 Hey guys, so today I'll be talking about what it takes to become a professional engineer So I myself got my professional engineering designation in Alberta In February 2023. So I'll be talking it through mainly through the requirements. If you do it through a PEGA Which is the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta And so depending on the province or territory that you do it with the requirements could The first slightly but I think overall for Most of the province and territories the requirements are very similar. So this video should be pretty applicable to you And also I'm making this video as of 2023 So in the future it's possible that the requirements could change So make sure you just double check everything before you submit your application So the first step is making sure that you have a document that proves either You are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident. So that could be things like your Canadian passports Birth certificate or your PR card things like that So that's something that they'll ask you to submit and then the next thing is your education So ideally you want to make sure you have a bachelor's in engineering. That's accredited by the Canadian Engineering accreditation board or CEAB for short And so if you have an undergrad degree that's accredited that's going to make the process a lot smoother But if you don't for example, I know a lot of you guys my viewers Are from out of the country. Maybe you did your bachelor's somewhere else Or maybe you don't have a bachelor's degree in engineering So if you do a master's of engineering in Canada or you have like a diploma things like that You're still eligible to become a professional engineer here in Canada But the thing is when you submit your application, they're going to look at your degree And all the courses you've taken and try to match it up And it's very likely that they're going to require you to take some technical exams And so depending on how far your degree is away from the Canadian undergrad engineering curriculum You could be required to take a lot of different technical exams or maybe just one But ultimately it just really depends on what degree you have After that, you'll be required to take the national professional practice exam or MPPE for shorts And so this exam is really about testing your knowledge of professionalism law and ethics And this is a multiple choice exam so around 110 questions Long so it requires about two and a half hours You probably don't need the full time and this exam can be administered through online So I did it online and I just basically did it in my own home You need to have a webcam. So there's going to be a proctor who will be basically monitoring you and The exam I would say overall is not that hard You just want to make sure I took around two weeks to just read through all the material Just give yourself enough time and making sure you read through the questions very carefully reading through all the answers carefully The questions itself is not super hard But sometimes therapy there could be two very similar answers and you just really need to choose the best one And also depending on which province or territory that you're writing the exam through You may be for example in an Alberta You're only given four attempts and if you fail on the fourth attempt Then you actually have to restart your whole application process again and so that's some just something to keep in mind and Lastly, there's like two hundred and fifty dollar fee for writing the exam So really you want to make sure you pass it on the first try and just give yourself enough time to Study through the material so you don't have to sit through the exam and pay the fee again All right The next step is a relatively simple step is just a declaration of character and reputation So as engineers in Canada the public is going to be trusting you with their safety So the board of examiners require you to declare that you are a character Your person of good character and reputation So declaring things like you don't have a criminal record You haven't conducted any unprofessional or negligent practices in the past But if you did conduct any of those in the past Just making sure you're honest and explain the reasons behind that It's still possible that they may allow you to become a professional engineer But really that's gonna be on a case-by-case basis based on what the Board of examiners thinks and based on the things like severity how long ago was that things like that? The next step is the language so as Engineers working in Canada You'll be mostly most likely speaking in English And so if you have an undergraduate degree that was taught in English then basically you can skip this part But if you don't Then you want to make sure that you take the TOEFL exam and score 100 or more on it and Depending on again depending on the province or territory that you're trying to register through They may allow different exams, but for the province of Alberta, they only require TOEFL So make sure you take the TOEFL and not any other Exams like IOS or whatever just take the TOEFL and score 100 or more on it for work experience wise you want to make sure you have 48 months or four years of experience and Actually 12 months of that can be through Co-ops or internships so whatever works experience you've gathered through Before you graduated. So that's actually what I did. I have Actually, I have more than 12 months of co-ops But I can only count up to 12 months of that and the remaining three Sorry, 12. Yeah, 12 months or one year and the remaining three years. I've counted my post graduation mark experience and So the time is actually only one part of that the other part is making sure that your experiences meet the competencies as outlined required by the whatever association you're trying to register through so for a Pega That's 22 different competencies And you have to do a write-up for each of those competencies and basically explain how your experience Given example of how your experience meet those requirements So I can make it a separate video for that because that could be a very long topic And I'll give some tips at the end on how to prepare yourself for that So the last part is paying the fee If you are already an engineer in training the fee is just $325 and if you're not an engineer in training already, then the fee will be $500 So once you have submitted your applications, it could take anywhere from three to six months for it to get fully processed I myself submitted it in June of 2022 Around November was November of 2022 was when all my supervisors Basically finished validating all my competencies and move on to the next stage for a Pega to review it And so I didn't ultimately get my Professional engineering designation until February of 2022. So that's actually six months in total And again, this time I could really depend on For example, like the complexity of your application how long it takes your supervisors to Validate everything how busy the association is so there's a lot of factors that could affect how long it takes But I'll say maybe around six months in total is what you should expect So some final tips I have for putting together your application The first step is whether you're working as an intern right now or you're working Full-time after graduation I would really recommend that you start keeping track of all the things you've done So for example, I had a monthly sort of like a journal entry of all the things I did And I make sure I update that at the end of every month just looking back at my calendars of all the meetings presentations Looking through my notes keeping track of what I did And that was really helpful when it came to write about my competencies because I had already a list of everything that I've done And it was really easy to just pick one example I elaborate a little bit more on it and then just base and that basically Explain how I met the competency and if you don't have a record of what you've done, it's gonna be really difficult When it comes time to write about your competencies to just look back at say like for the past four or five years And just try to think about like what you've done naturally What you have done and what experiences actually allows you to meet those competencies So that could be very hard if you don't have a record of what you've done already the second tip I would give is to make sure you're keeping in contact with your Supervisors, so making sure you have your phone numbers emails linked in and whatnot So they will get an email once you submit your application that they'll be required to verify your competencies But sometimes they may forget to get really busy things like that. So I personally had to like give my supervisors A few reminders and it's possible that they may forget and things like if you for example leave the company Or maybe they leave the company then maybe that'll be make it a little bit harder for you to get in contact with them So making sure you have your phone numbers emails Contact information just making sure you're able to get in touch with them because that'll be really helpful in speeding up your application process So that's it for this video. I hope you guys learned a lot Let me know which video for me to make next whether it's about the professional practice exam or How to write about your competencies and what they are I'll be getting back into making more YouTube videos So if you have any other comments or suggestions leave them in the comments below or you can contact me through my Instagram at Kwan underscore F VNG So that's it for this video. Hope to see you guys on the next one