Our Tutorial Sessions have attracted a lot of attention from the engineers applying to Engineering Australia skills assessment. Hence we will offer the full set of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement guidelines in series of these articles. In this session we will finalize the explanations and examples for the second and main part of the Summary Statement “Engineering Application Ability”.
The second part of the SS is generally concerned with presenting your ability to systematically use your engineering knowledge and skills. Consider especially the examples, which will help you illustrate your own experiences accordingly.
Professional Engineer CDR – Summary Statement: Element 2.4: “Application of systematic approaches to the conduct and management of engineering projects.”
This is another key component of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement, although it does not directly relate to the engineering skills. This part especially concentrates on the engineer’s ability to include all present side-factors in their work. These side issues and aftereffects or reactions to the standard engineering procedures do determine the courses of the projects, and are hence important to be considered. They can include, but are not limited to, the following: project planning and implementation, system design work and others.
a.) Contributes to and/or manages complex engineering project activity as a member and/or as leader of an engineering team.
The examples to be presented in the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement here relate to your activities as a leader. This includes your organization skills as well, as they will enable you to conduct the entire project process as per EA standards.
Example: Initially, I organized a meeting with my team in order to distribute the tasks and the corresponding workload equally to all of the attendees. This guaranteed a steady and unobstructed progress for the project.
Example: As a member of the R&D team, my role was to evaluate the information found and provided by the other members, and to validate its rightfulness and relevance to the project.
Example: I prepared a risk evaluation report that helped me mitigate any probable risks, and also indicated the main points that would be used for the development of a contingency plan to increase preparedness and help me address any problems quickly.
b.) Seeks out the requirements and associated resources and realistically assesses the scope, dimensions, scale of effort and indicative costs of a complex engineering project.
In this part of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement you should explain how you manage to include the implementation of all estimations of the standards, and how you calculated all the indicative costs of your projects having this mind.
Example: I studied the manufacturer’s technical manual and compared the maintenance schedule with the service logbooks to find out what should be done in the next session. Based on my findings, I developed a Bill of Quantities for the parts that should be ordered from the supplier.
Example: Each month, I performed an estimation of the required manpower, equipment, and materials for the completion of the tasks that were planned for the upcoming month. This helped me coordinate the ongoing on-site activities with the issuing of permits from the finance and procurement department.
Example: Based on the IEEE standards and technical suggestions, I calculated the required number of fuses that should be implemented in this kind of networks, in order to achieve a safely operating power network. This helped me estimate the cost for the acquisition of the components beforehand.
c.) Accommodates relevant contextual issues into all phases of engineering project work, including the fundamentals of business planning and financial management.
This part is mostly concerned with your planning process and how it relates to your business and financial planning and management of activities. So, examples in this part of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement are dedicated to correlations of these two aspects and should be presented accordingly.
Example: I established a project planning cycle consisting of the review, revise and the modify phase. This cycle was repeated every month, so the project was always staying on track and in accordance to any changes in the requirements.
Example: The project planning was ongoing and under formation at all times, as I collaborated closely with the financial department in order to stay in touch with the latest market trends that helped me steer the R&D activities to more profitable areas.
d.) Proficiently applies basic systems engineering and/or project management tools and processes to the planning and execution of project work, targeting the delivery of a significant outcome to a professional standard.
Examples for this part of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement need to present your abilities and efforts to adopt and improve the production and preparation process by applying your engineering knowledge on the standards and analyses of the work.
Example: By applying a Kepner-Tregoe analysis, I successfully replaced job activities that weren’t as efficient as others could possibly be, and justified each item replacement with the corresponding numerical rating data.
Example: I introduced the Six Sigma set of techniques in the company, helping the manufacturing plant work more efficiently without investing anything from the available financial resources.
e.) Is aware of the need to plan and quantify performance over the full life-cycle of a project, managing engineering performance within the overall implementation context.
This part relates to your planning activities to be presented in the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement. Thus you should present examples that illustrate how you made efforts to quantify and manage the project engineering force for their better understanding and improvement of overall performance.
Example: I first quantified the project’s goals, and then explained the equivalent effort that corresponds to each member of the personnel. This way, employees could fully understand what their personal goals where and how to reach them.
Example: I used Kanban boards combined with lead and cycle times data to quantify the performance of each employee and each department individually, so that I could adjust the resources engagement sector to achieve a better overall performance.
f.) Demonstrates commitment to sustainable engineering practices and the achievement of sustainable outcomes in all facets of engineering project work.
The final indicator in this SS element is basically concerned with sustainability and your determination to make the optimal choices in your projects in that respect. So, examples regarding any part of the engineering work you did to increase sustainability of your work, practices, but also outcomes, are welcomed.
Example: Instead of transporting the waste materials to a special treatment plant and paying for the services to two contractors, I proposed the development and implementation of an in-house waste treatment unit with enough capacity to service the needs of the plant for the next decade.
Example: I decided to use solar panels instead of petrol generators to power up the repeater substations, as their remote placement in the mountains favored the use of this kind of renewable energy resource, and lowered the maintenance and running cost by far.
This finalizes the second part and all its elements and the tutorial sessions of the Professional Engineer CDR Summary Statement will continue with third part of the Summary Statement in the next article.
Thank you for the feedbacks and comments we have received and if you need more information pertaining to your particular case or the other parts of this SS Tutorial please visit us on www.cdrsample.com, or contact us directly with the details of your CDR case via email: cdr@cdrsample.com.
