← Engineering Student Portfolio
Build your portfolio
What to record
Nine areas to cover over your whole course. You will not fill them all in first year, and you are not meant to. A thin area simply tells you where to look next.
The nine areas
Use them as folders, tags or headings
Each area is tagged with the competence letters it usually supports. The key is below.
Design Projects
The brief, your role, calculations and drawings, cost and programme where you met them, and the outcome.
Fundamental Theories
The core ideas of your discipline, such as effective stress, Kirchhoff’s laws or the laws of thermodynamics, in your own words.
Codes, Standards and Guidance
Each code or guidance document you meet: what it covers and where you used it.
Site Visits and Field Experience
Site visits, field trips and placements: what you saw, who you met and what you learned.
Laboratory Skills
The equipment you used, the tests you carried out and what the results told you.
Software and Tools
What you have learned to use, what it is for, and how confident you are.
Health, Safety and Sustainability
Safety training, risk assessments, and how your work protects people and the environment.
Communication and Teamwork
Presentations, posters, reports and group work, including any time you took the lead.
Research, Reading and Applications
Papers you have read, and every application you have made, including the rejections and what you learned.
The competence letters
What employers and institutions look for
In the UK, the Engineering Council’s standard for professional registration (UK-SPEC, fourth edition) groups competence and commitment into five areas. Tag each entry with the letters it shows:
- AKnowledge and understanding
- BDesign, development and solving engineering problems
- CResponsibility, management and leadership
- DCommunication and interpersonal skills
- EPersonal and professional commitment
Source: Engineering Council, UK-SPEC.