An example of the FPR and DAP can be seen here.

First off you’ll need to attach your most recent appraisal to support your Development Action Plan (DAP). Achievements since your last appraisal/career review is a pretty straight forward task and it should show that you’re progressing to plan.

The short term development objectives are usually what you can achieve within a couple of years, and should tie in with your appraisal. This sets out what you plan to achieve in your current role, including reaching CEng status!

The long term career aspirations are a Ronsil job (#DoesExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin). It should highlight where you want to be beyond your current role, highlighting how you need to develop to get there. As an example this could be undertaking a part time MBA to take you into the direction of a Management/Director role.

So, in summary, (the whole point of the DAP and FPR) this is a hard piece of work that will be in front of your CEng status interviewers and drive the discussions. Treat it with care, have it critically reviewed (including peers) and make the story interesting so it leads to an interesting interview.

In my next post I’ll talk about submitting your application and interview preparation.

To celebrate Williams F1 Team winning their first F1 race since 2004 at Barcelona at the weekend, the first link in this week’s round up  is about the success of a subsidiary company, Williams Hybrid Power.

 Williams F1 Flywheel to be used on London buses

Sometimes F1 technology passes into everyday use, and the announcement that Williams Hybrid Power are supplying their flywheel kinetic energy recovery system to London buses proves that it’s not just high end sports cars that benefit from the technology. Of course high end racing cars can also use the flywheel technology, as Porsche and Audi are proving! I love how the technology can be used for different applications – although I don’t think the Audi R18 e-tron Le Mans team are worrying about a 30% saving in their fuel bills like the bus company Go-Ahead!

Paperboard Built F1 Cars

Paul Bischof creates planes, F1 cars and sportscars out of paperboard, with every single part hand crafted after painstaking research to find out the exact dimensions. I can’t remember how I came across it but it was his unveiling of a 1:10th scale Red Bull RB7  that I found last week – I am absolutely astounded by the attention to detail, and so much effort has gone into it with brilliant results. There’s also full reports on other cars Paul has created – including Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus 79 from 1978.

Science Communication Conference 2012

On Twitter I follow quite a few people involved in science and engineering, and I’ve noticed a hashtag pop up a few times over the past day or two #scicom12. Now I’ve looked into it, how I wish I was there! With the wonders of modern technology, and more importantly social media, I almost feel like I was after reading this blog post with all the details from day 1!

A microchip restores some vision

Doctors can do some amazing things, but a story in the Independent grabbed my attention as a new clinical trial has helped a blind man Chris James, get some of his sight back after 20 years. A microchip was inserted into the back of his eye, and it functions like the retina, reacting to light and sending an electronic signal that is processed by the brain. Mr James still has very limited black and white vision, and is only able to make out shapes in a small region, but hopefully these breakthrough cases lead to further improvements in the technology!

A study says painting roofs white is as green as….

…taking ALL the cars off the roads for 50 years! I’m not entirely sure the numbers quoted in the study can be accurate, but it sounds like a good idea to me! The idea is if buildings and roads were painted with a light colour, they would reflect light, keeping cities and buildings cooler and reducing the need for air conditioning (in hot places obviously, rather than the UK!). The latest study puts a global figure at 130-150billion tonnes of CO2, although it doesn’t make it clear on the time scale of this figure, it is claimed that it is the same amount of CO2 as cars create in 50 years. It is also claimed that increasing the reflection of sunlight will help reduce the effects of global warming, so it seems like a good idea to me! I haven’t read evidence to prove this so if people with knowledge on this kind of thing would like to chip in the comments then please do!

Simulating the effects of climate change

The final link from me this week is about a study that I think is long overdue with all the talk about global warming and climate change. An Australian university is going to run an experiment into the effects of increased CO2 levels, to find out the effect on living things if nothing is done to reduce carbon emissions over the next 35 years. I think this is exactly the type of research that governments should be paying attention too and using as prime examples of why we all need to be working together to reduce climate change.

