacted by only hiring MEng graduates, but that wasn’t practical for many employers. Often BEng graduates outperformed MEng in the recruitment process and subsequently in the workplace anyway.

People trying to give advice tend to quote Professional Institution “rules”. But in the case of, what is and isn’t “further learning”, these have never been clear and consistent across the range of professional institutions. IMechE for example required someone to study some modules at masters level. The IET wasn’t prescriptive, preferring instead to check knowledge and understanding during the CEng assessment process, other institutions demand an accredited masters, for others non-accredited was OK. Around all of this is a web of personal experiences, hearsay, rumour, interpretation and even outright mythology.

Michael related a negative experience of seeking progressive transfer between IEng & CEng , some Professional Institutions such as ICE have promoted this and I don’t know how well this has worked for their members. In the IET the “pathway” has worked quite well for some people and terribly for others. There are threads in these forums with hundreds of posts in them debating the problem. I can only apologise to anyone who feels that they were misled or suffered some disadvantage. The IEng standard does represent being a perfectly competent engineer, but it wasn’t originally designed to be a “stepping-stone” to CEng and was hastily pressed into service without due thought and preparation. There are also perfectly valid Bachelor of Engineering Degrees accredited for IEng (not at Lancaster University when I checked) preparing equally good engineers to many that are CEng accredited, but subjected to academic snobbery from some quarters. Once again I can only apologise to anyone who has suffered any unfair prejudice or detriment. I am personally trying hard to resolve this.

Michael also offered a link to an IET web-page, which is intended to help experienced engineers who find themselves needing to explain their work-based learning during the registration assessment process. The attachment explains Kingston University’s version of a “Gateways” MSc. A number of universities specialise in providing academic learning and certification through examples drawn for work experience whenever possible. I have seen early career graduates admitted to such programmes, but they are ideally optimised for more experienced professionals. The attachment is rather dated, Mike Hope recently retired and I am not sure if Peter Barrington is still associated with that programme.

Roy Pemberton mentioned Professional Registration Advisors, some companies also have in-house experienced engineers who are IET trained to help. This isn’t a perfectly consistent service, carried out as it is by an army of volunteers, but generally its useful if you recognise expert advice for what it is and don’t treat it as infallible gospel. Mehmood is offering the wise council of his long experience and perspective. I think that he, Roy P and I are all saying, enjoy your work, be as productive and effective as you can and the rest will come in due course. As Scott Said you don’t need a masters. I certainly wouldn’t advise you to prioritise one in the short-term, unless there is a really strong reason that your employer supports, it could hamper your productivity or lead to an unhealthy work-life balance. If you fancy a masters then by all means do one in future. For now just recognise the difference between “telling me back what I told you” (undergraduate) versus “these are my ideas based on my experience or research and these are my reasons for having them” (post-graduate).
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0 Roy Bowdler over 5 years ago

Ben, may I first of apologise for any conflicting muddle of impressions that you may have gained from different sources.

You have developed your career, seemingly after leaving school you became a skilled technician and then through that vocation began to realise that you had an aptitude for a more academic approach and an appetite for technical and/or managerial leadership. I’m assuming that your Degree was an accredited one, but even if it wasn’t. I don’t think that you need to embark on further academic study right now. You just simply need to commit to being the best that you can be and adding value to your employer. I would anticipate that your employer has read UK-SPEC and that so have you. It gives examples in the (second column) of the sorts of things you might expect to see in an Chartered Engineer. So whatever the timescales, you need opportunities to practice these attributes, sometimes many times over with gradually increasing degrees of challenge and responsibility. This is similar to learning how to become a skilled Electrician/Technician but the skills are different and the intellectual challenges more demanding, hence the additional education and/or work-based learning expected.

This could be a very long post indeed, if I described in depth why things are so muddled.

For many years the pathway to Chartered Engineer for most people was to complete a reputable engineering degree, gain employment as a “Graduate Trainee Engineer”, often being posted round different departments for 2 years, be promoted to a “junior” Engineer then over the next 2 years grow further responsible experience under supervision, before with your employer's support applying for CEng. This remains the “normal” pattern in many sectors, endorsed by professional institutions such as IET, IMechE and ICE. Some employers are happy with a longer timescale, but some institutions and some employers strongly encourage the 4 year target timescale. The IET has tended to be fairly relaxed “come when you are ready”, anything less than 4-5 years post-graduation is exceptional, but you had plenty of work experience before your degree.

A problem was introduced in the noughties because Engineering Council decided that degrees accredited for Chartered Engineer should be 4 years long like an MEng instead of 3 like a BEng (full-time pathway). Therefore, they required Professional Institutions to demand evidence of “further learning to masters level” from aspirant Chartered Engineers holding Bachelors Degrees. Some employers committed to the “CEng model” reacted by only hiring MEng graduates, but that wasn’t practical for many employers. Often BEng graduates outperformed MEng in the recruitment process and subsequently in the workplace anyway.

People trying to give advice tend to quote Professional Institution “rules”. But in the case of, what is and isn’t “further learning”, these have never been clear and consistent across the range of professional institutions. IMechE for example required someone to study some modules at masters level. The IET wasn’t prescriptive, preferring instead to check knowledge and understanding during the CEng assessment process, other institutions demand an accredited masters, for others non-accredited was OK. Around all of this is a web of personal experiences, hearsay, rumour, interpretation and even outright mythology.

Michael related a negative experience of seeking progressive transfer between IEng & CEng , some Professional Institutions such as ICE have promoted this and I don’t know how well this has worked for their members. In the IET the “pathway” has worked quite well for some people and terribly for others. There are threads in these forums with hundreds of posts in them debating the problem. I can only apologise to anyone who feels that they were misled or suffered some disadvantage. The IEng standard does represent being a perfectly competent engineer, but it wasn’t originally designed to be a “stepping-stone” to CEng and was hastily pressed into service without due thought and preparation. There are also perfectly valid Bachelor of Engineering Degrees accredited for IEng (not at Lancaster University when I checked) preparing equally good engineers to many that are CEng accredited, but subjected to academic snobbery from some quarters. Once again I can only apologise to anyone who has suffered any unfair prejudice or detriment. I am personally trying hard to resolve this.

Michael also offered a link to an IET web-page, which is intended to help experienced engineers who find themselves needing to explain their work-based learning during the registration assessment process. The attachment explains Kingston University’s version of a “Gateways” MSc. A number of universities specialise in providing academic learning and certification through examples drawn for work experience whenever possible. I have seen early career graduates admitted to such programmes, but they are ideally optimised for more experienced professionals. The attachment is rather dated, Mike Hope recently retired and I am not sure if Peter Barrington is still associated with that programme.

Roy Pemberton mentioned Professional Registration Advisors, some companies also have in-house experienced engineers who are IET trained to help. This isn’t a perfectly consistent service, carried out as it is by an army of volunteers, but generally its useful if you recognise expert advice for what it is and don’t treat it as infallible gospel. Mehmood is offering the wise council of his long experience and perspective. I think that he, Roy P and I are all saying, enjoy your work, be as productive and effective as you can and the rest will come in due course. As Scott Said you don’t need a masters. I certainly wouldn’t advise you to prioritise one in the short-term, unless there is a really strong reason that your employer supports, it could hamper your productivity or lead to an unhealthy work-life balance. If you fancy a masters then by all means do one in future. For now just recognise the difference between “telling me back what I told you” (undergraduate) versus “these are my ideas based on my experience or research and these are my reasons for having them” (post-graduate).
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BEng to CEng registraiton

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