What is Chartered Engineer CPEng?

The Chartered credential, CPEng is the highest available technical credential for an engineering professional. It’s nationally and internationally recognised as a measure of excellence and signifies a certain level of skill, talent and experience.

When you hold a Chartered credential, it puts a solid value on the years you’ve devoted to the profession. It gives prospective employers and clients immediate respect and confidence in your abilities.

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply for a Chartered credential you need to be an Engineers Australia member and have five years or more engineering experience.

You also need to meet and maintain competency across 16 elements related to your occupational category and area of practice. The 16 elements sit across four core areas:

• personal commitment
• obligation to community
• value in workplace
• technical proficiency.

If you have more than 15 years’ experience, the application process is more streamlined. If you hold a Chartered credential from overseas, you may be able to apply through a mutual recognition agreement. You’ll need to provide evidence of a minimum of 150 hours of CPD over the previous three years.

Why Chartered Engineer?

As a Chartered Engineer, you gain:

• global recognition for your achievements
• peer assessment of your competency
• the opportunity to demonstrate your drive and integrity
• elevated potential for management roles

How to prepare for Chartered assessment?

Chartered Engineers have proven themselves in1 6 elements of competency

Personal commitment

• Deal with ethical issues
• Practise competently
• Responsibility for engineering activities

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Obligation to community

• Develop safe and sustainable solutions
• Engage with the relevant community and stakeholders
• Identify, assess and manage risks
• Meet legal and regulatory requirements

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Value in the workplace

• Communication
• Performance
• Taking Action
• Judgement

Technical proficiency

• Advanced engineering knowledge
• Local engineering knowledge
• Problem analysis
• Creativity and innovation
• Evaluation

How to achieve Chartered Engineer?

Step 1

Become a member of Engineers Australia. You need to be a member to apply for Chartered.

Step 2

Build your continuing professional development (CPD) portfolio. Keep track of your CPD in your EA portal account. CPD can include formal training, safety training, events, discussions, networking and site inductions. You need to complete at least 150 hours of CPD over a three-year period to apply and maintain a Chartered credential.

Step 3

Start keeping evidence of where you’ve applied the 16 elements of competency for independent practice (stage 2), in your role. These can include emails, presentations, development plans, project plans, peer review reports, drawings and plans.

Finally, be sure to attend one of our Chartered information sessions to learn more.

Step 4 - Graduate members only

This six-month structured program is exclusive to graduate members and pairs you with an experienced engineer in your field who can mentor you.

If you are confident that you may be Chartered-ready, Engineers Australia has a self- assessment website to assess if you really are. EngAus.org/GetChartered

ArchiEng Chartered Engineers CPEng

In ArchiEng, we are Chartered Professional Engineers CPEng, and Fellow of Engineers Australia. Professional engineers with Chartered CPEng Status is highly recognised by the government, business and the general public worldwide. In Victoria, this is governed by the Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019. Section 4 of the Act lists the areas of engineering where a professional engineer must be registered with the Business Licensing Authority(BLA) to provide professional engineering services in or for Victoria. These areas are:

• civil engineering
• structural engineering
• mechanical engineering
• electrical engineering
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• fire safety engineering.

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The elements of a professional engineering service

The definition of a professional engineering service in the Act can be broken down into four elements. Each of these elements must be met for anengineering service to be a professional engineering service for the purposesof the Act.

The four elements of a professional engineering service are that the service:

(i)   is an engineering service

(ii)  requires or is based on the application of engineering principles and data

(iii) is an engineering related design, construction, production, operation or maintenance activity, and

(iv) is not provided only in accordance with a prescriptive standard

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Area of Practice – Civil & Structural Engineering

Given we offer services in the field of civil and structural engineering in the building industry, our engineers are registered in Civil and Structural Engineering as the specific area of practice.  An Area of Practice is a sub group of the engineering profession that practitioners align their skills and work activities with.

Civil engineering involves the research, design, construction, and maintenance of the natural and built environment. As a guide, this may include:

• structures (including those made from steel, concrete or timber), for example, roads, railways, bridges, airports, pipelines, dams, canals, harbours, dockyards, towers and buildings
• analysing the likely behaviour of soil and rock when placed under pressure and designing above and below ground natural or build structures or foundations
• environmental impacts, for example, transport, urban development and municipal services, resource protection of building and construction of other infrastructure and service industries,
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• hydraulic supply and waste systems.

Civil engineering has many different areas of focus or speciality areas. As a guide, some of the main areas of focus are:

• structural engineering
• geotechnical ngineering,
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• hydrology engineering.

Civil engineers working in the building industry can work with foundations and footings systems, construction materials and structural systems, and hydraulic supply and waste systems.

Structural engineering is an area of focus of civil engineering.

It primarily deals with the research, design, construction, monitoring, maintenance, rehabilitation and demolition of permanent and temporary structures. Structures include, for example, buildings, bridges, in-ground structures, footings, large tanks, silos, mining structures and various plants, and frameworks and space frames. A structural engineer who intends to work in the building industry must:

• be registered as a professional engineer in the area of structural engineering, and
• have their registration endorsed to work in the building industry in the area of structural engineering.

As with civil engineers, structural engineers working in the building industry can work with foundations and footings systems, construction materials and structural systems.

Fellows of Engineers Australia

As a Fellow of the institution of Engineers Australia our engineers have been recognised as being amongst the true leaders of the industry and fire safety engineering profession.

National Engineering Register

The National Engineering Register (NER) has been created by Engineers Australia to provide a means of presenting registered engineers and their services to the public. It also provides assurance to consumers that engineers engaged from the NER meet the high standards of professionalism expected in the engineering profession.

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