Developing Engineers

Continuing on from my previous post on the two page Final Personal Report, this post explains the second part: the Development Action Plan. This, in my opinion, is a much easier affair (all ~0.7 pages of it), providing you have a good company professional development scheme. The plan is made up of three parts: achievements since your last appraisal, short term development objectives and long term career aspirations.

An example of the FPR and DAP can be seen here.

First off you’ll need to attach your most recent appraisal to support your Development Action Plan (DAP). Achievements since your last appraisal/career review is a pretty straight forward task and it should show that you’re progressing to plan.

The short term development objectives are usually what you can achieve within a couple of years, and should tie in with your appraisal. This sets out what you plan to achieve in your current role, including reaching CEng status!

The long term career aspirations are a Ronsil job (#DoesExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin). It should highlight where you want to be beyond your current role, highlighting how you need to develop to get there. As an example this could be undertaking a part time MBA to take you into the direction of a Management/Director role.

So, in summary, (the whole point of the DAP and FPR) this is a hard piece of work that will be in front of your CEng status interviewers and drive the discussions. Treat it with care, have it critically reviewed (including peers) and make the story interesting so it leads to an interesting interview.

In my next post I’ll talk about submitting your application and interview preparation.

An Executives Summary is used throughout the business world to summarise a longer document or group of reports. Remember all those Quarterly and Annual reports you’ve submitted during your Monitored Professional Development Scheme (MPDS)? Well you now need to summarise all of those into ~1.3 pages for the Final Personal Report (FPR).

Perhaps Summarise is the wrong word to use here. Yes the FPR sums up what you’ve achieved over your MPDS, however it’s not a simple cut and paste job on the competences. It needs to tell the story of your MPDS, in some ways it needs to justify why you should be bestowed chartered status.

So if you’re passionate about getting chartered you’ll need to approach this with the right attitude, spend as much time writing it as you did the covering letter and CV for your existing job. Giving it the same amount of critical review and proof reading too. If the FPR is an uninteresting summary of your work history it will not fill the assessors with any confidence to approve you. It also doesn’t bode well for any claims to your D competency, as interpersonal and report writing skills are core to most applications.

In my next post I will cover the Development Action Plan. An example of the Final Personal Report and Development Action Plan can be found here.

In my previous post, documenting my application for IMechE CEng status, I was standing in front of what initially seemed like a paperwork monster. After four years of reporting progress via the online Career Developer / eMPDS system I nearly couldn’t bare anymore self indulgent marketing of “Brand Tom”. However we Engineers are never put off by a challenge, so I put pen to paper and commenced writing.

Application Form
Attacking the Application form first as this is essentially a CV for the job of Chartered Engineer. There are nine sections in total, with only two requiring any word-smithing. These two sections detail your Professional experience and your Career to date.

The first of these sections is your chance to explain your company and your role in it. Some of what is required could come from you job spec, however this make for an obviously impersonal and boring read.
The second section follows a similar suit, with the focus on previous positions held, whether they’re during the MPDS period or not. I used this section to highlight my hands on experience from a workshop role I held.
Things to consider when completing these sections are what you’ve achieved, what the outcomes were and how they were measured.

The remaining sections are self explanatory and consist of personal details, details of your two sponsors, qualifications and preferred interview location.

Sponsor Form
This is one of the easier forms as little work is required, providing you can find a sponsor and they have the time to complete it. To assist my sponsor I outlined key points in each competency that I thought were worthy of a mention. This provided some empathy as a blank sheet can be a daunting starting point.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will cover the Final personal Report and Development Action Plan.

In the first of the new series putting a spotlight on different engineering careers, this month the focus is on software engineering.

So what is software engineering? The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computing Careers website describes it as the application of engineering in software; integrating maths, computer science and engineering principles to design, develop, program, operate and maintain software.

Wikipedia has some interesting information, including that the Wall Street Journal rated software engineering as the best job in 2012!  So to explain a bit more about a specific software engineering role, Andy Hearn answers some questions about his career. Andy is a Senior Software Engineer for mission control systems and test harnesses, and currently works for Thales.

Read more…

As I’ve written a bit about in previous posts, over the past month I have been involved in a couple of STEM projects speaking to students. I took part in I’m An Engineer Get Me Out Of Here & also acted as a career networker at The Big Bang Fair (like Giles previously).

These events really brought it home to me how important it is for young people to be able to speak to engineers about their jobs, so that they realise there are different aspects to engineering, and that it isn’t all fixing washing machines and cars. Read more…

Welcome to our first official guest blog, written by Dr. Anna Coppel, IMechE Greater London Region SET for Sport Chair.

How often have you heard “isn’t that someone who wears overalls and fixes cars” as the response to the question “what does an engineer do?” When I hear this (and I can tell you it has been more often than I would care to share) it makes me a touch angry but determined nonetheless to tackle this common misconception. I’m not talking about challenging people who are our contemporaries, as frankly they should know better, I am talking about opening the minds of young people to the possibilities of becoming an engineer.

As I am not a politician (or a policy maker of any sort), but an engineer, the options are limited. However, with the help of organisations like the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, STEMNET and wonderful NGOs such as Portia people like you and I can go into schools and both inspire and educate young people about becoming engineers.

I have been lucky enough to be involved in a number of schools events. One event in particular seems to have caught young peoples’ imaginations and it might be something to do with the upcoming London 2012 Olympics. The event is called SET for Sport (SET is Science Engineering and Technology) and it aims to showcase the many and varied ways in which science and technology can interact with sport and how it has completely revolutionised both sports equipment and performance over the years in which London has hosted the Olympics (1908, 1948 and 2012).

