Recommendations for Professional Development Courses

dirtychinchilla · 22 May 2017 at 16:06

Hi all,

I was just hoping that you might be able to give me some suggestions as per the title. Work are offering to send me on any courses that I might want to development me professionally, and I've had ages to think about it but really have no ideas.

To give you some perspective, I have a BEng degree and Prince2 Practitioner qualification. I work in the building services industry, HVAC specifically, and I do a few different things - CAD and BIM, excel programming, and then handling projects from inquiry stage all the way to delivery. These are typically small scale projects, so Prince2 hasn't helped me much here. I think I'm heading towards a more managerial position in the company's mind, which sounds good to me.

I literally have no ideas though! So if you do have any I'd really appreciate hearing them.

Thanks in advance,

dirtychinchilla

Freefaller · 23 May 2017 at 13:33

Join the IET and become professionally qualified and get your CEng or at least IEng?

That could lead onto chartered manager qualification too.

dirtychinchilla · 24 May 2017 at 10:50

Hmm OK, thanks for the suggestion. The worry I have is that what I do I don't think is genuinely engineering. How do you build up to that? I was a member of IET, but then changed it to IED...but at the end of the day I'm not sure that mattered. Anyway, I gave up my membership as I didn't want to pay for it!

Scotty123 · 24 May 2017 at 15:05

More Matlab and Labview? Relive your first year days

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dirtychinchilla · 24 May 2017 at 15:21

Did we go to uni together?!?! I went to Leeds. Bloody Matlab. I will never use that I'm afraid.

Scotty123 · 24 May 2017 at 15:28

Sort of. I helped teach you when I was a PhD student in Mech Eng

.

dirtychinchilla · 24 May 2017 at 15:29

Did you?! Doing what? How do you know it's me?

Scotty123 · 24 May 2017 at 15:31

The Matlab and Labview stuff. Because you told me when we played Minecraft together on the OCUK server of course!

dowie · 24 May 2017 at 15:38

dirtychinchilla said:
Bloody Matlab. I will never use that I'm afraid.

I don't understand the hate for Matlab, might get overtaken by Julia in future but at the moment it is pretty awesome.

dirtychinchilla · 24 May 2017 at 15:46

Scotty123 said:
The Matlab and Labview stuff. Because you told me when we played Minecraft together on the OCUK server of course!

Oh yeah, I vaguely remember now! Sorry!! That server was amazing, Matlab was not.

dowie said:
I don't understand the hate for Matlab, might get overtaken by Julia in future but at the moment it is pretty awesome.

I just don't have any need to use it.

Freefaller · 25 May 2017 at 17:11

dirtychinchilla said:
Hmm OK, thanks for the suggestion. The worry I have is that what I do I don't think is genuinely engineering. How do you build up to that? I was a member of IET, but then changed it to IED...but at the end of the day I'm not sure that mattered. Anyway, I gave up my membership as I didn't want to pay for it!

Well with some good structured CPD you can get chartered or at least see where your weak points are and address them to improve your capabilities. It sort of depends on what you want to do.

My organisation pays for professional membership fees so it's not so bad. However it gives me access to resources and networks to further develop my knowledge and capability. But I have a good structured development plan aligned with my work.