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Professional Registration UK SPEC

Written by: Charlotte Rogers
Published on: 25 Oct 2019

Professional Registration Hero Image

Becoming professionally registered demonstrates your engineering competence and commitment. The IET can help you with all aspects of your professional registration, including helping you understand the UK SPEC.

The UK standard for professional engineering competence outlines the requirements needed from you to be able to register as either an Engineering Technician (EngTech), Incorporated Engineer (IEng), Chartered Engineer (CEng) or ICT Technician (ICTTech).

There are five areas of competence and commitment that you must be able to demonstrate in order to become professionally registered.

  • Competence A - Knowledge and understanding
  • Competence B - Design and development of processes, systems, services and products
  • Competence C - Responsibility, management or leadership
  • Competence D - Communication and inter-personal skills
  • Commitment E - Professional Commitment

The difference between UK&U and competence

UK&U (Underpinning knowledge and understanding) Is the technical ‘know how’ you need to do a job well. This is usually acquired through formal study, or by taking an IET accredited course. It’s also possible to gain this knowledge and understanding through (experiential) on the job learning. Competence is a combination of knowledge, skills, attitude and behaviour which you need to perform a task to the required standard.

You do not need to hold formal qualifications in order to be able to apply for professional registration, as long as you can demonstrate your underpinning knowledge and understanding through your work-based learning, then you are eligible to apply.

CPD

You should try and complete at least 30 hours CPD a year. You can choose how you split your time and the type of activities you do but we recommend doing planned CPD such as training courses and secondments with unplanned CPD such as events and studying at home.

We recommend using Career Manager to record your CPD. Think of it as your professional home for life: you may move roles and organisations but your records will always be in one place. Plus, it’s designed to help you meet regulatory standards such as UK-SPEC and reach goals such as professional registration in a structured way.

Application Support

All professional registration applications require you to provide a supporter. It is a common misconception that your supporter needs to be professionally registered. The only mandatory requirement is that whoever supports your application must be in a senior position to you and have visibility of your engineering role (ideally your Line Manager). They do not have to be professionally registered or a member of the IET themselves. Now that is cleared up, you can focus on the more important parts of your application!

Additionally, the IET is here to offer any help you may need with your professional registration application. To make sure your application clearly demonstrates the required level of UK & U and competence, there are Professional Registration Advisors (PRA) that are available to help you with all aspects of your application. Please click here for information on how to contact PRA, industry representatives and student advisors.

Attached here is a PDF document of the UK Spec and if you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact Lucy Byrne the IET’s Registration Engagement Manager.

lbyrne@theiet.org

 (0)1438 767 307

 (0) 7936 341 416