Meeting the UK-SPEC: competence profiles and case studies

To become professionally registered, you’ll need to meet a set of national standards to demonstrate your knowledge, skills and experience. 

This is called the UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC) and it's used to assess all engineers who want to apply for professional registration as an Engineering Technician (EngTech), Incorporated Engineer (IEng) or Chartered Engineer (CEng). 

UK-SPEC requires you to demonstrate the competence and commitment level you’ve gained from an educational programme, professional development and experience in five main areas:

• Knowledge and understanding
• Design and development of processes, systems, services and products
• Responsibility, management or leadership
• Communication and inter-personal skills
• Professional commitment

How the profiles and case studies help you

We’ve developed competence profiles to help you to understand the mechanical engineering activities likely to be involved in each industry and the common requirements for membership.

Each profile provides a detailed description of each competence A-E specific to each industry, the role of engineers within each industry and examples of suitable Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities. 

In most cases, you can download at least one case study which includes examples of how to meet the requirements for each competence area in the specific industry.

The profiles are aimed at:

• Individuals applying for professional registration
• Mentors
• Our assessors 
• Our committees 
• Anyone else involved in the membership application process

These profiles aren’t definitive, so if you’ve completed other CPD activities, you may still be eligible to become a member. 

Competence profiles and case studies by industry

Here you’ll find our competence profiles, with case studies about our members.

Aerospace
Case study: 1 2

Army - The Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) 

Royal Engineers
Case study: 1 2 3 4

Automobile Industry
Case study: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Biomedical Engineering
Case study: 1 2

Building Services
Case study: 1 2

Computers in Engineering & IT
Case study: 1

Consultancy & Local Government
Case study: 1 2

Engineering Consultancy (Member to Fellow)

Health & Safety Departments and Government Inspectorates

Higher Education Establishments
Case study: 1 2

Maintenance Engineering

Management Consultancy
Case study: 1

Manufacturing Industries
Case study: 1 2 3

National Health Service
Case study: 1

Nuclear Engineering
Case study: 1 2 3

Oil Industry, Offshore & Topside Engineering
Case study: 1 2

Pharmaceutical Industry

Power Generation - Non-Nuclear
Case study: 1 2 3 4 5

Process Industries - Chemicals, Foods, Beer & Tobacco
Case study: 1 2

Railway Engineering
Case study: 1 2

Royal Air Force
Case study: 1 2

Shipping & General Insurance
Case study: 1

Steel Production
Case study: 1 2

Telecommunications
Case study: 1 2

Water Industry
Case study: 1 2

Helpful resources

• Guidance notes from the Engineering Council