Tips
Tips on the CDR writing
The purpose of the Competency Demonstration Report is to demonstrate to Engineers Australia that you apply your Engineering skills and abilities in your daily work. There is a list of “units and elements of competency” given in the “Migration skills assessment” booklet on pages 29-32 for the professional engineers, pages 34-37 for the engineering technologist and pages 39-41 for the engineering associate. It is important to understand that Career Episodes are not just your work description. Career Episodes must include all the “units and elements” in them.
What is CDR about?
Competency Demonstration Report is about your own professional experience, your daily engineering tasks and duties, your responsibilities. The report should describe your own rule in a specific project/work. One of the most important things in the CDR is to write using “I language”. Even if you describe a project were you worked as a part of a team, you should refer to your own role and use sentences such as “I and my team”, “I as part of the team”.
You can give a brief description of your company and the project in the first paragraph of the “background” part, but no more than one or maximum two paragraphs. Remember that the CDR is not about what your company do or what your team do. As well, do not provide too many technical details about your work/project, CDR is not about this. If your Career Episode contains about 3000 words, maybe you’ve included too much unnecessary technical details. When you write a paragraph in the Episode, think to what competency element you will refer it to. If you can’t refer a paragraph to specific element, consider removing it.
Style and language
Use active language. You can make use of the following words in your Episodes:
- I developed solution
- I checked and analysed
- I reviewed the background data
- I closely collaborated
- I carried out all the necessary calculations
- I took part in the negotiations
- I actively used and demonstrated my knowledge
- I decided to consider
- I studied a lot of materials
- I also identified
- I always take into account
- I managed to apply all my knowledge and skills
- I was responsible
- I had the meetings
- I structured information
- I organized the results in the form of
- I used my engineering background and knowledge
- I suggested
Summary Statement
Summary Statement is a table that contains claimed unit’s, element’s and indicator’s numbers (see the booklet), description how they were obtained and Episode and the paragraph number, where the element’s/indicator’s description can be found in the text.
Work order
- Read and learn the “Units and elements of competency”.
- Write the Episodes.
- Prepare the Summary Statement
- Check what elements are missing.
- Change the Career Episodes accordingly
Typical Mistakes
Providing too many technical details about a project without description of the own role. This kind of report will fail the assessment.
Missing elements – not all of the units and element are included in the CDR. This kind of report will fail the assessment.
Unsubstantiated claims. Not enough details about your Engineering responsibilities. This kind of report will fail the assessment. It is not enough to write “I work according to safety standards” to claim PE2.2. Describe according to what standards do you work, think whether you apply other indicators of PE2.2 and give more details and explanations.
Mistakes in the Summary Statement. In the case of the claims in the Summary Statement send the assessor to wrong paragraph in your Career Episodes, the report will fail the assessment.
If you need any assistance in CDR preparation, please see our services section or contact us.
