What is CDR (Competency Demonstration Report) and Why it is required?

CDR stands for Competency Demonstration Report that is a technical report required by Engineers Australia from the applicants who are aiming to make a career in engineering in Australia. Australia is utilizing CDR Reports as an appraisal method for evaluating the competency and education level of overseas Engineering students and professionals who desire to work in Australia. The main rationale of CDR is a demonstration of your skills and knowledge at a professional level as either an engineering associate, professional engineer or engineering technologist.

10 Ways to Write a Perfect CDR

Are you afraid that your CDR gets rejected? Here are the 10 ways for CDR Report Writing from our experts that can help you to qualify on Engineers Australia parameters.

1. Appropriate Introduction

You should include the introduction part which must be the length of approximately 100 words. Make sure it contains the information like:

• Name of an organization
• Dates and duration of career episodes
• Chronology
• Location where the experience was gained
• Title of the position occupied by you

2. Proper Background

You should include the content of where you have been studying or working in the background part. It must be the length of 200 to 500 words which must contain the information like:

• Nature of the overall project
• Nature of your particular work area
• Objectives of the project
• Organizational hierarchy
• Job description or statement of the duties

3. Personal Engineering Activity

This is the main part of Career Episode Report, and is the body of the narrative and the key assessable component. You should describe about the work you performed as an engineer in this part which should not exceed more than 1000 words. This is where you emphasize on your roles and contributions in the project. And do not make any mistake by including the team activities.

These are the things you should include are:

• How do you applied your skill and knowledge
• How you worked with other team member
• Tasks represented to you and how you accomplishing them
• Any technical problem occurred and how you solve them
• Include creative design work

4. Include Creative Design

The design activities have a higher priorities in CDR assessment. If your CDR Report includes the technical creative design then there is a high chance of your report being positively assessed.  That’s why, you should explain all the technological experience and creative engineering regarding the designing activities and make sure to highlight it.

5. Include Technical Difficulties

The project detail you were involved with and exactly what you contributed in the project are the essential parts to include in your career episode. Each project leads to some technical difficulties or problem which must be include while writing CDR Report. At least three technical difficulties/ problem should be mentioned in your CDR report. While you include the problem statement in your career episodes, you must mention the steps you took to solve them.

6. Details about Project Management

Project Management oversees a project to meet a goals, timeline and budget. While writing the CDR Report, you must include the duration, job description of the duties, and team members who involved to solve the problem. Make sure to include technical detail information like a schedule, assigning the tasks to team members and setting the deadlines for each of the tasks on your report.

7. Summary

The length of this section is 50 to 100 words. You need to pay attention to the technical representatives and how you concluded it.  Give an overview of the overall, mention the strategies you implemented and portray your technical growth while pursuing it. Don’t forget to include the following information are:

• Overall project view
• Contribution to the project
• Project fared to meet the goals and requirements

8. Summary Statement

Before writing the CDR Report, you must understand that CDR report has essential three elements: Summary Statement, three Career Episodes and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) list. Each of them serves the important role in the CDR Report. Summary statement is the first page that the most assessors read. It is a crucial and most complex part of any CDR where you need to demonstrate all the competency elements for the nominated occupational category. In Summary Statement (SS), you provides the cross references for all career episodes. It shows how well you analyses information which also provide the first impressions on them. Only one summary statement is required for all three episodes.

9. Avoid Plagiarism

You can find the CDR samples from different websites. Do not copy this samples. You can take a reference, learn and use the sample from the internet or any other sources. Engineers Australia is against plagiarism and if they find out you had copied the content in your report then you might face the rejection from the assessment for a year. Engineer Australia has no way to know whether you genuinely made a mistake or tried to do cheating. That’s why before presenting the CDR report to the Engineers Australia, first you must use the advanced tools which check out the plagiarism and find out which parts of your CDR need to paraphrasing.

10. A perfect CPD

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Report is required by an Engineers Australia for the migration skilled Assessment. In CPD, make sure that an engineer keep himself up to date with developments in the field of engineering. CPD provide the necessary information: title, date, duration and venue of the training. You do not need to contain more than one A4 page in Continuing Professional Lists.. CPD activities are to be designed to update or to extent your knowledge and skills, and enables to maintain technical competence, successfully deals with changes and serve better the community. Participation in CPD activities grow your networks and contacts.

13 Reasons for Your CDR Rejection

CDR stands for Competency Demonstration Report which is required by Engineers Australia in order to asses your skills and qualification. Applicants need to submit a complete CDR report to describe their capabilities in their related professional field. Even how much you care while writing CDR, you may commit some mistakes. These mistakes result in the rejection of CDR report.

