The Principles

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skills, together with the development of personal qualities, necessary for the execution of professional and technical duties throughout a practitioner's working life.

The objectives of CPD are related to improving work related performance, enhancing career prospects, increasing the capacity for learning, encouraging participation and commitment to lifelong learning and being adaptable to, and prepared for, changes in industry.

CPD is an essential element in any profession. Failure to keep up-to-date with advances in discipline, technology and changes in legislation could have significant repercussions for an individual practitioner, a company and a professional organisation.

It is therefore important that a profession is seen to be taking the lead in ensuring all its practitioners are constantly updating their skills and knowledge in line with industry requirements.

The Institution goes to great lengths to ensure that all candidates are competent to meet the academic and experience requirements for the grade of membership applied for. Meticulous attention to the CPD requirements of all members of the Institution ensures that industry standards are maintained and individuals grow professionally.

Every Technical Member, Associate Member (as from 1 January 2004), Corporate Member and Fellow is requested to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to professional development by adopting and adhering to the Institution's policy and regulations for CPD.

Applicants for the Technical Member, Associate Member, Corporate Member and Fellow grades of membership will be required to submit a CPD Record for the previous two years. Refer to the Membership section for details of the requirements for membership applications.

This document outlines the Institution's policy for CPD, the regulations for its members, and guidance on how to plan, implement, record and monitor your own professional training and development.

The Benefits

Continuing Professional Development offers individual practitioners, companies, professional organisations and industry as a whole many benefits.

Through careful planning, implementation, recording and monitoring professional training and development activities, you, as an individual practitioner, will benefit from CPD in the following ways:

• To have documentary evidence to demonstrate commitment to your chosen profession and professional development.
• Demonstrable commitment to CPD will help enhance career development opportunities and differentiate you in an application for employment.
• To have a comprehensive and up-to-date record of the training and development activities that you have undertaken and your achievements. From this record, you can review your CPD activities in order to identify shortcomings and consider future training and development requirements to overcome this.
• The opportunity to exploit change within the profession and not be driven by it.
• To identify personal and professional skills and competencies that could be of assistance to other practitioners.
• To broaden and demonstrate your skills, knowledge, understanding and competence through participation in a range of learning experiences, individually or as part of a learning community.
• To have an excellent reference document from which you can prepare a curriculum vitae, recall details of topics that you have studied and reflect upon these for the purposes of appraisals and interviews.

Employers would also enjoy reciprocal benefits from the employment of professionals who actively participate in CPD activities. Companies who offer and endorse CPD for its employees would also receive added value in the form of:

• Recognition as a progressive company, committed to developing its human resources, which would be acknowledged by existing and future employees, its clientele and the industry in which it operates.
• Ensuring staff at all levels are aware and prepared for changes within the industry.
• Improve staff efficiency and motivation for achievement of business objectives.
• Improved client satisfaction.
• Staff may be more receptive to changes made within a business.
• Assist with the development of a company training and development plan, identification of training needs, conducting appraisals and recruitment strategies.
• Team building opportunities from employees' participation in CPD activities.
• Identification of new skills and competencies available within the pool of human resources.

In addition, those who receive services or products will also benefit from the assurance that practitioners' skills are maintained and developed following academic qualification and that competencies are monitored by a recognised professional organisation.

Policy Statement

Members of the Institution have a professional duty to develop the skills and knowledge base of themselves and other practitioners within the profession.

The Institution's definition of CPD is widely drawn and not prescriptive; so as to remain flexible enough to be relevant to all members at all career stages.

It is, therefore, for individual members to choose an approach to CPD that will satisfy their own personal and professional needs and aspirations.

Members should ensure that their CPD is managed in such a way as to be credible to other interested parties and will bring credit to the profession.

Regulations

Every Technical Member, Associate Member (from 1 January 2004), Corporate Member and Fellow of the Institution is required to prepare a CPD Plan and a CPD Record.

The CPD Plan and CPD Record will be made available to the Institution on request for monitoring purposes.

Those members who have permanently retired from practice are exempt from the Institution's CPD regulations.

Monitoring Procedures

The reputation of the Institution and its members is influenced by the professional competence exhibited by its members. It is important that competence levels are maintained throughout the profession and, where difficulties exist with identified participants, support and guidance are provided by the Institution.

The Institution will, confidentially, undertake a random sample survey of its members to monitor professional development activity.

From this random sample, members will be asked to submit a copy of their CPD Plan and CPD Record for the previous two years for review.

Those members whose CPD Plan and CPD Record satisfies the requirements of the Institution's CPD regulations will be excluded from the random sample survey for at least the next three years.

Those members whose CPD Plan and CPD Record does not satisfy the requirements of the Institution's CPD regulations will be contacted by the Education, Training and Membership Officer who will explain the areas of concern and discuss and agree means of rectifying the identified shortcomings in their professional training and development.

Where areas of concern are related to a misunderstanding of the Institution's CPD regulations or there is a genuine difficulty in meeting the requirements, the Institution will offer support and guidance where possible.

If at the end of this process, shortcomings are still evident, the member will be requested to produce a new CPD Plan to address these areas of concern in order to ensure that the member satisfies the Institution's CPD requirements. This CPD Plan will be reviewed after twelve months.

Practicing Continuing Professional Development - The CPD Plan
The following provides guidance on how to prepare a CPD Plan.

These guidelines are deliberately brief, which puts the onus on you. CPD will only work if you put in the effort and enthusiasm.

The CPD Plan addresses the following points in relation to your professional training and development:

• Where are you now? - Initial review.
• Where do you want to be in the short and long term? - Development goals.
• How are you going to get there? - Development activities.
• How will you ensure that your objectives are achieved? - Measuring a successful outcome.

