Becoming Chartered by the Institute
Chartered Engineer (CEng)
These pages deal mainly with Chartered Engineer.
Navigate to the page you want below or on the right:
- Guidance on supporters
- How long will the application take to process?
- Is your degree accredited?
- What is an organisational chart?
- Interview assessment sheet
- Where will I be interviewed?
- Contact the Institute's Professional Development Team
It is mandatory that both your supporters must be chartered engineers. This document gives guidance on choosing your supporters.
All applicants are advised to search amongst their network of contacts and/or to attend local Group and Branch meetings in order to nurture suitable relationships. You could also find yourself a mentor, who, over time, may get to know you well enough to be able to provide support - we provide a mentor/mentee matching service to help with this. If you genuinely can not locate any Chartered Engineers in their network, the Professional Development team can nominate a supporter for you. However, this option is always closely scrutinised and queried by the assessing panel.
International applicants can use their local equivalent of a Chartered Engineer as a supporter. One supporter must be from an organisation other than your own. This is to ensure independence of opinion. You must not be related to either of your supporters.
How long will the application take to process?
Receipt of your application will be acknowledged within three weeks by the Institute's Membership Department. Your supporters will be written to within 4 weeks and asked to respond within one month. As long as your supporters' comments are received back within this time period, the assessment of the application can begin.
The compulsory interviews take place 4 times a year so you may need to wait up to three months for this. Once the interview has taken place a Panel will discuss your application within one month. You will then be notified of the Institute's recommendation to EC(UK). EC(UK) must approve all the Institute's recommendations and register you as a Chartered Engineer before you can begin using the designation. This can take an additional three months from when we notify you of our recommendation.
To apply for CEng through the simplest route you must have an accredited Physics/Engineering degree. Have a look at our register of accredited courses or the EC UK register of accredited courses, see http://www.engc.org.uk/registration/ACAD/search.aspx, and find out whether your degree is accredited or not. Candidates with an unaccredited degree will need to follow a different route.
All physics degrees beyond 1997 must be accredited.
What is an organisational chart?
This should show your position within the organisation's hierarchy. It should show your level of seniority in the company and clearly outline any staff responsibilities you have. It may be necessary to submit two charts. One showing your department within the organisation and one showing your position within the department. Charts should be A4 in size and your position must be highlighted.
A sample chart can be seen here
This is the form the interviewers fill out at the end of your interview. It does not include the questions on MEng Equivalence. Candidates without an accredited degree can apply to the Membership Office for copies of the interview forms which differ slightly from that above.
The majority of interviews are held at the Institute's headquarters in London. However, where there are two or more candidates from the same company or town we can arrange for interviews to be held more locally. In many cases the employer of one of the candidates will be asked to provide a small room for our use. If you think this could apply to you please contact ceng@iop.org to see if anyone else in your area is due for an interview.
Professional Standards Procedures
Click here to access the procedures for the professional standards activities. These include interview proformas and guidance for interviewers and panel members.
Please e-mail cpd@iop.org or call 020 7470 4800 for further guidance or to talk to somebody about getting chartered.
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