PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER: Sharing My Route Experience

I had this article title drafted for few years already (since 2019), with the intention to mark my personal milestone, and also to help many more engineers to go get their Professional Engineer (PE). It has been so long, the format of Professional Assessment Examination (PAE) by BEM has changed for 2023! Ha ha ha Though it might not help so much to others, I'll publish the article anyway. ??

As our attention span has become lessen, I will try to keep it short to the main points so that everyone could finish reading before you're getting bored. Focus folks!

WHO ELIGIBLE TO BE "PROFESSIONAL ENGINEER"?

Anyone registered as Graduate Engineer with minimum 3 years experience in one of below categories;

(A) Graduate Engineer (GE) as prescribed under Section 10(1)(a) of the Registration of Engineers Act, 1967 (Revised 2015).

(B) Graduate Engineer who holds a professional qualification which the Board considers to be equivalent to the PAE conducted by the Board or Route B.

Mine is Route (A).

WHY DO I WANTED TO TAKE THIS EXAMINATION?

These are my personal reasons of 3Cs, but I would like to share with intention to inspire others especially the youngsters as YOU can do it even earlier. Find your WHY and work it out.

Competency

• I want my knowledge, experience, and skills set to be certified and recognized. This will gain trust of my competency level from the Employer and Client in my working field.

Career Growth

• I view this as self-satisfactory and sense of achievement in my career growth as becoming a PE can be considered one step to higher standard in engineering profession. In having PE, I have more authority and responsibility to serve the public.

Continuous Improvement

• I believe it is important to keep improving myself in this competitive world. Thus, by having PE, I could set myself more marketable within the working field.

WHAT TO SUBMIT FOR THE EXAMINATION?

ALERT: What I am about to share is based on old format of PAE.

For my PAE (old format) by BEM, I need to submit;

1. Working and Experience Report. Pretty much like a CV with a front page and Table of Content.
2. Technical Report. I chose one of my latest and technically strongest project that I have involved in as the main body of the report. In the report must includes at least one (1) calculation, and one (1) approved drawing.
3. Both reports item 1 and 2 must be endorsed by PE (minimum 3 years experience as PE) within same branch (in my case; Mechanical branch). The PE not necessarily within same company.
4. When the PE is not from your same company, you should attached official Employment Letter from your employer AND a letter from your PE. If the PE works at within same company, one official letter with company letterhead is suffice.

For new format of PAE, you may refer to BEM website as provided link;

I believe post-COVID, all systems application have gone 100% online. So after you guys have registered as Graduate Engineer, you may login through MyBEM Login with your IC No. From there, you may browse through how to apply for PAE Examination.

INTERVIEW-EXAMINATION DAY

After all submitted, and paid (of course); the waiting game begun. I believe nowadays BEM has improved their system tremendously. During my time, it took quite few months due to MCO. There will be confirmation that your application has been submitted, then there will be confirmation on your interview/examination date availability.

For common practice, interview and examination day usually held on the same day. However, during my time, my interview session was held online on different day from my writing examination that was held at MySet centre.

Interview Session - Panels will ask based on your reports (both Experience and Technical reports), also any engineering related current issues. These are very experience (and kind too) panels, do not try to con them. If you do not know, just admit it. But, you may stated your opinion based on your experience, and relate back to the panels' questions. Remember, PE is recognition only on what you know but not on what you do not know.

Essay Examination - The 8 questions are already revealed in the website. But the answers are not ?? Worry not, there are ample examples to give you ideas and relates to your own experience. The famous tips are to write at least 4 pages and must mention the Code of Ethics values frequently.

RESULT

Result will be given through email with letter stating whether or not the candidate is passed. Usually the announcement will be given after BEM held their monthly meeting. But, that is only the result; you need to register your PE (in your MyBEM account and pay for PE fee) and wait for the official certification that can be downloaded after. In that letter, it will provide your Professional Engineer number.

Please note that; it took quite some time before your name appear in BEM search directory. So, if your potential employer is checking on your PE number, your name might not appear yet. Just saying so that you know.

THAT'S IT!

So, you made it till here. Maybe you could start browsing the new PAE requirement (as given above) and starts slowly (but surely) to do yours!

NEXT?

Keep clock in your ?Continuing Professional Development (CPD) hours in the system to maintain and renew your PE. It is 25 hours yearly or 75 hours in a rolling three?(3) consecutive years.

Other than that, personally, I would love to get the PEPC as one of my personal achievement. However, after seeing the range of subjects they covered in the examination; I must say it is quite hard especially for someone doing Piping. The examination contains questions on things that Piping Engineers does not deeply work on like air-conditioning (thermodynamics), rotating equipment like pump (hydraulics), fire protection design, etc.

It is not impossible, though. Its just that, first, I need to revise back my subjects during degree. And even after I succeed (just being super ambitious), I do not really use it in my daily deliverables (again, I am talking in the context of Piping Engineer). It is kind of dilemma for me.

However, as I believe no knowledge went useless; I am still looking out for any classes that will guide for candidates to take the PEPC examination, specifically for Mechanical background. Because to study all the subjects again without a guide, is like taking my degree course back! Dude, that's a lot of thing. ?? Please let me know if such classes exist. Much appreciated.

All the best and God bless!

p/s: Don't forget to apply for Asean Chartered Professional Engineer (ACPE) once you got your PE number. It is FREE! All submissions for the application done online through your MyBEM account.

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