Prepare your CPD Plan using the pro forma plan (Appendix 1). It should be restricted to a single sheet of A4.

Whilst your CPD Plan is tailored to your own personal training and development needs, you will improve its content and structure by speaking to fellow colleagues, managers, team leaders, personnel and training managers; learning from their successes and failures. Remember also that your employer may have a particular interest in your professional development.

You are requested to complete the Institution's CPD Plan using the following guidelines:

Where are you now? - Initial review

The basis of your CPD Plan will be what you determine as your short and long term career development aspirations and how you propose to achieve them.

Before preparing your professional training and development action plan, assess your current position by:

• o Briefly listing all of your current roles and responsibilities, areas where you have to have knowledge and experience, the level of skills and understanding required and identify changes that are likely to occur over the next two year period, or so, that may affect your capability to perform your duties.
• o Identifying what level of skills, competencies and knowledge you already have based on your past academic and professional experiences, achievements and performances.
• Where do you want to be in the short and long term? - Development goals
• From the information gathered at the initial review stage, identify what your development goals would be.
• Development goals are defined as your future training and development needs, which would take in to consideration factors such as the requirements for your current employment, career advancement, and personal and professional goals.
• Seriously consider any short and long term ambitions that you may have for developing or adapting your career. Be realistic, however, both about your ambitions and the time needed to achieve them.
• Having undertaken a self assessment to identify what your development goals would be, prioritise them. Remember that these are not set in stone, but rather as a basis on which to look for and take up relevant CPD activities as they arise.
• How are you going to get there? - Development activities
• Select appropriate development activities that you will undertake to achieve your development goals.
• The range of modes and materials available for development activities are vast and you should be sure to choose those that suit you best.

Activities that may contribute towards the Institution's CPD requirements will normally be related to the civil engineering surveying industry. However, an important part of CPD is also the development of a wide range of interpersonal and management skills that may be required during your career. Therefore, subjects such as management, communication, information technology, health and safety, finance, commercial matters, languages and community work can equally be valid topics for CPD activities, if considered necessary to your professional development.

Don't interpret CPD too narrowly and restrict yourself to the conventional training methods. Be sure to think about the resources available to you, as this will affect your choice of development activities. Training is both costly and time consuming. A CPD Plan should not be a request for unlimited training. An employer may be interested in a business case for your CPD Plan.

CPD activities may be structured, for example:

• In house courses and workshops.
• External courses and workshops.
• Vocational courses and workshops.
• Seminars.
• Conferences.
• Distance and open learning qualifications.
• Technical authorship.
• Preparation of lectures for organised events.
• Service on committees and technical panels.

CPD activities may be unstructured, for example:

• On the job research.
• Experience of new and extended technologies.
• Reading books, journals, professional magazines, technical papers and periodicals.
• Browsing relevant industry websites and participating in e-learning activities and research.
• Experience in the workplace, leading to a significant expansion of your knowledge base.

Members who are in countries or locations where structured CPD opportunities appear to be difficult to access are advised to take advantage of the wide range of unstructured CPD activities that are available to assist their professional development.

You can participate in a wide range of CPD activities available through the Institution, including:

• Reading and/or preparation of a technical article in Civil Engineering Surveyor and other specialist publications.
• Service on Institution committees and panels.
• Attendance of national and regional Institution events.
• Guest speaking at a national or regional Institution conference or seminar.
• Attendance of an Institution training course or workshop.

How will you ensure that your objectives are achieved? - Measuring a successful outcome

Consider how you will measure a successful outcome from a particular development activity against the desired development goal.

Set target dates for each of the development goals.

Refer to your CPD Plan on a regular basis to ensure that you are on course for meeting your development goals.

Remember to update and adapt your CPD Plan in accordance with changes in circumstances.

Periodic review will vary, but the Institution would recommend that this exercise be undertaken at least annually.

Practicing Continuing Professional Development - The CPD Record
The following provides guidance on how to prepare a CPD Record which is required by the Institution for monitoring purposes.

It is important that you regularly record what development activities you have, or have not, completed on a CPD Record (Appendix 2).

The aim of your CPD Record is to illustrate what development activities you have undertaken over any given period of time, what you have learnt from each activity and how it relates to your CPD Plan. The CPD Record would be used to identify any shortcomings and will influence your CPD Plan for the following period.

In order to complete the CPD Record, you would need to reflect on your performance, particularly on those development activities that you have learnt most from. Assess yourself in terms of new skills acquired, improved levels of competence, overall experience, and development of knowledge and understanding. Particular attention should, therefore, be made to sections titled 'Key Learning Points' and 'Key Benefits' on the CPD Record.

Members must be prepared to justify the learning-time claimed should their CPD Record be requested for monitoring purposes by the Institution.

Members may also participate in CPD activities of other relevant professional organisations. It is intended that the CPD records produced for one professional organisation may also be acceptable to another similar body. Equally, the information prepared for your employers training and development scheme may also be accepted by the Institution as a credible CPD Record. This would be at the discretion of the Education, Training and Membership Committee.

Practicing Continuing Professional Development - Ongoing Review
Once you have achieved your targets or circumstances require a change in your development goals, begin the CPD process again. CPD is a lifelong process of learning and development. Therefore, this CPD process is continuous.

Periodic review will vary, but the Institution would recommend that this exercise be undertaken at least annually.

ICES 401 and 402

ICES forms 401 and 402 are available to download from this website. Please click here to access and for details of how to fill the forms in.