International  Recognition and Benchmarking of Engineering Qualifications

Why International Education Recognition Agreements?
Developing and developed countries are all in need of engineeering services for infrastructure, services and industry. The economies of most countries are reasonably open and professional and engineering services are delivered across national boundaries. Engineering professions are themselves mobile. While local contexts and detailed knowledge required may differ from country to country, engineering competencies are increasing being recognised as having a common baseline. In view of the mobility of individuals, transborder services and common minimum standards, countries have banded together to ease the recognition of standards and qualifications. ECSA is a signatory to three such agreements: Washington Accord, Sydney Accord and Dublin Accord.  The signatories have also perform benchmarking by periodic monitoring of each others’ accreditation criteria and processes as well as producing consensus statements of expected outcomes of programmes.

Common Features of the Education Accords
The three Accords described below have the similar basic terms of agreement. The Signatories:

• Accept that one other’s accreditation procedures are comparable.
• Accept one another’s accredited degrees from the date of admission as a Full Member.
• Operate a periodic monitoring process.
• Agree to identify and encourage implementation of best practise.
• Accept that it applies to Accreditations in home jurisdictions only.
• Accept the need to encourage licensing and registration authorities to apply the Agreement.

The specifics of individual agreements are summarised below and more information is contained on the International Engineering Alliance Website

• Washington Accord
• Sydney Accord
• Dublin Accord

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Washington Accord

The purpose of the Washington Accord is recognition of the equivalence of Accredited Engineering Education Programs leading to the Engineering Degree and is applicable only to Candidate Engineer or Professional  Engineer registration. It is essentially a quality assurance process and is based on world best practice.

The current list of Washington signatories is available on the IEA website.  Signatories, are:

• Australia (Engineers Australia)
• Canada (Engineers Canada)
• Chinese Taipei (IEET)
• Hong Kong, China (HKIE)
• Ireland (Engineers Ireland)
• Japan (JABEE)
• Korea (ABEEK)
• New Zealand (IPENZ)
• Malaysia (BEM)
• South Africa (ECSA)
• Singapore (IES)
• United Kingdom (EC)
• United States of America (ABET)

Provisional Members - which are bodies that are working toward signatory status and consequently do not yet enjoy mutual recognition of their qualifications - are:

• Germany (ASIIN)
• India (AICTE)
• Russia (RAEE)
• Sri Lanka (Engineers Sri Lanka)

The present Chair is provided by ABET, Dr Win Phillips, and the Secretariat provided by the International Engineering Alliance. For more information, visit the Washington Accord website.

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Sydney Accord

Flowing from the Washington Accord, a similar Agreement was developed for Engineering Technologists or Incorporated Engineers, called the Sydney Accord (SA), which was signed in June 2001.

The current list of Sydney Accord signatories is available on the IEA website.  Signatories, are:

• Australia (Engineers Australia)
• Canada (CCTT)
• Hong Kong, China (HKIE)
• Ireland (Engineers Ireland)
• New Zealand (IPENZ)
• South Africa (ECSA)
• United Kingdom (EC)
• United States of America (ABET)

There are currently no Provisional Members

The present Chair is provided by The Engineering Council, Mr David Long, and the Secretariat provided by International Engineering Alliance.  For more information, visit the Sydney Accord website.

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Dublin Accord

The Dublin Accord (DA) is an Agreement for substantial equivalence in the typifying tertiary qualifications for technician education, normally of two or more  years duration. It commenced in 2002 and has the following Signatories:

• Canada (CCTT)
• Ireland (Engineers Ireland)
• South Africa (ECSA)
• United Kingdom (EC)

Provisional Members are:

• New Zealand (IPENZ)
• United States of America (ABET)

The present Chair is provided by Ireland (Engineers Ireland), Mr Dennis McGrath, and the Secretariat provided by International Engineering Alliance.  For more information, visit the Dublin Accord website.

Benchmarking Engineering Education Programmes

The signatories of the Washington, Sydney and Dublin Accords have developed agreed statements of Graduate Attributes, that is outcomes with level descriptors and knowledge profiles for education programmes for engineers, engineering technologists and engineering technicians. These are available at  http://www.ieagreements.org/GradProfiles.cfm  ECSA’s BEng-type programmes are accredited against a standard that is substantially equivalent to the IEA Graduate Attributes.  The Graduate Attributes are accompanied by statement of Professional Competencies  at the professional registration level.

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