Young Professionals
Young Professional Committee
The North Western Branch of CIHT has established a Young Professional Committee (YPC). The format and structure of the YPC was established in September 2008 by Mike Peet and Jamie Povall. Jamie was the inaugural Chair of the YPC. The new Chair of the YPC is Hayley McDonnell from Liverpool City Council.
Aims and Purpose of the Young Professional Committee
The YPC was established to promote the Institution and the profession to younger members and students. At the time of creating the YPC it was noted that there appeared to be a low numbers of young professionals involved or engaged with CIHT activities and there was an aspiration to widen the audience and involvement with CIHT.
The YPC was created with a number of aims:-
- Provide a range of varied CPD and social events;
- Provide a chance to meet and network with fellow young professionals;
- Assist in career development;
- Promote CIHT, including professional qualifications; and
- Provide wider insight into various disciplines of transport.
How Does the Young Professional Committee Operate ?
The YPC consists of a number of younger people within the profession. They meet on a few occasions during the year to develop a programme of events. The YPC will always welcome new additions to the Committee and is particularly interested to obtain members who are currently undergraduates. If you would like to get involved in the YPC please contact the current Chair Hayley McDonnell (hayley.mcdonnell@liverpool.gov.uk) or any of the other members listed on the Who’s Who Page (www.ciht.org.uk/en/branches/uk-branches/north-western/whos-who.cfm).
Initially programmes have focussed on evening events discussing routes to promote professional qualifications and a number of technical topics. Also the YPC has been involved in working with other institutions including the Transport Planning Society and the Royal Town Planning Institute on events such as quizzes and technical evening topics.
At the end of June 2010, the YPC worked with a number of consultants in Liverpool to develop a briefing session on all the professional qualifications offered by CIHT. If you would like to learn more of this recent event then please watch out for our feature that will appear on the website soon.
What About The Future ?
The YPC is keen to broaden the activities it promotes and the YPC intends using feedback through the North Western Branch survey so that this can help to develop a future programme of activities. Some of our initial ideas on our programme are:
- Briefings on Routes to Membership (C.Eng, I.Eng, TPP)
- Mentoring (through support from the North Western Branch senior members)
- Social events such as quizzes
- Papers Competition;
- Programme of transport related technical papers
Hayley McDonnell
Chair of the Young Professional Committee
Mentoring Support
Mentors can have an important role is supporting candidates with submission for professional qualifications. Ideally mentors will be from the potential candidate’s own organisation. However, the North Western Branch does have a number of Professional Reviewers that may be willing to assist and support candidates with their submission.
Areas of support and assistance that could be provided by Professional Reviewers :-
- assist with the structure and format of submissions.
- provide a degree of challenge to the report submission, project synopsis and other content.
- assist with preparation for the formal interview stage.
A mentor must not contribute to any content in the report submission or be involved in the assessment process of the candidate being supported.
Advice On Finding A Mentor
If a candidate does not have mentor support in their own organisation and is seeking support then CIHT headquarters in Britannia Walk should be contacted initially, please get in touch with :
Jennifer Rasteiro
Qualifications Manager
CIHT
119 Britannia Walk
London
N1 7JE
Tel. 020 7336 1579
Email: education@CIHT.org.uk
News and Event Reports
June 2010
An event on Professional Qualifications was held on 30th June. Full report and presentations appear below.
A collection of p[revious reports and notes from the Young Professional Committee can be found below.