AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING COMPETENCY STANDARDS STAGE 2 EXPERIENCED PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER
The Stage 2 Competency Standards are the profession's expression of the knowledge and skill base, engineering application abilities, and professional skills, values and attitudes that must be demonstrated in order to practise independently or unsupervised. Purpose of the Stage 2 competency standards The Stage 2 competency standards are used as the basis of assessment for Chartered membership of Engineers Australia (CPEng) and registration on the National Professional Engineers Register (NPER). Chartered membership is exclusive to Engineers Australia. It is a professional credential recognised by government, business and the general public worldwide. The achievement of CPEng brings with it a careerlong obligation to maintain competence in a chosen practice area. What is expected of an experienced professional engineer? The community has certain expectations of experienced professional engineers, their competence, how they apply this competence and how they will conduct themselves.

Experienced professional engineers:
• • • • • understand the requirements of clients, wide ranging stakeholders and of society as a whole work to optimise social, environmental and economic outcomes over the full lifetime of the engineering product or program interact effectively with other disciplines, professions and people ensure that the engineering contribution is properly integrated into the totality of the project, program or process are responsible for: - interpreting technological possibilities to society, business and government - ensuring, as far as possible, that policy decisions are properly informed by possibilities and consequences - ensuring that costs, risks and limitations are properly understood in the context of the desirable outcomes - bringing knowledge to bear from multiple sources to develop solutions to complex problems and issues - ensuring that technical and non-technical considerations are properly integrated - managing risk as well as sustainability issues - ensuring that all aspects of a project, program or process are soundly based in theory and fundamental principle - for understanding clearly how new developments relate to established practice and experience and to other disciplines with which they may interact

While the outcomes of engineering generally have physical forms, the work of experienced professional engineers recognises the interaction between people and technology. Professional engineers may conduct research concerned with advancing the science of engineering and with developing new principles and technologies within a broad engineering discipline. Alternatively, they may contribute to the education of engineers, continual improvement in the practice of engineering and to devising and updating the codes and standards that govern it.

5 June 2012

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Stage 2 competency standards
The Stage 2 competency standards are generic in the sense that they apply to all disciplines of engineering in four units: • • • • personal commitment obligation to community value in the workplace technical proficiency

Each unit contains elements of competence and indicators of attainment. The elements of competence are the capabilities necessary to the unit of competence and the indicators of attainment serve as a guide to the engineering work likely to be considered as demonstrating attainment of that competence.

Demonstration of competence – Professional Engineer
The demonstration of competence requires the presentation of written accounts of work that involves engineering contributions – contributions based on the bodies of knowledge associated with established engineering practice and engineering science. Many aspects of engineering practice may be based on wellestablished but unpublished guidelines, or even practices that are not commonly documented or written