Harry H:

I didn't intend to insinuate that we should protect the word 'Engineer' to create market advantage or anything else detrimental;

[...]

In summary, after some consideration, I believe protecting the word Engineer might not be the best way forward; promoting professional registration and adequate education/experience is.

Hi Harry, 


Yes, my error, because posts on this are usually "the title engineer should be protected so I can earn more money" (usually disguised by the word "status") I did head off on that path rather quickly! Sorry about that.


On your other point I've pulled out, absolutely - this is why I volunteer on the professional registration side of the IET. And to be honest, I think it's less important whether engineers become formally registered, the more important part is the journey of benchmarking themselves against UKSpec.


The games designer example is an interesting one, before I moved into the development (and now assurance) of safety critical equipment for the rail industry my first career was designing very very expensive recording studio equipment. A hugely successful and creative company, still revered in its industry many years later, but when I joined (originally as a test engineer) I was the only electronics graduate - not one of the design team had a degree in electronics, let alone any professional registration. Now, with hindsight there are undoubtedly things we could have done better if more of us had followed all the provisions of UKSpec, but in terms of proportionate actions to manage risk it's more difficult whether they they would have gained real benefit against cost by pushing registration. (If the Chartered Manager standard had been around in those days, however, that may have made a big difference! Writing as CMgr as well as a CEng). Now, I do totally agree with you, and raise at every point I can, that we should be promoting UKSpec beyond just the usual utilities / safety critical industries / military. However, there needs to be a meeting of minds on this. The registration assessment process needs to appreciate that different industries have different ways that "professionalism" is presented, at present someone working in a fast moving, innovative, and low societal risk industry may feel (rightly or wrongly) they do not have a meeting of minds with a CEng assessment panel. It's not a failing (imho) of UKSpec, personally I'd have no problem now applying UKSpec to my past life (wish it had been there at the time!), but there's lots of nuances in how it's interpreted. I see this as very chicken and egg: unless we get more assessors in from these types of industries then professional registration won't be seen as relevant by them, but we won't get more assessors in unless it's seen as relevant. Make no mistake that in many industries (and even sectors of their core industries) the PEIs are often seen as out of touch "old boy's clubs". Any ideas as how to break this welcomed...


In the end, most engineering companies believe that they are perfectly competent to manage the competence of their engineering staff themselves, and have no need for third party accreditation. Where they are likely to need to justify in court that a particular engineer's judgement  can be relied on then they do use CEng. As has been discussed on many threads here, personally I believe this is why take up of IEng and EngTech is so low, for people in those roles it is far less likely that they will be making personal judgements on which the company relies to keep itself out of court - and if they are then they should probably be applying for CEng! So that's the other side of this discussion, the industry itself is not seeing that third party accreditation will do a better job then their own internal recruitment, promotion review etc process...and to be honest often they are probably right, we see one 5 page submission by an applicant for registration, and talk to them for 45 minutes, whereas their employer sees them day in and day out. (Incidentally, I was wondering what you were thinking of in your earlier post about "streamlining" the process? It already is just that, a 5 page job history (albeit carefully worded to demonstrate competences) and a short presentation.)


The Peter Principle is a book I know well and love, but unfortunately the effect is that if an an employer has reached their level of incompetence they won't realise, or accept, that they need third party help to assess their staff, whereas if they haven't reached their level of incompetence they don't need it!


But coming back up again (I'm well aware that was all a bit "down"), we're obviously both in agreement that wider application of professional registration (or at the very least benchmarking of engineers against UKSpec) would be of huge service to all practicing engineers and their employers. So how to make it happen.


Here's a radical idea: maybe we need a new PEI. One that encompasses engineers, of any discipline, who do not work in utilities / safety critical industries / military. Still applying UKSpec and working under EC remit, but providing a clearly welcoming home to those who work in the more creative and innovative, and less regulated and lower risk industries. 


Any more thoughts?


