Hi Roy,


Many thanks for that, very clearly expressed. My view is still that what you're suggesting professional experienced engineers would expect to do (or I would say, would be expected to do) is CPD in the UKSpec framework, and can be shown to meet all the requirements except point 1 (which, as I say, I think is incorrectly worded). There's nothing in this list that says it has to be "points based", my understanding is that for most of us simply presenting - as you say - results will be adequate.


It's also worth remembering that the requirements are very light, so for most of us we are not going to need to provide every bit of evidence. I can't honestly remember what the hours criteria are at the moment, but I remember when that awful letter come out last year I did use the online CPD manager, just as a test, to record what I could very quickly remember in (iirc) something like the first three months of that year. I found I had already exceed the yearly target by 2-3 times. 


It's really not onerous for a senior engineer to gather the evidence when it's needed, and personally I think this whole issue has been blown out of proportion. 


Maybe I'm wrong and the IET will impose strict draconian measures on it's senior members. But I'll bet you that pint that I'm right and that in the end no-one is going to have to do much more than send in a brief CV of "what I did this year".


Now whether this is actually an adequate approach to improving the credibility of (particularly) CEng I am more doubtful. Simply because it is so easy to satisfy these requirements. Thinking as an independent assessor: without governance of CPD (as we effectively were a couple of years ago whatever UKSpec said) a professional registration level gained many years ago didn't tell me anything very much about the abilities of an engineer today. With this pretty low level of CPD monitoring, which people already seem to be complaining is draconian, I'm not sure it really tells me much more. OK, I'm only looking at this from one point of view, but I'd suggest it's a very important point of view - it is directly related to why those statuses are legally protected. Otherwise, for many of the other reasons for getting a professional registration level, engineers might as well get it and then resign the following year - they'll still know they met the benchmark at a point. Ideally I'd like to see a re-assessment against UKSpec every - say - three years, and as you say this could perfectly well be results based. Of course it won't happen, we don't have a fraction of the resources available to do this.


Sorry about using the word "draconian" twice - poor writing style, but it's a nice word and I'm trying to send this quickly before getting started at work!


Cheers,


Andy

Hi Roy,


Many thanks for that, very clearly expressed. My view is still that what you're suggesting professional experienced engineers would expect to do (or I would say, would be expected to do) is CPD in the UKSpec framework, and can be shown to meet all the requirements except point 1 (which, as I say, I think is incorrectly worded). There's nothing in this list that says it has to be "points based", my understanding is that for most of us simply presenting - as you say - results will be adequate.


It's also worth remembering that the requirements are very light, so for most of us we are not going to need to provide every bit of evidence. I can't honestly remember what the hours criteria are at the moment, but I remember when that awful letter come out last year I did use the online CPD manager, just as a test, to record what I could very quickly remember in (iirc) something like the first three months of that year. I found I had already exceed the yearly target by 2-3 times. 


It's really not onerous for a senior engineer to gather the evidence when it's needed, and personally I think this whole issue has been blown out of proportion. 


Maybe I'm wrong and the IET will impose strict draconian measures on it's senior members. But I'll bet you that pint that I'm right and that in the end no-one is going to have to do much more than send in a brief CV of "what I did this year".


Now whether this is actually an adequate approach to improving the credibility of (particularly) CEng I am more doubtful. Simply because it is so easy to satisfy these requirements. Thinking as an independent assessor: without governance of CPD (as we effectively were a couple of years ago whatever UKSpec said) a professional registration level gained many years ago didn't tell me anything very much about the abilities of an engineer today. With this pretty low level of CPD monitoring, which people already seem to be complaining is draconian, I'm not sure it really tells me much more. OK, I'm only looking at this from one point of view, but I'd suggest it's a very important point of view - it is directly related to why those statuses are legally protected. Otherwise, for many of the other reasons for getting a professional registration level, engineers might as well get it and then resign the following year - they'll still know they met the benchmark at a point. Ideally I'd like to see a re-assessment against UKSpec every - say - three years, and as you say this could perfectly well be results based. Of course it won't happen, we don't have a fraction of the resources available to do this.


Sorry about using the word "draconian" twice - poor writing style, but it's a nice word and I'm trying to send this quickly before getting started at work!


Cheers,


Andy