Ingenieur Vol.81 January-March 2020 | Page 47

Society needs sharp and bright engineers to serve public Interests. Therefore, WA-rated fresh graduates cannot be “Industry ready on day one” – they can be only “industry primed” – at the very best. It is industry’s responsibility to train fresh engineering graduates and the domestic “Professional Regulatory Authority” (PRA – as defined in the ASEAN MRA on Engineering Services; Malaysia’s PRA for Engineering Services is the BEM) has the “duty of care” in outreaching to industry to advise them that they cannot just leave engineer training to institutions of higher learning. Training is frankly their job! IHL educates and Industry trains. That’s the natural “Order of Things”. Industry and IHL cooperation and relationship is vital! Graduate Engineer’s ‘In-career’ training and Professional Development The second stage of ‘in-career’ training and professional development under supervision or through mentoring, is to prepare graduateengineers to appear before a peer-to-peer certification process to prove they have the requisite professional competencies to practice engineering without further mentor supervision. In other words, graduating to the stage as to be capable for “independent practice” and registration or licensing as a Professional Engineer (PE by a domestic PRA). Life-long-learning for a PE will keep “obsolescence at bay”. A PE is registered or licensed to practise engineering and must adopt continual professional development (CPD) to be relevant. Outcome-Based Education (OBE) Approach OBE is education, not training. An educated person is one who is: ● Informed; ● Literate; ● Well read; ● Knowledgeable; ● Learned; ● Enlightened; ● Cultured. 45