CPD is a normal part of a career for every professional engineer, and InstMC is happy to provide support to enable you to obtain maximum benefit from managing your personal development. It is part of your professional responsibility as a member of the Institute that you maintain your CPD records.

How do I manage my CPD?

A key feature of CPD is that each professional engineer takes responsibility for their own development. You decide what training or knowledge augmentation you need, and then identify suitable solutions. These may be available in-house from your employer, or from InstMC.

At one level CPD involves keeping skills and knowledge up to date, in an environment where technical advances and regulatory changes are the norm. Examples of CPD activities here may be training courses, conferences and workshops, or they may involve web-based learning and social media forums, or simply reading a relevant journal article.

CPD is also a useful tool for planning your career progression, identifying gaps in your expertise that you can plan to fill by appropriate training and networking in order to continue along your chosen development path, from student to senior practitioner and manager.

InstMC runs a range of training courses and events through local sections and nationally that can contribute to your CPD, and you will find details on the Events section of this website. We also have two peer-reviewed journals available on line to members. There are also a set of Special Interest Groups you can join free of charge that have their own networking arrangements.

At the early stages of a career you will probably be interested in developing your technical expertise, and you will want to attend specific training courses, networking events and workshops.

You can learn more about CPD in our Guidelines and Policy Statement

Planning and recording your CPD

InstMC provides a free web-based tool, mycareerpath, where you can record your CPD activity and reflect on its value. We encourage members to take advantage of mycareerpath as a service that is specially designed for professional engineers. But if your employer operates their own CPD scheme you may prefer to use that, or any other suitable method that allows you to plan and record your progress.

CPD Audit

As part of our commitment to professionalism, every year we randomly select a sample of members and ask them to submit their CPD records for audit. The audit is carried out by experienced assessors who are senior members of the Institute, and they will provide feedback to you with suggestions where appropriate. This is not an examination which people pass or fail, and we do not keep records of assessors’ comments – it is a service to members to help them get the maximum benefit from the CPD activity. Nevertheless it is a requirement of our Bye Laws and of the Engineering Council that members co-operate by submitting their records for audit when requested.