Continuing Professional Development(CPD) Examples & Samples

The Engineers Australia defines four main elements of CPD and hence evaluates every CPD based on these elements.

1. Personal Commitment – How you practice ethical behaviour in the workplace and take responsibility for your engineering activities
2. Obligations to the Community – How you engage yourself in community activities, undergo risk mitigation and develop sustainable solutions
3. Value of Workplace – How well you can communicate at the workplace and demonstrate your decision making and teamwork abilities
4. Technical Proficiency – How you demonstrate your engineering skills, creativity, knowledge and innovation

Keeping these four principal elements in mind, every activity you undertake in your CPD should demonstrate either of the following –

1. You have kept yourself up-to-date in your areas of practice
2. You have extended your knowledge and skills relevant to your engineering field
3. You have developed new skills
4. You understand how these skills can be applied in your engineering field
5. You can lead, help and influence others with your knowledge and experience
6. You can enhance your job profile and serve your community in a better way

How to Prepare a CPD record?

Along with the online recording platform, the engineers Australia provides a manual recording system to the engineers so that they can maintain and evaluate their CPD on their own. Consider the following continuing professional development template by Engineers Australia.

Figure 1 CPD Record Template

Figure 2 CPD record template for CPD Type

You may clearly see that you have to mention the following things in your CPD record –

1. The type of the CPD activity you undertook
2. The topic of that activity
3. How that activity extended your knowledge and skills
4. Number of hours that you contributed to risk management, business and management and your relevant areas of practice and in totality

CPD Examples

Now that we know the format of how to maintain the CPD record, consider the following examples of CPD activities that the engineers can include in their records.

1. Technical presentations
2. Research papers
3. Technical meetings
4. Seminars and workshops
5. Technical courses and conferences
6. Group discussions
7. Technical articles and journals
8. Volunteering work

How can you enhance your CPD?

As a member of Engineers Australia, you must take responsibility to enhance your CPD. You should have a plan of how you want to conduct your career, what are your goals and expectations from your job profile. To gain full control over your CPD, you can start by conducting a reflection session and hence finding your areas of improvement. Collect feedback from your managers and co-workers as well, evaluate it and act upon it. Always keep looking for CPD opportunities and assess how they can serve to enhance your professional career.

Your proactive approach towards your career would play a great role in ensuring that the CPD activities you choose are productive for you. Consider the following continuing professional development sample for a personal record that you can maintain for your information. It describes the CPD in chronological order with a suitable description that can be used to prepare your Engineers Australia CPD record. You can find more CPD examples on our website. Based on your engineering field our CPD experts can provide you with CPD statement samples and templates.

Some other tips to keep in mind while preparing your CPD

1. It should be in the form of a list
2. It should be brief, no need to mention many details
3. It should rather be to the point
4. It should only explain how the activity has a relation to your skill development
5. It should also include the relevant information where you practised that activity such as time period, location etc
6. You do not need to attach the certificates if any with the CPD report unless asked
7. It may contain any formal, informal and external CPD activity that manages to meet the Engineers Australia CPD requirements
8. The members of EA may also require presenting a CPD statement declaring their qualification details, current job role, skills and other important career achievements
9. You may consider some CPD engineers Australia samples before preparing your CPD statement