Dear Roy,

I remember that you are an IEng (if my memory is correct!).

And you are a FIET!

Will you apply for CEng? I am just curious to ask you this question and wonder what you think and reply to us! :-)

I see your English and presentation are really good!

And I think you hold senior position in The IET.

Do you want to challenge yourself to apply for CEng? :-)

Roy, your golfing and driving examiner analogies left me totally baffled, so I'll just take your quote "if you're good enough then you'r old enough" to sum up your opinion!

Roy,

On the other hand I liked your golf and driving test analogies and thought them very suitable. I think that as a volunteer PRA I understand the registration process well and so can see the parallels but others may struggle to understand.

Lee, I’m not sure whether I should thank you for adding me to the pantheon of those who have conspicuously failed to explain the issue satisfactorily, or for reminding me of my own limitations and/or the use of metaphor as a form of explanation. I’m ill-suited the first group, so I’ll accept my failure graciously.?

Professor John Uff, a distinguished Chartered Engineer who also went on to become a Barrister in his twenties, suggested in his major report that there may be three million potentially eligible professional registrants in the UK who have not chosen to engage. As far as Chartered Engineer is concerned, research has shown that only a minority of those who are potentially “qualified” have chosen to register.  Arguably they have also failed to understand? Alternatively perhaps they have and don't like the message?   


We can’t change the past, so we can only make progress from where we are.  Here is an example of another attempt to explain https://www.newcivilengineercareers.com/article/chartered-engineering-vs-incorporated-engineering/            

If it is any consolation Chartered Accountancy is also unclear https://www.icslearn.co.uk/blog/posts/2018/july/accountancy-qualifications-how-to-choose-the-right-course-for-you/


I would like to see every young person who begins a career in Engineering and Technology welcomed into our professional community. I would define this “beginning” as commencing a formal apprenticeship or enrolling on programme of study leading to our threshold of recognition or beyond.  We should then offer support and impartial advice about career development.  As these people gain employment experience and opportunities they will pass a threshold that we have codified as an Engineer or Technician. We should help to validate and recognise that.  We want our terminal threshold for the most fully developed Engineers (CEng) to be benchmarked at post-graduate standard and we don’t think that competence can be achieved without circa 4-5 years in employment, so it is rare to find anyone under the age of 25 and common to find Chartered Engineers aged 25-30.      


At present, most Professional Engineering Institutions don’t offer “impartial” advice, they seek successors in their own image, which for them is as an elite fraction of engineers, based on early academic selection and subsequent specialisation.  This model has some merits, but it leaves many gaps, where there isn’t an attractive proposition to a competent person of good character. On the more negative side it also helps to create a narrative based on academic snobbery, in which anything other than Chartered Engineer or a prescribed pathway towards it is diminished and disrespected.  


The IET has certainly made progress with our emphasis on competence and  packages of support such as “Signature” and “Advantage”, but I would like us to make more. We still accept assumptions based on the unreliable ground of selection by teenage aptitude for complex mathematics and scientific theory. Because most Engineers and Technicians disengage with academia by the age of 23, it is in my opinion premature to place them into silos by that time.  


Perhaps we should just invite every 25 year old Engineer or advancing Technician to participate in a professional review? At that point I would like to see three options “Engineer”, “Chartered Engineer” and “development feedback”.  I wouldn’t mind an option like “master technician” to emphasise the importance and value of professional technicians.

I’m sorry if some people might think that this is either complex or simplistically utopian. Yes it does mean that if “you’re good enough you’re old enough”. Our standards have only ever been intended as a threshold on which to build a career further.


Engineers and Technicians will become optimised for different roles at different speeds, depending on aptitude, commitment and opportunity. Our role should be to nurture them, by offering stretching but achievable goals, relevant to employer's needs. If that requires something beyond “proficiency” then we should be discussing that, not trying to aggrandise CEng at the expense of other professionals. Fellowship is an obvious contender. Are we using that in the right way?        

Looking back, with the benefit of my PRA and Mentoring experience, I could probably have achieved Chartership (if I'd been interested then) at the age of 27 given good advice, and could have sailed through at the age of 29. As my career had had a few false starts by that point, the age range 24-25 seems perfectly reasonable.


Simon mentions Chartered Manager. The CMI magazine regularly describes 25 year old company directors for significant businesses. That's just as challenging (for the examples I'm thinking of) as CEng - in many ways more so.


Personally I see three reasons why we don't see more 25 year old CEngs, sort of as alluded above:

1. Lack of interest within that age group

• Lack of understanding of the wider professional role amongst early career engineers

• Poor advice from employers, particularly the idea that you must be a manager (or at least project manager) before you can apply

I'm going to let others debate point 1, I know why I wasn't interested until my mid 30's but everyone's different.


Point 3 I know the IET is trying to address, but it shouldn't underestimate the huge amount more it needs to do!


Point 2 is the one I'm particularly interested in, and I think ties in well with Roy's thoughts. As I repeatedly say, one of the huge benefits of the professional registration process is - or should be - that it makes the candidate think about their holistic role as an engineer. As I've just posted somewhere else, engineering operates within the wider society, and showing that engineers can think beyond the screen in front of them and consider their colleagues, customers, and beyond is what makes a fully rounded professional engineer. Which is what the registration grades capture. Wouldn't it be good if as well as recognising 50 year old engineers for what they've learned through bitter experience (and through getting it badly wrong at everyone's expense) we encouraged graduate engineers to start developing these wider skills from day 1 of industrial experience? 


