Professional development is a continuous process of learning and improvement. It plays a crucial part in achieving and maintaining engineering competence. Anyone wishing to be registered with the Engineering Council must demonstrate competence and commitment through the professional review process.

Professional development generally takes place in a working environment and builds on knowledge and understanding acquired through formal education. However, it is not necessarily separate from education and the two processes may be integrated, for example in work-based degree programmes or Advanced Apprenticeships.

What our Standards say

UK-SPEC and the ICTTech Standard set out the required standards of competence and commitment for each professional registration. They also:

• include examples of the sort of activities that could demonstrate that the required standard has been met
• emphasise the achievement of outputs defined by competence and commitment statements
• support progression within the registration structure
• recognise that professional development in the workplace can be integrated with meeting educational requirements for registration
• stress that professional development is a continuous process throughout one's career