If you are a Mechanical Engineer and looking to apply to Engineers Australia (EA) for membership or skills assessment for migration purposes, writing a Competency Demonstration Report (CDR) is usually a mandatory requirement. The CDR comprises three Career Episodes, Summary Statement and CPD plus other documents you will need to provide. Generally, you would need to prepare the Career Episodes before writing the Summary Statement.
To write the Career Episodes for a Mechanical Engineer, you need to follow a specific structure and include relevant information to demonstrate your engineering competencies. This article serves as a guide to help you write your CDR Career Episodes for Mechanical Engineer.
Selecting projects for the Episodes
The purpose of the Career Episodes is to demonstrate your engineering skills and competencies through specific engineering projects and experiences or university education. Each Career Episode should showcase your abilities in relation to the specific Occupational Category and ANZSCO code you are applying for.
You should choose three significant engineering projects or experiences that highlight your Mechanical Engineering skills and achievements. If you are lacking sufficient engineering experience, you can use the projects you carried out during your university education such as your final year project and internship. Ensure that these Episodes cover different aspects of your work and demonstrate a range of competencies.
ANZSCO code description
The first part of writing CDR Career Episodes for Mechanical Engineer is to understand the ANZSCO code description for a Mechanical Engineer – ANZSCO code number 233512. ANZSCO codes are specific guides to help you to focus on the details of the Career Episodes. It is important to note that each Career Episode must demonstrate the duties of a Mechanical Engineer to maximize your chances of passing the EA assessment.
The duties of a Mechanical Engineer according to the ANZSCO code description include
- Planning, designing, organizing and overseeing the assembly, erection, operation, and maintenance of mechanical and process plants and installations.
- Designing mechanical equipment, machines, components, products for manufacture, and plant and systems for construction.
- Developing specifications for manufacture, and determining materials, equipment, piping, material flows, capacities and layout of plant construction and systems.
Below are examples of specific projects you might’ve undertaken as a Mechanical Engineer. Please notice that these are just some examples, projects you might’ve been involved in may differ.
- Designing and installing of HVAC systems and selecting HVAC equipment based on design specifications.
- Designing material flow process layouts and racking systems.
- Designing chiller water systems and firefighting piping networks.
- Designing and sizing air conditioning systems, grills, diffusers, exhaust ducts, and fans.
- Designing conveyor belts.
- Designing and manufacturing of robotic arm and robotic gripper.
- Designing a Variable Refrigerant Volume (VRV) hydro-box for heating the floor and solar panels for heating water in the tank.
- Designing crane systems.
- Designing horizontal and vertical rotational car parking systems.
- Designing hydraulic pump network systems and centrifugal pump systems.
- Designing heat exchangers (for example, plate heat exchangers and shell and tube heat exchangers), valves, and compressors
- Designing and developing CNC (computer numerical control) single-purpose machines (SPM).
Knowledge and Competency Demonstration
Generally, each Career Episode should have four sections: Introduction, Background, Personal Engineering Activity, and Summary. Out of these, the Personal Engineering Activity section is the most important section where you are expected to describe two competency types – engineering and general competencies.
The engineering competencies refer to design details, design calculations, and technical problems encountered during a project. The design details include the steps you followed to carry out the designs, such as the factors you considered to choose a specific design and the design process description. When describing your designs, always include the drawings you created and mention the software you used. Design examples for Mechanical Engineering are given above.
The design calculations refer to the numerical aspect of the designs and should include formulas,calculation examples, tables, simulation details, etc.
When describing the technical problems that you encountered during the projects, it is important to explain how you applied your engineering knowledge and skills to solve them. Also, you can include any related diagrams, charts, tables, etc.
Other parts of the engineering competency include the engineering standards/codes you followed such as ISO, IEC, ASTM, etc.
The general competencies include your collaboration with your team, work with contractors and suppliers, written and oral communication, knowledge and skill improvements through participation in training and carrying out research, and economic considerations.
Writing tips
Use the first person and active voice to emphasize your personal involvement. Begin sentences with action verbs. Be specific and provide detailed information about your engineering tasks, methodologies, and technical skills used.
Including technical illustrations, graphs, computations, and calculation details strengthen your Episodes. Emphasize your aptitude for troubleshooting, logical analysis, informed decision-making, and inventive methodologies. However, if you use acronyms , do explain what they mean, as the assessors may not be familiar with them.
In summary, writing the Career Episodes can be a challenging and time-consuming process. If you are busy or inexperienced, you can seek help from a professional service. At CDRsample, our team of technical writers are professionals in their engineering fields with a combined experience of more than 12 years.
We provide CDR writing services at a budget price. Our CDR writing services include writing of three Career Episodes, Summary Statement, and CPD, please see our CDR writing services here: https://cdrsample.com/cdr-services/ . Contact us today at cdr@cdrsample.com for a free consultation and free evaluation for your draft Career Episodes.