Or, to flip it around, for the graduate who immediately decides to dive straight into project management, making sure that they make a continuous effort to keep in touch with the technology they are managing? 


I suppose that supports the IMechE model of continuous review and benchmarking against the relevant professional reg criteria over a period of 2-3 years up to registration, which could start immediately post graduate or (I assume) during undergrad work experience or during an apprentice programme. So we can end up with 25 year old engineers who are innovative, have a sound technical basis, but are also actually able to talk to (and listen to) someone outside their own discipline! (Is the IMechE model I'm think of "MPDS"?)


Now there's real value the IET could add to the world of engineering. Personally I think the formal IMechE model is too cumbersome for many employers, particularly small employers. However, far more effort in promoting Mentoring / PRA services to very early career engineers should have significant benefits for everyone - engineers, employers, customers and wider society. 


Coming back to Simon's point of "how many managers are CMgr" - in my experience very few. Most of those I meet are consultants who need that extra accreditation. (Of course it might just be that they're the ones that go to CMI meetings - it's great fun at these watching the consultants all hoping to find clients and just finding other consultants! I have an evil sense of humour sometimes.) A somewhat similar tale to my experience of CEngs. Which is a shame - for both groups - as the rest are missing an opportunity to look outside the narrow confines of their day job and gain wider skills and knowledge. At whatever age. 


Here's a dream. The norm to be that all engineers / technicians hold one of the professional registration grades at the age of 25.


Cheers,


Andy

Andy,

I think your points 1 and 2 are actually linked. The reason there is a lack of interest in that age group is probably because of the lack of understanding of the wider professional role amongst early career engineers.

Another point worth considering is how information are engineering students (university, college, etc.) given about professional registration, never mind the sixth form students choosing their career. I have to admit that I was blissfully unaware of CEng registration until I started on a graduate scheme and others on the scheme were talking about their intention to gain CEng and then leave (though admittedly many who said that were still working alongside me in the same company quarter of a century later....). I was by that time pushing 30 (having had a different route to a degree but having come through an industry where registration was not common). It still took my manager a while to persuade me to submit my application as I wanted to be sure I had enough experience to be confident I would be successful - in retrospect he was probably right that I could have applied several years before I did.

The IMechE system (MPDS - Mentored Professional Development Scheme) has some advantages over the IET approach as it requires candidates to self assess and complete quarterly reports, but in other respects I find it too restrictive as I tend to tell candidates that they should be reporting what they are doing but the frequency of reporting needs to align with what they are learning - a scheme where they are spending a few weeks in each of six different departments probably needs much more frequent reporting than a year long stint in one department, but the MPDS model treats both the same. At work we use the IMechE approach, partly because the Mechanical Engineers make up the largest group but probably mainly because the IMechE provide Mentor training for free.

I agree about promoting mentoring/PRA services but it needs to be done from two sides - promote the availability and advantages of using the services but also encourage newly registered engineers to volunteer for these roles so that the increased uptake can be accommodated.

Alasdair

Yes, I nearly mentioned we need more young PRAs and Mentors! (My train arrived at Paddington so I needed to come to a close.) Thanks for adding that, I think it's very much a "virtuous circle" - the more the average age of the registered professionals is driven down, the more the average age of PRAs and Mentors - and indeed Council - will hopefully also be driven down and the more representative the IET is likely to be of practicing engineers, which should attract more recent graduates...


Personally I'm not that keen on MPDS, similarly to your feelings I think it can result in false targets being set just to achieve targets (and then embarrassment all round when they're not met because the candidate has been asked to work on something different), but I think there's the germ of an idea there - the idea that there is a regular questioning of whether early career engineers are making sure they're developing all the professional registration competences. (Needs their managers to buy into this as well!)


Yes, I only know about it because my company put me through the IMechE mentor training because it was free! (IET please note...) Although I believe IET Mentor training is free to IET Mentors, just not to internal mentors on company schemes.  


Cheers, Andy

Hi Andy and Alasdair,


I've read your comments with interest, especially around developing engineers and mentoring - in large part because following a brief secondment in Registration & Standards, I'll be heading back to look after the candidate support services (in IPD and Mentoring) after the Easter break.


Career Manager allows for self-assessment, in a similar way as MPDS, although the IET do not have a formal monitoring of this the IMechE do in part because of the restrictive nature and wider audience that the IET support and the increased number of candidates that we see with non-exemplifying qualifications that therefore have to undertake some element of work based learning along side their competence development.  Candidates can still use Career Manager in this way, and I would be interested if you think there would be benefit in providing more structure to this, or more guidance on this.


In terms of mentor training, I may be wrong but my understanding on the free mentor training that the IMechE offer, is around how the Career Developer system and MPDS system work rather than mentoring skills training and understanding of professional registration.  As Career Manager, the Career Developer equivalent, is free to all members to use and there are extensive guidance documents and video tutorials on how to use this we consider this as being an alternative for mentors supporting members in the system.  The Mentor Training the IET offer is much more around training mentors in the process of mentoring, and I understand that the IMechE charge for thier similar course in this area as well.


In terms of candidates support and bringing down the age at which members apply (assuming of course that they have developed the underpinning knowledge and understanding and competences required) is something we're always looking for ideas on progressing so feel free to drop me an e-mail at: profdev@theiet.org if you have any ideas.