The system the government is trying to implement works around low-carbon electricity (from renewable or nuclear sources) can sign long-term contracts to supply at a preferential rate, so effectively legislating against carbon emissions. While this on the face of things looks like a step in the right direction the head of climate change at WWF-UK had some harsh criticism of the legislation, while saying it was a step in the right direction he indicated that it did not nearly go far enough.

One significant implication of the legislation is that it will effectively subsidise the Nuclear Industry as it is a low carbon source of electricity, which is at odds with the coalition agreement, that there would be no state subsidies for nuclear power. Incentives have been shared across, what the government has been to classify as, low-carbon industries; though surely a worry is that the renewable industry will be stifled in the UK, compared against more established technologies.

If we take a look at the German Company Strabag’s development of serialised wind turbine installations, and the speed of that development, we can see what can be achieved focus is placed on renewable energy. This goes to highlight that while the renewable industry is growing in this country at a very healthy rate more can be achieved with greater support.

The Nuclear industry by its very nature is a slow developing beast with small evolutionary design changes targeted towards safety rather than taking revolutionary design steps. This approach being taken to ensure that we have the safest plants possible, as we are dealing with radiation sources after all. If we take a look at the development on the EPR plant at Flamenville in France we can see how slow Nuclear can progress.

The government is worried, and so should we all, about the impending likelihood of black outs and, with the nuclear renaissance faltering, needed to promote growth within the energy sector. With the energy bill they hope to achieve that, unfortunately as the bill seems to be lacking in detail in some areas and over complex in others, the likelihood of success is uncertain.

The future energy balance in the UK must be made up from a mixture of renewable and nuclear in order to be anywhere near the targets set for 2050 on reducing carbon emissions and we must develop a smart grid in order to deliver electricity to where it is needed. That is why clear direction is needed from the government on such issues and while the UK may not ever be a major contributor to global nuclear technology we still have the opportunity to be world leading in renewable/clean technology .

Also posted @ therenewablefuture.

Perhaps Summarise is the wrong word to use here. Yes the FPR sums up what you’ve achieved over your MPDS, however it’s not a simple cut and paste job on the competences. It needs to tell the story of your MPDS, in some ways it needs to justify why you should be bestowed chartered status.

So if you’re passionate about getting chartered you’ll need to approach this with the right attitude, spend as much time writing it as you did the covering letter and CV for your existing job. Giving it the same amount of critical review and proof reading too. If the FPR is an uninteresting summary of your work history it will not fill the assessors with any confidence to approve you. It also doesn’t bode well for any claims to your D competency, as interpersonal and report writing skills are core to most applications.

In my next post I will cover the Development Action Plan. An example of the Final Personal Report and Development Action Plan can be found here.

Application Form
Attacking the Application form first as this is essentially a CV for the job of Chartered Engineer. There are nine sections in total, with only two requiring any word-smithing. These two sections detail your Professional experience and your Career to date.

The first of these sections is your chance to explain your company and your role in it. Some of what is required could come from you job spec, however this make for an obviously impersonal and boring read.
The second section follows a similar suit, with the focus on previous positions held, whether they’re during the MPDS period or not. I used this section to highlight my hands on experience from a workshop role I held.
Things to consider when completing these sections are what you’ve achieved, what the outcomes were and how they were measured.

The remaining sections are self explanatory and consist of personal details, details of your two sponsors, qualifications and preferred interview location.

Sponsor Form
This is one of the easier forms as little work is required, providing you can find a sponsor and they have the time to complete it. To assist my sponsor I outlined key points in each competency that I thought were worthy of a mention. This provided some empathy as a blank sheet can be a daunting starting point.

Stay tuned for my next post where I will cover the Final personal Report and Development Action Plan.

Colonies in space

If the TV shows, films and books of 50s and 60s were to be believed, by now we should be living like the Jetson’s, flying our space-cars and getting our nourishment from pills. Whilst the images on TV and in comics were fanciful, one book went out of it’s way to make a business and engineering case for the construction of orbiting colonies.

“Colonies in Space” by T. A. Heppenheimer, published in 1977, went into extraordinary detail of both the engineering and societal requirements for building space colonies, complete with fabulous period illustrations and diagrams.

