Applying for the Migration Skills Assessment and CDR preparation for the Engineers Australia has proven to be a more difficult task than can be firstly imagined. One of the most difficult parts is definitely the CDR Summary Statement preparation. As the EA have become stricter, the essential information to prove your skills competency needs to be both precise and sufficient in order to succeed. Hence, and due to popular demand, we are providing an additional Summary Statement guidance to assist you with your CDR application process.
General information on CDR Summary Statement
The general notion is that the CDR Summary Statement represents a combined summary of your Career Episodes. When presented in the Summary Statement they are categorized in different sections, as follows: Knowledge and skills base, Engineering application ability, and Professional and personal attributes. The assessor (EA) utilizes each of those SS parts to authenticate your skills presented in the respective Career Episodes. The evidences of your skills are spread over the Career Episodes and the references to them validate your competencies. That said, any point that is missed in the SS will lead to your competencies not proven and possible rejection. Hence, the SS preparation becomes a very important step for your CDR due to its usage in the assessment process.
The first step you need to do is to consider the description of all the indicators that are important to your Occupational Category. These can be found in the MSA Booklet on pages 32-36 for Professional Engineer. Read them carefully as they are the first guidance on what you need to present. While doing this initial evaluation you need to go through your already prepared Career Episodes. This is to confirm that you have covered all the chief parts in the Career Episodes, that are to be indicated in your SS.
If a part is missing, or not well described, it will not be presented in the SS properly. If that happens take a step back, and return to your Career Episodes, so as to fill in all that is missing. Parts related to Engineering design are especially important for your CDR. These parts are mostly presented in the second part of your SS – the Engineering applications ability which is the core part of your SS.
Another wide-ranging rule is that apart from demonstrating all the competencies in your Career Episodes you need to make sure you have covered as many indicators as you possibly can. This goes for each Career Episode, as each will need those indicators for the SS. Furthermore, the very first element (PE1.1) may possibly pass with just one indicator, whereas for the first and third parts of the summary statement (Knowledge and Skills Base and Professional and Personal Attributes) our advice is to cover them with at least two indicators for each element.
Additionally, the second part of the CDR summary statement (Engineering Application Ability) should be covered with at least three indicators for each element. Leaving the SS with insufficient indicators is a fast way to get your CDR rejected; and remember that the most important part of your SS is the second part – this is where the design activities and related activities are summarized.
Now let’s return to the Summary Statement basics and look into each one of them carefully.
Parts of CDR Summary Statement
The CDR Summary Statement (SS) consists of three general parts: Knowledge and Skills Base; Engineering Application Ability and Professional and Personal Attributes.
The most general part of the summary statement is the first part: Knowledge and Skills Base. Here you do not have to go into much details of either your engineering skills or design work. This general part displays that you have sufficient engineering knowledge and that you are able to apply it in your work.
Thus, keep the design experience and technical details of your work for the second part of the summary statement and just keep it general in this first part.
Thus for this first part you should present your research work, expertise in key areas, theoretical understanding, aptitude to conduct numerical analysis, your ability to use software tools, and finally that you can comply with existing engineering codes and standards. These is the proof that you, as an applicant and engineer, have a valid basis to be evaluated upon.
Continuing with the Sections now, in order to present them in more detail and with further instructions on how to deal with them.
Element 1.1: Comprehensive, theory based understanding of the underpinning natural and physical sciences and the engineering fundamentals applicable to the engineering discipline.
This first element of the CDR summary statement has much importance as it starts your case, so consider it closely.
This part requires one indicator to be filled in, and it relates to the broad engagement of your engineering discipline. What this includes is your fundamental or basic engineering comprehension, showcased with universal practical skills. These skills are to be presented as applied to analyzing and solving engineering problems, development of solutions for those problems and taking into account a wide inquiry during these processes.
In order to sufficiently illustrate these skills you need to use your Career Episodes, and extract notions on the engineering fundamentals presented there. Here are some indicative examples for filling the indicator:
1.) My conceptual understanding of Heat Transfer engineering in relation to oil plant safety, led me to the development of a modification on the piping network arrangement that would increase the efficiency and safety of operation of the processing unit.
2.) In all three career episodes, I demonstrated my understanding of the underlying physical sciences knowledge. While working on the projects, I used my electrical engineering knowledge and expertise to tackle several technical challenges. Also, by following professional and methodological approach, I managed to complete projects on time.
3.) During my work in the presented episodes, I often had to deal with physical science factors such as mass and basic functions, interaction of mechanical elements concepts, etc. I demonstrated that I possess the required understanding and knowledge to cope with my work on various projects.
Section 1.2: “Conceptual understanding of the, mathematics, numerical analysis, statistics, and computer and information sciences which underpin the engineering discipline.”
What is needed in this second element of the summary statement is your knowledge of particular basic principles related to your engineering field. These relate to numerical and statistical analyses, computer and information knowledge and mathematics in general. These are the basics of each professional engineer and they are used in your analysis and assessment processes. They are thus needed so you can foresee any eventual problem, assess it accordingly and suggest a model or system that will deal with them and provide quality solutions.
The only indicator description related to this second element of the first table of the CDR summary statement can use examples of your systematic usage of professional level mathematical knowledge and other types of knowledge as per the description in MSA booklet (page 32).
Another example is to present your aptitude to use analytical thinking through engineering investigation and your capability to use the statistical analyses in order to recognize and remove any measurement errors. Lastly you can use your competence to foresee alterations in the operational characteristics by simulating them on a PC.
A few examples on how to fill this particular indicator:
1.) Using my knowledge on Calculus, I determined the optimal size of the custom truck platform based on the size of packages and maximum allowed hauling weight.
2.) Statistical analysis of the wind forces on the bridge location revealed the critical points that needed further reinforcement.
3.) The MATLAB Simulink simulation that I set up and ran confirmed the advisability of my initial schematic approach.
4.) In my work on all my projects I have performed various technical calculations.
In the next article we are going to speak about the Sections 1.3.; 1.4.; and 1.5. of your Summary Statement.
For any further information on the CDR summary statement, or our assistance with your entire CDR preparation you may contact us via email, cdr@cdrsample.com, or by contacting us via the link on our website: www.cdrsample.com Our experts are standing by to further your CDR regardless of whether you have already started it or need a CDR preparation from scratch.
