New regulations to help you get the most from your CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD), in its many shapes and forms, strengthens the experience and skills of every professional engineer.

The Engineering Council has set out new requirements relating to CPD. It has asked Professional Engineering Institutions (PEIs) to begin auditing a sample of their professionally active registrants’ CPD records from January 2017, and to continue this practice on an annual basis.

These new requirements are intended to help you map and direct your CPD. At the Institution, the emphasis is not on achieving a set level of CPD hours or ‘points’, but approaching – and recording – CPD as an ongoing, developmental aspect of life as a professional engineer.

Those whose CPD records are audited may ask to receive feedback and support about making the most of CPD activities, such that the planned and/or undertaken activities are tied to, and support, a planned goal.

To help registrants make their CPD records more easily available for audit, the Institution’s online recording tool, Career Developer, is undergoing significant improvements to make it more user-friendly. Career Developer enables all members to log their CPD activities. The enhanced system will allow you to record your CPD historically, or to set up a plan to work towards key goals. It will have improved flexibility, reflecting how people work in different ways, depending on where they are in their career and what their career goals may be. The new Career Developer is due to launch in June.

The Institution recommends that, where possible, Career Developer is used to record CPD, for several reasons:

• Career Developer stays with you throughout your career, even if you change employer.
• The CPD Assessment Committee, with your permission, can access the relevant year’s records for audit direct from Career Developer, so no further action is required from you.
• Career Developer is the natural progression after Initial Professional Development tools such as MPDS.
• Using Career Developer can help you stay focused on your long-term career aspirations.

Penny Taylor CEng FIMechE FWES, Chair of the CPD Assessment Committee, explained further aspects of the changes, how they benefit members and what members will – and won’t – need to do.

She said: “As a member, you have already committed to keeping your knowledge and skills up to date through planned professional development, as explained in the Institution’s Code of Conduct. The only change, therefore, is that from January 2017, you may be chosen to have your CPD records audited from the previous calendar year.

“We ask that you regularly record what you do as CPD (the number and type of activities) and carry out some reflection on what you have learned and how that helps you in your professional development. We provide Career Developer as a tool for you to use.

“Your CPD submission will only be viewed, in confidence, by trained CPD Assessors, who are volunteer corporate members of the Institution, and the CPD administration staff. It has always been the case that commercially sensitive information or confidential documents should not be included in your CPD records.

“This new CPD policy is also relevant to all members who consider themselves to be ‘active in the profession’, through roles such as Institution or STEM volunteers; or by attending engineering lectures or reading industry publications. Members who are not, at present, ‘active in the profession’ because they are taking maternity leave, or are unemployed or on sick leave, will not be asked for details of their CPD if selected for audit.

“Our aim is to inform and advise our members on how they can get the very best out of their existing CPD activities and to signpost new opportunities.”

If you have any questions about sampling and auditing members’ CPD please e-mail CPD@imeche.org.

Get started with Career Developer.