Remember, as engineers we naturally have inquisitive minds, and often delve into things – just to see how it works or understand a little more about the subject. All this can be CPD. In fact, anytime you gain knowledge that maintains or enhances your professional competence, which usually means it satisfies an area within the UK SPEC Engineering Council it is CPD and should be recorded. The SOE are about to make recording your CPD so much simpler and more effective with the introduction of a CPD platform – look out for the launch sometime soon.
A sometimes-overlooked area of competence, now listed in the UK SPEC, is that of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion or EDI. See the article on page 29 which gives us all food for thought.
As part of my own CPD I recently attended the Royal Academy of Engineering annual EDI conference. The D&I Annual Conference: Engineering intersecting with life (www.tinyurl.com/3hvb9e7s) centred around intersectionality (the understanding of how groups’ and individuals’ social and political identities result in combinations of discrimination and privilege) and its impact on engineering. The day was an exploration of how social categories intersect to influence the engineering workforce and society and focussed on people, partnerships, products and processes.
The importance of having diverse teams when designing products, systems and processes was evident on the day, eloquently articulated by the founder of the ‘WeWalk’ smart cane (www.tinyurl.com/mrx727nh), which was done through partnerships with a London university and the RNIB.
The same evening, I attended the CIBSE Lifts Group AGM 2025 and Evening Seminars (www.tinyurl.com/2t6v5thm), where Dr Richard Peters presented a paper on a Non-Proprietary Approach to Destination Control, which explored removing collective control and door logic from the controller and making them the responsibility of the dispatcher. This would enable a global dispatcher unit to work with all controllers to enable destination control. We were also given an update on BS 9991 2024 New evacuation lift requirements.
Enjoy the magazine and remember – log that CPD.