Achieving Chartered Engineer status is a career milestone. You’re recognised as attaining a certain level of professional competence and commitment to the discipline. But like all milestones, it’s just a marker on the journey not the destination. Excelling as an engineer requires a lifelong commitment to learning and developing your competence and skills. So here are some thoughts on a what a few next steps might look like:
- Find a mentor. It’s always useful to have a mentoring relationship (formal or informal) with at least one other experienced engineer, whom you trust and respect, and can continue to learn from.
- Keep learning. Competence is completely dependent on your knowledge and how you apply that knowledge through practice. How do you gain and apply new knowledge? One way is to continue studying the subject – don’t just rely on quick answers through internet search engines – read some books! I’ll post some recommendations for your bookshelf.
- Make presentations. Find opportunities to present things you’ve worked on or are working on. Lunch and learns, local IChemE branch events, management presentations, guest lectures at your alma mater….all help you reflect on what you’ve learned, reinforcing the knowledge and giving you fresh insights as you try and communicate those concepts clearly to others.
- Solve a problem. There are all sorts of opportunities lurking in the place you work to solve problems that either, no-one else has noticed or others have tried and failed. Find something and work on it. And importantly write it up – you’ll find the act of writing will help you think through the problem, ask more questions and lead you to dig deeper to get a solution.