This book has now been released online in its entirety on the website of the “National Space Society“. Head over there and see what the future might still look like.

Engineering can save us from drought

James Dyson argues in the Telegraph that just as the Victorians engineered their way out of the terrible problems presented by poor sanitation via the construction of the enormous sewers, we can now engineer our way out of the disparity between rainfall and consumption requirements across the UK. He goes on to add, that we should look at our water consumption and take serious steps to reduce it.

Sustainability by numbers

David MacKay’s book “Sustainable energy without the hot air” brought some much needed rationality to the renewable energy debate. Impressively and very usefully, the entire book is available free online in a variety of formats.

More recently he’s been working for the British government to advise on energy policy. In this month’s issue of the the IMechE’s Professional Engineering magazine, he discusses his experiences in working in government and how his viewpoint has changed and evolved since working there.

Dr No killed the nuclear industry’s image

The Royal Society of Chemistry have blamed the James Bond film “Dr No” for destroying the public’s previously positive image of nuclear power. In 1962. Head over to Power Engineering International where the absurdity of this statement is tackled and followed by a train of James Bond villain puns…

Mining asteroids

I couldn’t let this week’s news round-up pass without mentioning the James Bond villain-esque-meets-Jetson’s plan to mine asteroids by a billionaire. Yet like James Cameron exploring the oceans and Richard Branson blasting off on Virgin Galactic, I’m rather glad that we have billionaires who want to push the boundaries. Head on over to The Engineer magazine to read Stuart Nathan’s amusing and positive peace on the subject.

That’s your lot for this week. Let us know what you think in the comments and check back again this time next week for another news round up!

Right, I’m off to plot my path to world and galactic domination. I shall be in my space colony if anybody needs me.

The Greenest Government Ever…

This week David Cameron remarked that this government was ‘the greenest government ever’ but with recent surveys showing that a mere 2% of the public agree with him where does the truth lie?

During the clean energy summit Cameron also praised renewable energy on the ‘vital part’ it has to play in the energy balance. However he grouped it alongside the questionable ‘cleaner’ coal, Carbon Capture and Storage, oil and gas (with a particular mention to shale gas which has no green credentials and is arguably more contributory to global warming than burning coal). He also mentioned nuclear, which people will argue that is clean energy but I have to question how something can be called clean when it produces radioactive waste that we cannot handle adequately.

Cameron came to power on a promise to make the UK the renewable technology capital of Europe, rejuvenating manufacturing with clean-tech companies, turning the tide for engineering. However after two years of virtual silence on the matter of his support, the industry has faltered and investment has often lacked by the uncertainty surrounding the UK commitment to clean energy.

The UK has a abundance of natural resources that could be harnessed in the production of renewable energy, with plentiful offshore wind, tidal, and wave potential that comes from being an island nation. The UK has had investment for some renewable projects but the sector has received no way near the support it needs to thrive. We have made good strides in offshore wind with the largest offshore wind farm in the world, the London Array, under construction off the Kent coast but progress overall has been slow with large scale wind projects, as identified in round 3 of the crown estate sea bed allocation, still at the very early stages and not looking at producing any energy before 2015 at the very earliest.

You could look at the government’s solar energy push, the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT), as a good indication that the government does have true green credentials. However most recognise solar as not the ideal energy solution in a country that receives minimal sunshine, resulting in fairly low energy returns, so maybe more of a token green gesture than a indication of green credentials. Not to mention most companies that pounce upon the FiT install low quality solar panels with poor energy conversion efficiencies.

Ok so maybe if we compare now to what came before, we can say that this government is greener, as, previous to the last Labour government, historically the green issue was seen as insignificant by politicians and many of the public. So the contenders for greenest government so far are the previous Labour government and this current Conservative government and you could arguably say that the current incumbent has done more in supporting green energy; but saying that many of the foundations for the significant projects that are underway today were laid by the previous government, along with commitments to reducing emissions.

The last government failed and this current government has so far failed to show support and reassurance to a fast growing sector that may be a hope for regenerating engineering, manufacturing industries and the economy as a whole. So yes, maybe this is the greenest government ever, but that’s not much of an achievement – yet.

