CIOB and CPD - continuing to encourage ethical practice

In my previous blog, I wrote about the background to our new Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Policy, with a reminder that the revised policy requires members to undertake CPD and then focus on the ethical aspects of their learning and practice. 

For any occupation, reflecting upon and applying ethics in practice, whether in a job or during studies (called reflective learning or reflective practice), is the hallmark of a true professional.

We are now a little over 6 months on from the launch of our revised policy and at the point where our members are looking to record their CPD and post-learning reflections and assess the CPD points accrued so far. We are having conversations with members about how to best to take this different way of looking at professional learning and incorporating it into their roles.

This blog covers more of the scenarios used by the working group, when examining the new policy last year, to illustrate how the reflective learning could be supporting various roles. The focus here is on built environment students and academics.

After undertaking something that qualifies as CPD – e.g. a webinar, a training course, reading Construction Management – the requirement is now to do “reflective learning”. Here are a couple of examples, with hypothetical situations of people studying or teaching:

Nathan is a part-time student, doing his degree one day a week and working for a construction consultancy four days a week. He can draw on either of these to fulfil his CPD requirements. He may reflect on some of the formal learning he's doing within the university environment, gaining a large number of points in one go (potentially 10 points) or he may reflect on some of the learning gained over the year as he has worked in his consultancy role – perhaps he’s brought some of the ideas from his lectures to create a short ‘lunch and learn’ on new incoming legislation (2 points).

Haley is a full-time student on a building surveying degree programme. She will have a lecturer leading her through her learning on different aspects of the construction industry, including best practice and ethical considerations. It is a formal qualification and Haley will be learning lots of new ideas and concepts all the time. Haley can choose to reflect on the ethical aspects of any part of her learning whilst she undertakes her qualification, where she is learning new ideas every day, and will gain the maximum number of points for doing so (10 points).

Lukasz is a lecturer on a built environment programme at a university. He also undertakes research in construction management. He might choose to do his reflection on his outreach work in schools, encouraging young people to explore the construction industry. This would gain him a small number of points each time (2 points) or he could reflect upon his research activities and findings. This would have involved more consideration of best and ethical practice, along with synthesising new ideas and communicating them to others, so he could earn a significant number of points each time he did this (5 points).

There are, of course, many other members in different roles and holding different types of CIOB membership – my previous blog gives examples for two built environment management roles.

I also want to remind members that we have a CPD information page on our website, now updated to reflect the new policy. For more information and answers to some frequently asked questions, take a look at our Find CPD page.