One challenge is adherence to a knowledge and competency assessment system that reassures both the candidate and the manager that the time is worth it and that it is necessary to have sufficient resources dedicated to the process.
The advantage of this quantitative system is the development of skills that include the necessary verification of documentation that reflects that the work was carried out by those who dealt with the necessary professional standards as part of the quality management process. Persuading people can be very difficult, especially when people believe they have been doing their job for a significant amount of time. It is advisable to use a term such as “confirmation of competence” in order to define the assessment system, rather than the term “demonstration of competence”, since it is assumed that the candidate may not yet be competent before the assessment.
For highly practical jobs such as manufacturing, equipment installation or maintenance, the most accurate assessment method is usually the candidate's verification method. Any knowledge that could not be obtained from observation, but which is required to collect professional standards, will be extracted from a survey or test. A candidate performing an activity is assessed in a work setting and is likely to carry out this activity in a routine manner. The downtime (time of unproductive work) of the candidate then limits the answers to any questions raised by the candidate.
However, this is not the case for many engineers and managers, including design engineers and designers, who carry out their work mostly at the table. Activities are usually carried out over a longer period of time, encompassing discussion and analysis that are difficult to observe in action, and the candidate may need information gathering, meetings, etc., before the result can be demonstrated. In this case, the traditional way of assessing managers and engineers is for them a personal report that reflects how they performed their work and collected a portfolio of documentary evidence used by them in professional standards.
There are tendencies to forgo additional work to demonstrate that I am “doing my job properly,” especially in an environment where there is little free time for personal development, as long as there is no financial incentive, or the need for a contract or regulatory requirement. There is also "expert time" to consider as there is likely to be a shortage of top-level experts. Experts should be professionally competent at the candidate level as well as at the expert level. Many organizations feel that engineers and managers at this level are more productive as engineers and managers than experts.
Therefore, in order to gain recognition of the system for assessing competence and knowledge, it is necessary that this process does not become a burden for the time of both: the candidate and the expert.
