Mutual friends

The pathway to working abroad could be made a little smoother with a new international award for incorporated engineers (IEng).

As part of a global agreement, the Engineering Council UK (ECUK) has set up an international engineering technologist (IntET) register that incorporated engineers satisfying certain criteria can join.

The membership will mean that signatory countries will more readily recognise the qualifications of an IEng when they register with their national engineering bodies, which is a legal requirement in some countries if engineers want to do certain jobs.

Members of the register will not, however, have a free passport to jobs outside the UK.

'Currently we are at a halfway house in that we have agreed with the Sydney Accord countries to set up this international register,' said Dr Jim Birch, head of international recognition at ECUK.

'The register has a common criterion which describes an experienced incorporated engineer and we have all agreed to that. So if somebody on the IntET register applies to ECUK, then we do have a bit of short-circuiting of the registration procedure and each country has signed up to the same thing.'