Why was your CDR rejected by Engineers Australia?
We have supported many engineering applicants applying for skill assessment from Engineers Australia. With our team of advisors who specialize in chemical engineering and experiences in environmental assessment and remediation, we have compiled common mistakes that some candidates make when applying for skill assessment under the CDR pathway with Engineers Australia.
This mistake is common with candidates applying for skill assessment under the CDR pathway with Engineers Australia (EA). Generally, EA accepts candidates using group projects to compose Career Episodes as long as they highlight their roles and specific tasks performed to contribute to the group’s results. Therefore, we recommend applicants confirm and use only individual parts (calculations, tables, diagrams, drawings) to compose Career Episodes (CE) for themselves. Please avoid using other group members’ results to avoid follow–up and explanation requests from EA. Otherwise, you might face a 12-month ban if you are discovered to have intentionally used someone else’s results.
EA has strict requirements regarding the originality of articles, so applicants must use original project reports under their names. For academic projects, it is necessary to add the instructor’s name and email so EA can verify authenticity. Therefore, we always advise clients only to use projects with their names in them to satisfy the requirement “Your career episode must be written based on your work and activity”.
One of our clients initially composed career episodes himself by using unauthorised sources. When Engineers Australia requested him to explain similar information to other applicants, he asked us to support him in producing an explanation letter on which sources he had used to compose career episodes. Unfortunately, EA banned him for 12 months because he used identical project reports and results with other CDR applicants.
This scenario usually happens with PhD graduates who use academic articles published in scientific journals. They typically copy and paste their journal contents (words, figures, equations, and diagrams) into career episode contents to save time. Although EA understands that you are the primary author of these articles, EA still requires you to rewrite them in Career Episodes to ensure that “Your career episode must be written in your own words”. Therefore, please treat Career Episode as a new work and write it in your own words even though you have published your projects in scientific journals. This would avoid self–plagiarism detection from EA.
In addition to career episodes, EA will consider engineering and technology subjects at the Bachelor’s level to decide whether to award you the Professional Engineer or Engineering Technologist title. Please ensure that the number of subjects related to engineering is sufficient according to Engineers Australia’s requirements so that you can apply for a skill assessment smoothly. You should prepare a complete syllabus listing all relevant engineering subjects to prove to EA that you have studied enough engineering subjects according to EA.
When submitting a skill assessment to EA, one of our clients did not carefully check the number of engineering courses she had studied at the Bachelor’s level. As a result, EA did not approve the skill assessment application because EA discovered that her core subjects focused more on Science than Engineering and Technology. Our team supported her to review and appeal the results twice, but both times, EA did not approve her application since her application does not meet the minimum requirement to confer standing as a member of the engineering profession in Australia.
We can understand your anxiety and worry when being banned for 12 months or being requested with explanation letters by Engineers Australia. Hence, we advise you to be courteous when drafting career episodes for the skill assessment CDR pathway. We recommend carefully choosing a reputable consulting business so your skill assessment applications can go smoothly.
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