Institution news
David Hall knows the importance of professional development. Having worked at JCB for ten years, he now works as a railway design engineer at SNC-Lavalin having spent an intervening period at Royal Enfield Motorcycles.
This change of sectors pushed David outside of his comfort zone, but a solid technical engineering foundation, and a mantra that “engineering is engineering”, meant that he was able to quickly adjust to his new surroundings and was even rewarded with a promotion just a matter of months into his new role.
This success has not come by chance, however, as David is an avid practitioner of reflective learning and makes sure to regularly update his CPD portfolio so he can learn from past successes, and failures.
“CPD and reflective learning is a great way of capturing everything that I learn, whether that’s day-to-day learning, training courses or on-the-job training, and collating it all so that I can go back to it as a reference source at a later point,” he says. “It is so important to be able to go back and look at what you have learnt.
“Documenting your training courses and on the job knowledge is vitally important and extremely beneficial – especially if you’ve documented how you’ve gone about doing it. You can then look back and reapply things that have worked, or learn the lessons of what went wrong and tweak the process and make it better.”
David’s view is that all engineers should aspire to have a number of ways to improve their knowledge and technical skills, as it is this variety that really helps to form a polished and rounded engineering skill set.
“Having a variety of learning methods is important,” he says. “I am in control of which articles I read and learning like that, but sometimes specific on-the-job training can help focus in on the detail, and sometimes that level of detail and structure is needed.
“I normally document all of my CPD on the system and then leave a bit of time before going back to reflect on it and make sure that what I’ve learnt is being applied to my everyday work, if that is appropriate. It is a great piece of reference material.”
David says such a bank of knowledge is also a powerful tool for mentoring young and developing engineers, something he has been doing for the past three years.
“My CPD record is a great way of keeping track of what I’ve achieved and what I am proud of, and then I can go back and look over those achievements and learn from them,” he says. “Having that record is also extremely useful for mentoring new engineers, because you can look back at challenges you have faced and then help them overcome similar challenges they are facing.
“By having that reference pool you can pass on your knowledge and experience to the next generation of engineers, and that is important because passing on that experience and how you overcame obstacles gives them appreciation of what needs to be done to be a success.”
Have a look at our website to find out more about CPD reflective practice.