Some of the common reasons for the rejection of CDR report are:

1. Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a critical reason for the rejection of your CDR report. CDR samples available in different websites are only for reference purpose. Never copy and paste the project report from the CDR sample or from the internet. Whether you do it intentionally or unintentionally, Engineers Australia will catch your plagiarized content and rejects your report. The CDR report is meant to be an original work based on your own profile and project. So, to avoid plagiarism and rejection just read the sample, learn from it and write in a similar way.

2. Use of excessive Technical details

It is okay to write some technical detail information on your report. But too many technical details like tables, excessive calculations, charts, photos, etc. on each report can degrade your CDR report. A CDR report is an official document which is meant to be written by a professional without excessive use of technical details. That’s why a CDR report should be in point information rather than long and elaborated.

3. Career Episode too Technical

Each career episode demonstrates the application of engineering knowledge and skills in the chosen engineering discipline. According to the EA it is strictly mentioned that the career episode must not be too technical. A career episode is where you discuss your project or problem and your approach to that problem and results. If some necessary calculation is involved then you can include them in your CDR Report. But the diagrams, tables and excessive calculations must be avoided. Engineer Australia wants to check solving ability and your practical skill because the theory knowledge of yours can be already known via your educational qualifications.

4. Word Count

There is a specific rule for the number of words that should be written in each section of CDR reports. The words limit for each Career episode is more than 1000 words and do not exceed 2500 words. Providing extra details and making it too long can lead your CDR to rejection. So, you need to include only the essential information and address within a limited word which satisfies all the requirement of Engineer’s Australia.

5. Improper Organizational Structure

The organizational structure showcasing your hierarchy and position in the project should be clearly defined. It is essential to convey your exact position to appropriately describe the work you have done in your project as viable in the capacity occupied.

6. Lack of creative design in the CDR

The high priority in CDR assessment is given to design activities. There is a high chance of your CDR report being positively assessed when you include the technical design activities in it. In the same way, lack of creative design may act as a huge impediment to the positive assessment of your CDR report. Hence explain the technological experience and creative engineering regarding the designing activities you have and make sure to highlight it as possible.

7. Improper/Technical Difficulties

Before presenting your CDR report to Engineers Australia, you must pay attention to its correctness of spelling and grammar, formatting, and the flow of sentences in your career episodes. Your report must look like it is written by a professional. A CDR report must include duration, location, company profile and project objective. Not only include this information in a report but also present in chronological order. To provide the information on the bullet point is the common mistake made by many people while writing CDR report. So instead of writing the information on bullet point, explain the information and data in paragraphs so that it can be easily understandable.

8. Absurd Selection of Project

Your CDR Report can be simply rejected for the fact that your supporting project did not stand enough. If you present the illogical project then you might face the rejection from the Engineers Australia. According to your educational qualification, a reasonable project should be selected while writing a CDR report.

9. Vague/ Wayward summary statement

Before writing the CDR report, you must understand that CDR report has three main elements: Summary Statement, three Career Episodes and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) list. Each of them serves an important role in CDR report. The summary statement is the essential part of CDR which provides cross references for all career episodes. It is the first page that the most assessors read. It shows them how well you analyze information which provides the first impressions of them.

10. Misguided CPD (Continuing Professional Development)

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) report is required by Engineers Australia for Migration Skilled Assessment. CDP includes:

• formal postgraduate study detail
• short courses, workshops, seminars attended
• Conferences attended
• Internships or volunteer work

CPD must provide the necessary information like title, date, duration and venue of the training.

11. CDR in Different Language

It is compulsory to present your CDR report in English language. It is even better if you could use Australian English in correct way. In case if you write the Career Episodes in different language then you must need to translate it into the English language so that Engineers Australia can understand the language and be able to access your CDR report.

12. Mention only your experiences

CDR report is all about you and your work activities. Even if it is a group project, you should mention only your experiences and contributions to the project. It is unnecessary to include the whole team. Engineers Australia are going to assess your skill and not your whole team’s. So, always keep in mind to write only about your participation and contribution on the project in your CDR report.

13. Not mentioning the Problem Statements

It is very essential to clearly mention about the problems along with the steps you took to solve them in your career episode report. Mentioning problem statements in your report helps clarify exactly what you contributed and accomplished in the project. So make sure you include all the problem statements and solutions in each of your report.

For more information please visit https://cdraustralia.com.au