Quarterly reports and annual assessments are compulsory elements of MPDS. Plans and evidence are optional but can play a valuable role in helping you to set objectives and competences, and in showing how you achieved them. Full details of the compulsory and optional submissions which you can make are found in our MPDS toolkit for Developing Engineers.
Plans (optional submissions):
Plans allow you to set aims, objectives and competences for the quarter you’re working in. Your mentor can tell you if they’re achievable – and if you’ll have the necessary resources to attain them.
If you don’t achieve your objectives, just readdress them in your next plan. If you think you don’t have sufficient opportunities for development, contact your mentor or your organisation’s training supervisor. It’s up to you to make sure you receive the right placements within your company.
Evidence (optional submissions):
Although it is not compulsory to upload evidence items, recording examples of your activities and assignments will enable you to build a portfolio of evidence demonstrating your levels of UK-SPEC competences.
You may wish to include a summary of any project roles, courses, risk assessments and quality management tasks that you’ve completed during the quarter. You can upload evidence as a report, calculations, a company appraisal or even a drawing – however you feel best demonstrates the competences you hope to achieve.
Your mentor will review your submitted evidence against the UK-SPEC and will score your levels of competence. These competences will then appear in your end of year Annual Assessment.
Evidence scores are not averaged out. The score reflects your single piece of evidence for that particular sub-competence. These are auto mapped to your Evidence Competence Report, showing where you have gaps in the competence framework. Your mentor will manually insert the overall competence score for A, B, C, D and E on the Annual Assessment Report, but these won’t show up on your Evidence Competence Report. They will instead appear on the Annual Competence Report. Developing Engineers will be able to access both the Evidence Competence Report and Annual Competence Report from their Summary page.
Please note that some organisations don’t allow you to record work-based evidence outside their area of control, so always follow your company’s guidelines for evidence submission. Don’t upload evidence that’s secure or commercially sensitive. If you do upload anything that needs to be removed, please contact the MPDS helpline and we’ll take it down for you immediately.
The evidence size limit should be no bigger than 10MB. If it exceeds this, we would advise you to split the file into two or three parts and upload them as separate items. It is possible to upload a maximum of eight evidence items per quarter.
Reports (compulsory submissions):
Quarterly reports are designed to show the key elements of your achievements, challenges and contributions throughout each stage of your development. They are a compulsory part of the scheme because proving your level of monitored progress is vital to your success on MPDS.
The objectives and competences assigned to any plans and evidence during this quarter will automatically be added to your report.
You should make comments on any objectives you set for the quarter and, if you haven’t submitted evidence for this quarter, you should use the competence codes (e.g. B1, D2 etc) to match the paragraphs in your report to UK-SPEC.
Include details of:
- Any presentations or reports you wrote
- Feasibility studies
- Meetings with suppliers and customers
- Process and design reviews
- Responsibilities
- Avoid all jargon. Keep your report between 200-500 words.
We recommend that you aim to keep to the quarterly reporting dates of your MPDS as closely as possible. The ‘Professional Development Summary’ page of your MPDS will enable you check when your reports are due.
Annual Assessment (compulsory submissions):
Once a year, you will submit an evaluation of your development over the course of that year. The Annual Assessment provides a summary of quarter 4, the year as a whole and should show how you achieved the competences set out in UK-SPEC.
Your mentor will then review your work and award the level of competency you have achieved, so that you can move on to the next stage of your development.
Like Quarterly Reports, Annual Assessments are compulsory to submit and are crucial to your success on the scheme.