What is Continuing Professional Development (CPD)?

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CPD is your way of keeping up to date with skills, knowledge, experience and industry news.  CPD needs to be recorded and as demonstrates that you are committed to improving your knowledge throughout your career.

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You will need to manage your own CPD and when requested, send your CPD record to the ICE.

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Benefits of CPD

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• Professional pride - throughout your career, you will never stop learning.  Whether this is on the job training, undertaking courses or watching webinars, you should be constantly developing your skills and knowledge to become a better engineer.

• Client reassurance - demonstrating to clients and stakeholders that you are aware of current regulations, standards and best practice.

• Career development - you should identify your gaps in skills, knowledge and qualifications to constantly improve yourself.

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The CPD cycle

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Undertaking CPD follows the following cycle (you should do this once a year):

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1. Identify development needs - review your performance in the past year and identify any gaps in your skills and knowledge.  Using a SWOT analysis or skills matrix can help you here.  Think about your short, medium and long term goals and your 'hard' (technical) and 'soft' (behavioural) performance.

2. Create a Development Action Plan (DAP) - come up with a plan of how to meet your development needs, considering activities, resources and timescales.  For many of us, annual appraisals at work could form a good basis for your DAP.  An example DAP can be found below.

3. Record activities in a Personal Development Record (PDR) - record your CPD activities.  An example template can be found below.

4. Evaluate development activities - what have you learnt and how has this helped you in your career?

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