22 April 2015

Costain has successfully achieved re-accreditation for its learning programmes that bring certain personnel up to the educational standard where they can apply for Chartered Engineer status.

“When we employ a graduate engineer, they will leave university with either a bachelor’s or a master’s degree,” said Work-Winning Director, Hugh MacIntyre. “Both degrees mean they are very good engineers but, going forward in life, if you wish to become a Chartered member of the ICE you must have educational learning to master’s level.

“The difference is that you do a bachelor’s degree in three years and a master’s in four; in Scotland, it takes longer.

“If you graduate with a bachelor’s degree and want to be chartered, you have to do some further learning to bridge the gap.”

Hugh sees the first few years of working with Costain as the place in which the theories taught at university are put into practice in real life as well as being augmented with on-the-job training and specialist learning, notably in fields such as health and safety. It is also the period in which bachelor’s degree personnel can be brought up to master’s level.

“Five years ago, Costain put in place a further learning programme, which is basically an education programme that we can put our bachelor’s degree engineers on. It runs in parallel with their initial training. At the end of four to five years they should have picked up all the learning needed. It gives them enough to go for the Chartered Engineer’s review.

“Like all educational programmes they are accredited by the Joint Board of Moderators and last November we had a re-accreditation visit from them, to make sure we’re doing everything in the right way. It’s like an OFSTED inspection in schools.

“As a result, in March we received notification that we had been successfully reaccredited for the next five years to provide master’s-level learning for our graduates.

“One reason we do this is that it helps us to attract the very best bachelor’s degree graduates. They get into salaried employment a year earlier than somebody doing a master’s. Four to five years down the road, they are all at the same academic level.”

 

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