Mehmood Birdi:

...though trying to base the human on one of the Red Dwarf characters. 

Roy Pemberton:

I think what confuses me is that I don't believe we do have a points or hours based system mandated, yet every event or activity we engage in, we get told "don't forget, you can claim x points or hours for this". Frankly, I can't remember which it is because I consider it so worthless that I pay no attention to it, but it does make me wonder if it means the Institute thinks we should be using points or hours?

Roy Bowdler:

Our thinking tends to be “top down” addressing what people with 30+ year careers behind them, should be doing. They know better than “nanny”. Our proposition should be and I think is probably trying to be; “how can we help you”? However, an impression is given of policing a requirement and of creating a paper/data chase to do so. 

Difficult. Totally agree that what is clearly upsetting the more experienced members is this idea that somehow the IET is fit to judge them, but the problem is that with the IET being the manager of registration statuses we're a bit stuck with that situation. (And I'm certainly one of those that was furious at the way CPD was communicated out last year - which is why I dove in to find what the situation actually was.) As you suggest, it's all about handling this sensitively. Alasdair, myself and many others of us who work in independent assurance have to do this all the time in our day jobs, assessing and passing judgements on engineers and engineering projects when those involved may have far more technical knowledge of their field than we do, plus we actually spend very little time with them, and yet our word is (to some extent) law. It absolutely can and does work, but it has to be done sensitively. As you say, it is a peer review, when I was a school governor the phrase was "critical friend", but there must be an element of censure as absolute last resort to retain credibility of the status. And I don't think the balance is right yet.


David - really useful posts and insight, thank you!


Cheers,


Andy

Mehmood Birdi:

...though trying to base the human on one of the Red Dwarf characters. 

Roy Pemberton:

I think what confuses me is that I don't believe we do have a points or hours based system mandated, yet every event or activity we engage in, we get told "don't forget, you can claim x points or hours for this". Frankly, I can't remember which it is because I consider it so worthless that I pay no attention to it, but it does make me wonder if it means the Institute thinks we should be using points or hours?

Roy Bowdler:

Our thinking tends to be “top down” addressing what people with 30+ year careers behind them, should be doing. They know better than “nanny”. Our proposition should be and I think is probably trying to be; “how can we help you”? However, an impression is given of policing a requirement and of creating a paper/data chase to do so. 

Difficult. Totally agree that what is clearly upsetting the more experienced members is this idea that somehow the IET is fit to judge them, but the problem is that with the IET being the manager of registration statuses we're a bit stuck with that situation. (And I'm certainly one of those that was furious at the way CPD was communicated out last year - which is why I dove in to find what the situation actually was.) As you suggest, it's all about handling this sensitively. Alasdair, myself and many others of us who work in independent assurance have to do this all the time in our day jobs, assessing and passing judgements on engineers and engineering projects when those involved may have far more technical knowledge of their field than we do, plus we actually spend very little time with them, and yet our word is (to some extent) law. It absolutely can and does work, but it has to be done sensitively. As you say, it is a peer review, when I was a school governor the phrase was "critical friend", but there must be an element of censure as absolute last resort to retain credibility of the status. And I don't think the balance is right yet.


David - really useful posts and insight, thank you!


Cheers,


Andy