Career progression and how the CPD audit can help

IMechE’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) audit offers members an opportunity to have their career development plans reviewed and helps them to sharpen their focus on the next steps

Every year, 5%  of the Institution’s professionally registered engineers are randomly selected to participate in the audit, which requires them to simply upload the past twelve months of their CPD records via the online Career Developer interface.

“The CPD process was very good in enabling me to track the progression of my career,” said 30-year-old IMechE Chartered Engineer Amer Obeid, who has recently received his feedback from the 2019 CPD audit. “It allowed me to think about where I want to go, what I want to do, and finding the route to get to that point.”

For Amer, the audit came at a crucial career junction. After years working for the oil and gas industry he realised that his passion is helping the climate, not contributing to its worsening. Last year, he therefore embarked on his second master’s degree (in addition to his Master of Aerospace Engineering from Sheffield University), this time focusing on renewable energy and green technology.

“I have been planning this career change for two to three years,” said Amer. “I realised I wanted to help fight the effects of the climate change rather than causing more climate change. I am interested in renewable energy and technology that is enabling widescale system change that will ultimately enable the UK to reach its net-zero 2050 target.”

Amer, who has recently taken up a new role as an energy and carbon consultant at Manchester-based consultancy Jacobs, said the CPD audit helped him to get clearer on the next steps in achieving his ambitions. 

“One area that I was told to focus on was defining my goals more clearly,” he said. “I think I set a very general goal to begin with but actually bringing it down a little bit more and having milestones that I can work towards, that’s better for my career.”

He encourages everyone who gets selected to have their CPD reviewed by the IMechE to take advantage of the opportunity. 

“The audit process in itself is very simple,” he said. “The system is built very well to accommodate the audit process. You make your CPD available to the audit processors, you get an email telling you that you were selected. You get some time to update your CPD records, and at the end you receive a very concise report telling you what you have done well and what you might improve. It was a good experience on the whole.” 

Amer said he believes procedures such as CPD auditing help the entire industry to move forward, by enabling the engineers to draw on the best practices and innovation from across the wide field that is modern-day engineering.