Originally Posted by
portsharbourflyer
Homsap,
I will agree with you to an extent MRAES and CEng mean very little; there are two year graduate training schemes in some companies that allow someone to gain charter-ship by getting them to jump through the necessary hoops to tick off the boxes for charter-ship; without necessarily gaining competence in any one technical specialisation.
I happen to be an assessor/advisor for I.Eng and C.Eng applications - I only mention that to make it clear that I am not speculating or reporting rumours.
A carefully-crafted ytwo-year grad development scheme might JUST make I.Eng, but won't make C.Eng. The exemplifying qualification for C.Eng is an accredited Masters degree supported by an accredited Honours degree (or equivilent "Underpinning Knowledge and Understanding" achieved by other means). That alone just gets you through the starting gate. To get to an assessment interview you need a career history showing you have displayed all the "competencies" as defined in UKSpec (available free at all good internets near you). Two of these are "engineering" - specifically understanding and furtherence of engineering science, and application of engineering tools & methods to address real world problems. The other three are "professional" - management/leadership, communication and a mop-up for professional attributes (compliance with copdes of conduct, ethical behaviour, promoting safety in engineering, contributing toi sustainable development etc). You provide a career history, with referees, that show an arguable case for these and it gets you to an assessment interview. At the interview they grill you until golden-brown with some charred areas and if you pass your papers will be forwarded to the Engineering Council with a recommendation. The only "walk-over" entries are provided to a few senior military engineering post-holders, but this practice is being restricted now.
There was a time when some corporate "high flyer" grad schemes would get you to C.Eng in two years, but those days are gone and we've been rejecting most of them for a while now where they simply don't meet the requirement. In my own organisation we've reworked our fastrack scheme to ensure that these candidates are given placements where they do actually do engineering rather than merely l;eading/managing other engineers for this reason.
In Aerospace certainly in my field no one puts that much emphasis on charter-ship; I have never needed it, there are other industries where it is regarded and required but certainly not in Aerospace.
You need to be chartered (or in exceptional circumstances incorporated) to be a CAA form 4 signatory. You also need to be I.ENg or C.Eng for some of the accountable roles in a CAMO (or sub-part G or similar). I understand the MAA are looking to have similar policy requirements. In a DAOS organisation it is becoming the norm to require I/C.Eng for any role which has a signatory authority, because that prevents anyone in a court or BoI asking "on what basis did the company determine that Josaphine Bloggs was fit to exercise that authority/judgement".