Also posted @the renewable future blog.

Rural leccy = lights & telly

Harry Hutchinson has written a blog post for ASME’s ME magazine discussing the impact of rural electrification after coming across a World Bank report from 2008. It may not be a complete surprise but it turns out the main thing people do when they get wired up is to turn on the lights and the television. Would I do anything different? Well, the computer has priority over the television, but I do like having the lights on!

Engineers and politicians: pot kettle black?

Over at The Engineer magazine blog, the Secret Engineer has been pondering why the UK seems allergic to government-led projects. Given that engineers specialise in scepticism, we may have to shoulder our share of the blame.

As much use as a concrete canoe?

Apparently a concrete canoe is very useful and the construction of them is competitive. This news comes fresh from the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, where the New York region competition took place last Sunday and was won by New Jersey Institute of Technology. Further investigation reveals that this is a long-running contest organised by the ASCE.

So when can we expect to see the ICE’s inaugural concrete kayak event?

When engineering went pro

Staying with water but this time keeping it in a structure rather than keeping it outside the structure, the IET’s E&T magazine has a great article on the difficulties faced during the construction of the Ellesmere canal and the long-term impact on the engineering profession.

The third industrial revolution

This week’s Economist leads with a 14-page special report as to how 3D printing and rapid prototyping might be about to change the way we consider manufacturing.

If nothing else, as the article notes, we’ll never run out of spare parts ever again.

That’s your lot for this week. Let us know what you think in the comments and check back again this time next week for another news round up!

Right, I’m off to print out some parts for my concrete canoe.

So what is software engineering? The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computing Careers website describes it as the application of engineering in software; integrating maths, computer science and engineering principles to design, develop, program, operate and maintain software.

Wikipedia has some interesting information, including that the Wall Street Journal rated software engineering as the best job in 2012!  So to explain a bit more about a specific software engineering role, Andy Hearn answers some questions about his career. Andy is a Senior Software Engineer for mission control systems and test harnesses, and currently works for Thales.

Andy, what does being a software engineer for mission control systems involve? 

It is writing from scratch test ‘applications’ to run alongside the deliverable software to automate testing of it, and to hammer it from all angles to ensure that nothing breaks.  I also implement requirements for mission control systems; multi-processor processes for maintaining and ensuring the integrity of flight and ground controls.   The actual role varies greatly on a project-by-project basis though.

What are the best and worst things about your job? 

The best thing is getting to learn and understand diverse fields (i.e. writing software that underpins the functioning of other engineering and bespoke requirements). The downside to my job is the documentation, writing instructions and keeping our ‘model’ (reverse-engineering what we have back to the design stage) up to date – as the pace of change in the code is so rapid, reminding ourselves to go back and make the umpteenth change to the model can be taxing when we have more pressing things to do!

What skills are important for your role? 

Creativity, ability to understand other fields with the minimal of information – i.e. asking the right questions to elicit all the needed information in a short amount of time, patience (especially for the more elusive bugs), and imagination perhaps – especially when trying novel ideas on what the embedded system could do, and how to achieve this within the hardware constraints.

So when did you decide to become an engineer?

It wasn’t an overnight decision (unfortunately, as that would have been much more exciting), it was a gradual realisation over a number of years that I gravitated towards problem solving, and being creative.   And the instantaneous nature of software (i.e. getting results to feed back to the development stage within seconds) appealed to that side of me.

What inspired you to follow this career? 

I made that choice quite late on, as I had to wrestle with this great dilemma (something I really don’t want to wish on anyone) whether to do go towards marine biology, or go into software and computers.  I had to decline offers for university places as I felt I couldn’t go into a degree being 50% sure of my choices.  Back when I had just done my A-Levels, these two fields (biology and computers) were quite distinct and whatever overlap they had didn’t justify me attempting to do both simultaneously (if that was even possible!).

What route did you take into engineering?

