Engineering Council

UK courses accredited for Engineering Council registration are listed on the Engineering Council accredited courses database. Some overseas courses are also listed on our database. If your course is not listed on our database you might find it in one of the following locations:

• Europe: a large number of European degrees are listed on the European Engineering Education Database (EEED, previously the FEANI INDEX)
• Outside Europe: courses accredited in overseas countries that are part of the International Engineering Alliance (IEA) can be found on the IEA website. You should use the links on the Washington Accord, Sydney Accord or Dublin Accord accredited programmes pages of the IEA website.

If you are still unable to find your course please contact us and we will be happy to assist. 

If your qualification is not accredited you may demonstrate the required knowledge and understanding in other ways. Please contact a relevant professional engineering institution for further information.

If you search just by university you can see all the programmes accredited for that university. If your degree does not appear it is probably not accredited.  However, occasionally there may be an explanation as to why an accredited programme is not listed. Please ask your university first if it is an accredited programme.  If the university believes that it is accredited, they should contact the relevant professional engineering institution to check the degree’s accredited status.

Please don’t contact the Engineering Council until you have done this as we can only direct you to the professional engineering institution.

No.  Degrees are accredited on request from the university. If you wish to seek professional registration, you may do so by what is known as the ‘individual route’. This assessment is carried out by a professional engineering institution licensed by the Engineering Council – please contact a relevant institution for further information.

Until 1 September 1999 the academic requirement for IEng registration was an accredited Higher National Certificate (HNC) or Higher National Diploma (HND). However please note that if the course was started between September 1987 and September 1999 then specific units would need to have been successfully passed in order to meet the academic requirement. From that date, the requirement was raised to Bachelor degree level. This means that HNC/HND qualifications started in September 1999 or later do not fully satisfy the IEng registration requirement, with the exception of a small number of courses whose accreditation extends beyond this date. If you have studied, or are thinking of studying for, an engineering HNC or HND see our guidance note, our spreadsheet of accredited HNCs and HNDs and our database of technician qualifications for further information.

In 1999 the Engineering Council established a precedent that Bachelors programmes accredited as partially meeting CEng learning outcomes could be assessed for IEng registration in the same way as an applicant holding a degree accredited for IEng.

From 2009 this precedent was replaced by a policy whereby all honours degrees accredited from intake year 1999 were deemed to automatically have ‘dual accreditation’ for IEng and be eligible for recognition under the Sydney Accord.

This policy was reviewed during 2021.when it was decided to revoke the policy of automatic dual accreditation and revert to a precedent that allows for someone applying for IEng with a degree accredited for CEng to be assessed for IEng registration in the same way as a candidate who holds an IEng accredited degree.

This means that an honours degree accredited for CEng (with further learning required will, for intakes of students following implementation of this change:
a. continue to be treated by professional engineering institutions (PEIs) licensed by the Engineering Council to assess candidates for IEng registration as a qualification that demonstrates knowledge and understanding for IEng
b. not be automatically accredited for IEng, and will therefore not be recognised as an engineering technology degree internationally (ie under the Sydney Accord)

In some cases Bachelors with Honours degrees (eg BEng(Hons)/BSc(Hons)) are specifically accredited as partially meeting the academic requirements for CEng. Other Bachelors degrees, honours or non-honours, are accredited specifically for IEng and these do not partially meet the academic requirements for CEng, although they may be considered as part of your evidence during a professional engineering institution’s ‘individual route’ process for registration.

A programme can be accredited as partially meeting the academic requirements for IEng or CEng. In such cases, further learning will be required to demonstrate your learning and understanding to the specified higher level.  You may achieve this by way of a further formal qualification, sometimes referred to as a top-up qualification, or by a range of other means such as private study, workplace projects or attending courses related to work. However, whatever means is chosen, it must be subject to rigorous and valid independent assessment.

By way of an example, if you hold a Bachelors with Honours degree that is accredited as partially meeting the academic requirements for CEng, you may choose to complete your learning by studying for an accredited Masters degree.

A programme accredited as ‘further learning’ for IEng or CEng is accredited as a ‘top up’ from a programme which is accredited as partially meeting the academic requirements for that grade of registration.

For example a MSc that is accredited as further learning for CEng can be used to ‘top up’ from a bachelors degree with honours that is accredited as partially meeting the academic requirements for CEng.

Where individuals were given exemption from one or more years of a programme, their intake year is the year they would have started, if they had joined at the beginning of the programme. Eg a person who was admitted to a programme in 2000 with direct entry to the second year, their start year would be 1999 for the purposes of determining recognition status of the programme.