Continuing Professional Development (CPD)…

CPD is not going away and we all need to consider how it will impact on our employment. Taken from the Engineering Council website, the following text relates to CPD:

CPD has several purposes, which will vary in relation to your circumstances, needs and career progression. It can also take a variety of forms. At its heart is informal learning, through the challenges and opportunities of working life, and interaction with others such as colleagues, customers and suppliers, including professionals from other disciplines. This may be supplemented by structured activities such as courses, distance learning programmes, private study, preparation of papers and presentations, mentoring, involvement in professional body activities or relevant voluntary work. This list is not exhaustive and individual registrants are best placed to determine their needs and how to meet them.

The PCN certification scheme, amongst other schemes, also asks for CPD in a less direct way through documents CP16 and CP17. At the point of renewal, those holding PCN Welding Inspection certification are required to complete Part 4 of the application form PSL/57WIR, as shown below:

Part 4 – Continuing Professional Development
Please provide a brief description of the nature and duration of relevant further training (external or on-the-job), membership of a relevant professional society or attendance at events that may be considered as providing professional development during the past five years.

I have also heard a good case for relevant hobbies to be acceptable for CPD purposes – an engineer whose hobby is go-kart preparation and racing, for example. Your personal section on the BINDT website, My BINDT, is a useful place to store CPD activities. If you have a local BINDT Branch, attendance at the Branch events can also count towards CPD. Any article you read that has technical content can also be considered as CPD. You could record that you have read the article and make a brief comment on it, which would demonstrate that you have done so.

Additionally, the 55th Annual British Conference of Non-Destructive Testing is taking place from Monday 12 to Wednesday 14 September 2016 at the East Midlands Conference Centre (EMCC) and on the Tuesday there is a Practitioner Day. This will be a day devoted to tuition sessions for practitioners and several important presentations commemorating a relaunch of BINDT’s Service Inspection Group (SIG). Entrance is free and CPD points will be awarded for attendance. Please see the article to the right for more details.

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