The importance of certification/registration in expanding engineering career opportunities

The difficulties of the engineering profession in exploiting to the full the opportunities available to it are not due to the oft-repeated and reputed lack of academic/industrial orientation and liaison. I am convinced that the reasons are due to present-day attempts to guide the profession in a characteristically multiprofessional world by inapplicable, restrictive and inhibitive uni-professional concepts and principles. The Engineering Council in particular should evolve active, rather than passively reactive means of recognizing and encouraging multi-professional team efforts on a much wider spectrum of activities than at present. This spectrum should, in particular, recognize the Health Service as the industry pertinent to biomedical engineering. The way forward lies in pre-experience registration of the newly qualified, followed by training 'on-the-job' accredited by the professional Institutions, culminating in 'certified' specialties. The process of accreditation/certification should be flexibly designed so as to permit changes of specialty orientation and even that of total career content.