I did an HND in Computer Automation and Networking as a taster, to see if I wanted to continue with software after two years of studying, instead of ‘risking’ a three or four year degree on it (the idea of dropping out of anything never registered with me!).  After my HND I thought I’d do well by gaining some real working experience before settling on a degree in robotics, or switch career paths to biology and the open sea(!), but I got so immersed into my job that I’ve stuck with it for just over fourteen years now!

Have you had to overcome any obstacles to get to where you are now? 

No real obstacles study or work-wise:  I’ve had quite a few on-the-job training for areas outside of software such as project management, technical authoring, team-motivating skills (the latter was via courses provided by the IET).  I was able to submit a paper to the IET to gain an IEng status (being a chartered engineer eluded me as I’m prevented by contractual obligations from revealing any ‘new’ technology – that was the part between IEngs and CEngs) after a good number of years of working experience – that substituted my lack of a degree.

Do you have any advice for people considering engineering as a career? 

I think the best thing anyone can do is to experience as many different fields as they can, so they end up with a more rounded idea of what they want to do, and what is available out there.   For studying, be it degree, HND, or other courses, I think it helps to tackle this on a term-by-term basis rather than seeing it as a long stretch of 2 to 4 years.

Andy was the High Performance zone winner of I’m an Engineer Get Me Out of Here, so you can read more about his career here. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass without asking him about the event…

Congratulations on winning I’m an Engineer Get Me Out of Here! How did you find the experience? 

Thanks!  Actually, the winning itself was quite depressing as I felt there was no real difference in how we answered questions.  Despite me always “playing to win” in other kinds of competitions, the event itself, I felt, tuned into our thriving on teamwork, naturally being engineers ourselves, so the idea of others being evicted (on what appeared as on a whim of students) didn’t rest easily with me!  The event as a whole was simply fantastic, highly recommended.  Interacting with students from secondary schools has shone a nicer light on our work – we also got to learn more ourselves of the other engineering fields.

There were so many difficult, thought provoking questions. What was your favourite?

They were!  I preferred the non-engineering ones to be honest!  As they conveyed the human aspect to our roles!   Out of the engineering-related questions, from the top of my head, I think I liked the ones asking after the Raspberry Pi boards, Linux, and how we could get computers to ‘think’ for themselves!

Many thanks to Andy for sharing his story. Feel free to add a comment if you have anything to share, would be great to hear from other engineers! Over the next couple of months we have an automation engineer and building services engineer answering questions, feel free to get in touch if you would like to share your career on Developing Engineers.

Is planned obsolescence a get-out-of-jail-free card for the economy?

The first major case of planned obsolescence was in the early 20^th century with the light bulb industry. A group of the largest light bulb manufacturers was created with the sole purpose of regulating the expected lifetime of light bulbs. Before this light bulbs used to last more than 2500 hours and it was one of the main advertising highlights, but the lifetime was reduced to 1000 hours by this cartel. And that what they named themselves: The Phoebus Cartel. This reduction in average bulb lifetime resulted in people buying bulbs more often, and more hence money in the cartel’s pockets. They even fined member companies if samples from their production lines lasted too long!

Whilst this can be seen as a disease, it was also proposed as a cure, a cure for the Great Depression in the USA in the 1930s. Bernard London proposed the idea to kick start the economy, although it was never implemented.

More recently, Apple came under fire in the USA for the limited life of the iPod. They made it very hard for an iPod user to replace the battery, which meant that after 18 months of use, it was more worth it to buy the latest model rather than replace the battery.

As planned obsolescence might be economically beneficial, it has some environmental drawbacks. As products have shorter life-cycles, there are a larger number of products reaching their end-of-life and being thrown away. There has been a huge increase in disposed waste resulting from this. Obviously at the moment this is not a sustainable way of life, but we live in a consumer society and seem addicted to it. But can it be a cure for the recession that has not gone away completely? Or is it a disease that will cause countless problems for years to come?

For engineers and designers it can cause moral and ethical dilemmas. I, for one, have always been taught to design something to its full potential, and if I do not do that, am I falling below the standard of the engineering profession? Do you think engineering institutions have tackled or are tackling this issue properly?