Cheers,


Andy

Harry H:

I didn't intend to insinuate that we should protect the word 'Engineer' to create market advantage or anything else detrimental;

[...]

In summary, after some consideration, I believe protecting the word Engineer might not be the best way forward; promoting professional registration and adequate education/experience is.

Hi Harry, 


Yes, my error, because posts on this are usually "the title engineer should be protected so I can earn more money" (usually disguised by the word "status") I did head off on that path rather quickly! Sorry about that.


On your other point I've pulled out, absolutely - this is why I volunteer on the professional registration side of the IET. And to be honest, I think it's less important whether engineers become formally registered, the more important part is the journey of benchmarking themselves against UKSpec.


The games designer example is an interesting one, before I moved into the development (and now assurance) of safety critical equipment for the rail industry my first career was designing very very expensive recording studio equipment. A hugely successful and creative company, still revered in its industry many years later, but when I joined (originally as a test engineer) I was the only electronics graduate - not one of the design team had a degree in electronics, let alone any professional registration. Now, with hindsight there are undoubtedly things we could have done better if more of us had followed all the provisions of UKSpec, but in terms of proportionate actions to manage risk it's more difficult whether they they would have gained real benefit against cost by pushing registration. (If the Chartered Manager standard had been around in those days, however, that may have made a big difference! Writing as CMgr as well as a CEng). Now, I do totally agree with you, and raise at every point I can, that we should be promoting UKSpec beyond just the usual utilities / safety critical industries / military. However, there needs to be a meeting of minds on this. The registration assessment process needs to appreciate that different industries have different ways that "professionalism" is presented, at present someone working in a fast moving, innovative, and low societal risk industry may feel (rightly or wrongly) they do not have a meeting of minds with a CEng assessment panel. It's not a failing (imho) of UKSpec, personally I'd have no problem now applying UKSpec to my past life (wish it had been there at the time!), but there's lots of nuances in how it's interpreted. I see this as very chicken and egg: unless we get more assessors in from these types of industries then professional registration won't be seen as relevant by them, but we won't get more assessors in unless it's seen as relevant. Make no mistake that in many industries (and even sectors of their core industries) the PEIs are often seen as out of touch "old boy's clubs". Any ideas as how to break this welcomed...


In the end, most engineering companies believe that they are perfectly competent to manage the competence of their engineering staff themselves, and have no need for third party accreditation. Where they are likely to need to justify in court that a particular engineer's judgement  can be relied on then they do use CEng. As has been discussed on many threads here, personally I believe this is why take up of IEng and EngTech is so low, for people in those roles it is far less likely that they will be making personal judgements on which the company relies to keep itself out of court - and if they are then they should probably be applying for CEng! So that's the other side of this discussion, the industry itself is not seeing that third party accreditation will do a better job then their own internal recruitment, promotion review etc process...and to be honest often they are probably right, we see one 5 page submission by an applicant for registration, and talk to them for 45 minutes, whereas their employer sees them day in and day out. (Incidentally, I was wondering what you were thinking of in your earlier post about "streamlining" the process? It already is just that, a 5 page job history (albeit carefully worded to demonstrate competences) and a short presentation.)


The Peter Principle is a book I know well and love, but unfortunately the effect is that if an an employer has reached their level of incompetence they won't realise, or accept, that they need third party help to assess their staff, whereas if they haven't reached their level of incompetence they don't need it!


But coming back up again (I'm well aware that was all a bit "down"), we're obviously both in agreement that wider application of professional registration (or at the very least benchmarking of engineers against UKSpec) would be of huge service to all practicing engineers and their employers. So how to make it happen.


Here's a radical idea: maybe we need a new PEI. One that encompasses engineers, of any discipline, who do not work in utilities / safety critical industries / military. Still applying UKSpec and working under EC remit, but providing a clearly welcoming home to those who work in the more creative and innovative, and less regulated and lower risk industries. 


Any more thoughts?


Cheers,


Andy