An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

124A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILThe SARTOR-3 StoryUnder the auspices of the previous Board for Engineers Registration the first edition ofStandards and Routes to Registration (SARTOR) had been published in 1985 with a revisionin 1990. On both occasions Professor Jack Levy, the Director Engineering Profession, hisdeputy Brian Senior and the Executive Ena Duffley who had transferred from the CEI, hadbeen the staff team responsible.Under the guidance of Professor Keith Foster, Institution Working Groups (IWGs) producedin 1993 the discussion document ‘Review of Engineering Formation’ followed by the 1995policy statement ‘Competence and Commitment’ – as we described in Chapter 5. FollowingProfessor Foster’s retirement and the relatively brief tenure of Robin Bond, Director GeneralMike Heath invited Professor Levy to return temporarily to expedite a third edition ofSARTOR. Professor Levy agreed, imagining that this call out of semi-retirement would befor a few weeks but in fact turned out to be some 9 months!Fortunately a new Deputy Director, Engineering Profession had been appointed, Dr JudithSecker, who came to the EngC from The City University, as coincidentally had ProfessorLevy. Together with Senior Executive Peter Swindlehurst, an experienced education andtraining professional, this team was well placed to advise the SARTOR IWG not only onproposals for the new SARTOR but on its gaining general acceptance by the Institutions,universities and employers. The IWG was under the chairmanship at first of SenatorProfessor David Fussey of the University of Greenwich and then of Senator Professor JohnSpence of Strathclyde University. Both these chairmen put in an immense amount ofvoluntary work to assist the development of the document and the consequent complexnegotiations with Institutions and other interested bodies.After much discussion and many meetings of the IWG agreement was reached for raising thequalification standards for CEng, IEng and EngTech. These relied heavily on those developedfor ‘Competence and Commitment’ [see above] but had a significant number of differencesto make the changes more palatable and easier to comprehend. SARTOR-3 fully retained the‘ladders and bridges’ approach of the original SARTOR, enabling students and othercandidates to add to their qualification level. Qualification would be in three stages – (1)academic, (2) a combination of training and experience [now termed initial professionaldevelopment] and (3) a professional review to confirm competence and assess commitment.The exemplifying academic standards were determined as:for CEng………an accredited 4-year MEng degree or a 3-year BEng plus a 1-year“matching section”;for IEng……… .an accredited 3year degree or an HND plus a 1-year “matchingsection”;for EngTech …..a recognised National Certificate.Matching SectionsThe term “matching section” had been coined by Professor Levy much earlier and hadappeared in the first edition of SARTOR. The term was now given added emphasis to expressthe idea that for those with a qualification which fell short of that required, appropriatefurther study would, at its beginning, match their existing level and at its end match thesubsequent career target. It could take various forms according to the requirements of the© Engineering Council UK 2004