Could you imagine Usain Bolt running sub 9.6 seconds without a set of spikes, starting blocks or access to top sports nutritionists, bio-mechanists and psychologists? Would Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and the other GB cyclists be at the top of their sport without the assistance of aerodynamics specialists and materials engineers? Would Oscar Pistorius be able to walk, never mind compete with able-bodied athletes on the world stage, without biomedical engineers?

Bicycle technology has moved on immensely in the past 100 years.  Modern sporting competitions are as much about the technology as they are about the athletes.

The SET for Sport schools event is a full day of off-curriculum activities aimed at year 9s (13 and 14 year olds). The tasks set range from designing a tug of war shoe and a sport of the future; to debating the ethics of whether there should be a limit to the role of engineering in sport. Each year we have also had a former Olympian as a guest speaker to talk about how engineering and science has helped them in their careers.

The event is in its fourth year and in this, its concluding year, we hope to run it across as many regions in the UK as we can. To use the momentum and interest in sport that the 2012 Olympic games have generated to try and get more young people taking STEM subjects at A-level and beyond.

The demand for STEM qualified school leavers and graduates is expected to continue to increase in the UK. So it is important that when it comes to picking their A-Levels and degrees young people are aware of the massive variety of careers which are open to them in the field of science, engineering, technology and mathematics. It’s not about fixing cars in oil stained overalls, but instead it could be designing the next generation of running shoe or prosthetic limb.

If you would like more information, or would like to be involved in the next event please contact Dr. Anna Coppel (IMechE Young Members Panel London Region SET for Sport Chair and Arup).

In the roundup of stories from the internet that I posted last week, I mentioned an engagement event called I’m an engineer, get me out of here!

The idea is students ask engineers questions, in live chats and through the website. The engineers and students are split up into different zones, based around the areas that the engineers work in.

Read more…

Tribology is one of those funny things that pervades the everyday lives of absolutely everyone who lives anywhere in the world – and yet is almost unknown amongst the general public, and more worryingly amongst many business leaders and politicians as well.  Even a lot of engineers are surprisingly clueless about it!

That’s not to say people aren’t aware of the obvious physical effects of tribology, just that very few of the people who should do, actually realise just how important the understanding and correct application of tribology is.

Read more…

As a long-time Associate Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (AMIMechE), I recently decided it was time to drop the “A” and register for Chartered Engineer (CEng) status.  Having let my Monitored Professional Development Scheme (MPDS) lapse several years ago and changed jobs since, I checked out the options for us more mature candidates on the IMechE website…  and was shocked to discover that I’d  basically have to write “Me: The Essay” (2000 words) in order to become Chartered.

It’s called the Professional Review Report and it’s the long-standing process for demonstrating that you meet UK-SPEC competencies when you aren’t on a company-accredited scheme.  Wading through pages of industry- and role-specific examples, guidance notes and instructions, it seemed the essay itself would be the biggest challenge of my career, never mind developing new technology,  running manufacturing lines or leading a project team spread over three countries.

It was only after about 1500 words and a quick visit to my newly-appointed mentor that I became aware of the New Application Process.  The main difference with the New Way is that instead of an essay with UK-SPEC competencies in the margin, there is now only one form, and you fill in examples for each competency in a logical way.  For the benefit of all non-MPDS applicants, here is the link.

As I’m not the only one to have been caught unawares by this change, I wrote to the IMechE with some feedback, and they are reviewing the advice available on their website.  If in doubt, get in touch with them directly, and good luck to anyone going for Chartership.

We often comment on how little Joe Public understands about what engineers do, but for me there’s a particular group of us engineering types who suffer more than most.  I am of course referring to that very specialist, oh so technical, scientific and dare I say ‘geeky’ breed known as, ‘research engineers’.

But actually, more often than not your average research engineer (yes, even the ones like me who ‘hide’ themselves away in old academic institutions) are not any more ‘geeky’ or scientific or technical than any other engineer!  Now that’s not to say we’re not specialists, because we very much are – but it is not our scientific or technical abilities that set us apart; what sets us apart is our focus.

Whilst a graduate in ‘industry’ will spend their first few years working on a range of projects within numerous multi-disciplinary teams, during the same time a new research engineer could well be working on one project or process or technology, and likely in a much smaller team of similarly specialised people.

The problem as I see it, is that we research engineers are unfathomably poor at communicating our work and it’s importance to the outside world. Even within the wider engineering ‘fraternity’ there’s often the false impression that research engineers are white-lab-coat-wearing scientists.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that Scientists, it’s just not who we are ok? Besides which, we prefer blue lab coats).

In case you were wondering, yes that is a chicken fillet under that big mechanical arm.  This is what a Poultry Research Engineer looks like – note the lack of white coat.

That’s why I’m always heartened to see an article like this one in The Guardian, where Anne Osterrieder (@AnneOsterrieder on Twitter) talks about ways that researchers can make their work less opaque and more understandable to mainstream audiences.  As Anne mentions in her article, social media channels such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ etc are fantastic ways of connecting with people who would’ve never even heard of you otherwise.  I mean, how many of you reading this article have ever met me before?  Do you think it likely that you were ever going to?  Probably not.

So Research Engineers, I put it to you: talk to people about your work (beyond the person sitting at the desk next to you), publicise your work (outside of professional or academic journals) and let people know why what you do is so important (beyond your family and closest friends!)