Premier Status For Costain People
30 June 2010
Costain people continue to achieve premier status
with regards to professional qualifications.
Seven have recently passed the latest Institution of Civil
Engineers (ICE) examinations to achieve Chartered status: Senior
Engineers Sean Ellison, James Forward and Carlos Vasquez Travieso;
Senior Agents Andy Goodwin and Sean Lang; and Agents Richard Pickup
and Mark Tootell.
While the achievement is frequently thought of as a young
engineer's passport to improved career prospects, it also applies
to older, more experienced staff, says Bill Hewlett, Costain's
Group Technical Director.
"Very often it's associated with graduates who are bright-eyed
and bushy-tailed, but there are also some people for whom it's the
fulfilment of a mid-career aspiration," he notes.
Whatever the status of the person involved, undertaking the
process involves several years of work, much of it in their own
time. "There's a lot of support from within the company, such as
training schemes and workshops, but it does require an equal
measure of commitment of personal time." (See below.)
Typically this amounts to a couple of evenings a month over four
to five years, plus several weekends when preparing a final
submission.
That submission contains a career review (essentially an
extended CV); a project report setting out what the candidate has
brought to a particular job on which they have worked; and the
actual organisation of the submission, which means arranging the
necessary paperwork and getting their sponsors lined up.
"It's peer review. It's the top professional benchmark," says
Hewlett, who takes office as a vice-president of the ICE in
November this year.
Gaining Chartered status is important for several reasons, he
adds. Apart from the sense of personal achievement and potential
improvement of career prospects, it demonstrates to Costain's
customers that the Group is serious about encouraging its personnel
to seek the highest professional qualifications and that the staff
on their projects are well-suited to the demands of modern
construction.
"It's also important in terms of leading their own people," he
comments. If a Project Manager does not have Chartered status but
his younger staff do, or have aspirations in that field, it can
potentially affect the PM's ability to lead and inspire.
One engineer's
journey
Mark Tootell joined Costain as a Graduate Engineer in July 2002
and is currently External Works Agent on the St Germans pumping
station contract in Norfolk.
He describes Chartered status as "always an aspiration" and
signed up for Costain's ICE training agreement shortly after
joining the Group. However, pressure of work led to the process
drifting until he attended an ICE Professional Review workshop in
February 2009.
He feels that five years' experience "is the absolute minimum"
before applying for Chartered status.
Mark recommends developing a timetable to keep the application
programme on track and "I would commend the ICE workshop for anyone
thinking of starting the process."
While his year-long spurt towards qualification saw him putting
in two evenings a month for the first six months, the time required
rose thereafter, with last Christmas's holidays being heavily
devoted to writing his project and experience reports. He also put
in time over six weekends early this year on final preparations for
his submission.
What does he gain from his successful application? "Costain is a
large organisation and, although I am respected as an engineer and
manager by my immediate team, I hope being MICE CEng will extend
that respect to people who haven't had the pleasure of working with
me!
"The qualification is great for Costain but, more importantly,
it is a personal achievement of which I am very proud."