Getting licensed in the UK
Getting licensed in the UK
(OP)
I am a PE in the US and was looking at possibly moving to the UK, does anyone know if the UK has some sort of comity for licensed engineers from the states? If not, how hard is it to get licensed there? Thanks in advance





RE: Getting licensed in the UK
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
However, the Accord is an accreditation agreement for professional engineering academic degrees, not licensure, and it is up to the individual countries (and their respective engineering registration organisations/societies) to accept a candidate for licensure via comity, as I understand it.
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
I think your biggest difficulty may be the differences in codes and standards in which you've gained your experience rather than your capability as an engineer, unless you work in a niche area where the depth of your expertise outweighs unfamiliarity with local codes. I think I would struggle to move to the US or Canada as an electrical engineer because the codes and materials are so different, but within the narrow sphere of power generation my knowledge of that specialty might tip the balance in my favour even though I'm not fully conversant with the North American codes.
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
I moved from working in power generation in NZ (probably reasonably similar to UK) to Canada, and found the move fairly straight-forward. For the first few years, I tried to avoid doing too much work on things that were largely based on electrical codes (most work in power generation is beyond the codes, thankfully). Of course, I was a fairly young engineer then so expectations were lower. Ten years on, I'm relocating again to the UK in the next month or so--that feels a bit more daunting!
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licen...
In the UK you dont _need_ a license to call yourself an engineer, but in some industries they expect (or require) a protected title e.g. IEng (incorporated engineers) and CEng (chartered engineers).
In my country (Denmark) the title "engineer (or" in Danish ingeniør) is a protected title by law, but if you have a degree from one of the engineering colleges then you are automatically allowed to use the title. If you have this title from a non-danish institute i dont actually know if you are allowed to use the title.
Best regards, Morten
RE: Getting licensed in the UK
In terms of recognition, if you have PE already, to get CEng you'll need to do a bunch of paperwork but it'll be a formality. To get mIStructE, you won't have to interview or submit a portfolio, but you'll still need to sit and pass the exam. No idea how it would compare to the PE exam in terms of difficulty.
To be honest I wouldn't bother, since in the UK its not legislative. Any serious employer with will recognise your PE as equivalent to MIStructE.