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EC UK Quality Assurance Committee on CPD requirement

Former Community Member
Former Community Member

Quality Assurance Committee on CPD requirement



Published: 01/11/2018

 



All Engineering Council registrants are committed to maintaining and enhancing their competence, which means undertaking Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

From 1 January 2019, licensed members will be required to sample their registrants’ CPD and sampling activity will become part of the licence review process.
Professionally active registrants who persistently do not respond to or engage with requests for CPD records from their institution risk removal from the Engineering Council Register.


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    In my humble opinion; “continuous professional development”, begins from the start of your career. It is just the everyday process of being intellectually curious and recognising ways in which you can add value to yourself and those who are willing to employ you in some capacity. On the whole, people who practice this will be “luckier” because opportunity is more likely to find preparedness.


    If you ask those who began their careers in engineering about “their success” you will find many different stories, for some success is defined by money, personal fulfilment, interesting work or through family or other interests.  Among high flyers; I have met many former apprentices who became senior leaders in business and one who became the president of a major country and Nobel laureate. There are many obvious examples of those whose talents were well-nurtured at an early stage and passed through the university pathway to subsequent distinction. Many of us (myself included) just try to “play the hand that they are dealt” as best they can. Personally I ended up a bit “over-qualified”, but have been able to pursue a modestly successful career, with several different facets.  


    I explained in my earlier post how we have compartmentalised our “ideal” professional engineering career into; “Education” followed by “Initial Professional Development”, followed by “Professional Registration”/Recognition, followed by “Continuing Professional Development”.  I seem to remember something issued by Engineering Council some years ago by way of clarification, which went something like “Education and IPD do not necessarily have to be conducted separately and elements may be conducted concurrently”.  I also remember thinking; how hopelessly out of touch some people must be, if they need to be told thissurprise?  I don’t know if a plaque somewhere that commemorates this first tentative acknowledgement that an “apprenticeship” might be suitable preparation for a chartered type of careerwink?


    As I hope is obvious, I’m an enthusiast for life-long learning , but the missives of bureaucrats and patronising tones of those who presume to superiority on often dubious grounds, describing “CPD”, tend to  irritate rather than inspire me. I have seen far too many examples of perfectly good experienced engineers, such as those who are IEng registered, with huge amounts of valid CPD behind them, having that learning ignored and being tagged as “second class”, compared to peers of no better performance, but with some teenage academic advantages. To be even-handed, I have also come across quite a few younger engineers with excellent academic achievements and good career progress, unreasonably failed, whilst peers of no better performance succeed.


    As someone who finds themselves on the front-line of these type of issues, I believe that something needs to change and that counting CPD hours isn’t a change at all (I have in front of me an institution certificate for 100 CPD hours during 1994).


    By chance, I came across someone yesterday; A senior professional with a 20+ year career, from the “more practical” tradition of ONC/HNC in early career, passed the IEng threshold about five years in and registered IEng for the last seven. Hundreds of hours of CPD, now leading a large team including a couple of registered CEng. Sorry, still in the “second class” box! Not enough “creativity and innovation”! Bit of a smell of project management rather than design!  

    Those who want to defend the status quo and focus instead on counting CPD hours (held of no value in the situation above), may say that such situations are small minority, that every system has some imperfections and a “defect rate”. However we are dealing here with people, not widgets and we are unreasonably harming themblush. We also harm ourselves as a collective in doing so. “Zero harm” has become an increasingly popular mantra, in the corporate world and an essential part of many engineers work.      

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  • 0
    In my humble opinion; “continuous professional development”, begins from the start of your career. It is just the everyday process of being intellectually curious and recognising ways in which you can add value to yourself and those who are willing to employ you in some capacity. On the whole, people who practice this will be “luckier” because opportunity is more likely to find preparedness.


    If you ask those who began their careers in engineering about “their success” you will find many different stories, for some success is defined by money, personal fulfilment, interesting work or through family or other interests.  Among high flyers; I have met many former apprentices who became senior leaders in business and one who became the president of a major country and Nobel laureate. There are many obvious examples of those whose talents were well-nurtured at an early stage and passed through the university pathway to subsequent distinction. Many of us (myself included) just try to “play the hand that they are dealt” as best they can. Personally I ended up a bit “over-qualified”, but have been able to pursue a modestly successful career, with several different facets.  


    I explained in my earlier post how we have compartmentalised our “ideal” professional engineering career into; “Education” followed by “Initial Professional Development”, followed by “Professional Registration”/Recognition, followed by “Continuing Professional Development”.  I seem to remember something issued by Engineering Council some years ago by way of clarification, which went something like “Education and IPD do not necessarily have to be conducted separately and elements may be conducted concurrently”.  I also remember thinking; how hopelessly out of touch some people must be, if they need to be told thissurprise?  I don’t know if a plaque somewhere that commemorates this first tentative acknowledgement that an “apprenticeship” might be suitable preparation for a chartered type of careerwink?


    As I hope is obvious, I’m an enthusiast for life-long learning , but the missives of bureaucrats and patronising tones of those who presume to superiority on often dubious grounds, describing “CPD”, tend to  irritate rather than inspire me. I have seen far too many examples of perfectly good experienced engineers, such as those who are IEng registered, with huge amounts of valid CPD behind them, having that learning ignored and being tagged as “second class”, compared to peers of no better performance, but with some teenage academic advantages. To be even-handed, I have also come across quite a few younger engineers with excellent academic achievements and good career progress, unreasonably failed, whilst peers of no better performance succeed.


    As someone who finds themselves on the front-line of these type of issues, I believe that something needs to change and that counting CPD hours isn’t a change at all (I have in front of me an institution certificate for 100 CPD hours during 1994).


    By chance, I came across someone yesterday; A senior professional with a 20+ year career, from the “more practical” tradition of ONC/HNC in early career, passed the IEng threshold about five years in and registered IEng for the last seven. Hundreds of hours of CPD, now leading a large team including a couple of registered CEng. Sorry, still in the “second class” box! Not enough “creativity and innovation”! Bit of a smell of project management rather than design!  

    Those who want to defend the status quo and focus instead on counting CPD hours (held of no value in the situation above), may say that such situations are small minority, that every system has some imperfections and a “defect rate”. However we are dealing here with people, not widgets and we are unreasonably harming themblush. We also harm ourselves as a collective in doing so. “Zero harm” has become an increasingly popular mantra, in the corporate world and an essential part of many engineers work.      

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