New Non-Chartered Grade Project

Background

In 2015, a review was undertaken of the non-chartered grades with the aim of restoring the balance of chartered to non-chartered members and to address the “revolving-door issue” of people moving in and out of non-chartered grades whose entry criteria were based solely on qualifications (HNC for the Associate Grade and HND for the Incorporate Grade) which also had no competencies built around them.

Around the time of the review, there were 8,000 Associated members and 12,000 Incorporated members compared to around 20,000 Chartered members/fellows. This review saw both the Associate and Incorporate Grades closed to new entrants, although those already in the grades were allowed to retain their postnominals, unless they lapsed or were removed for disciplinary reasons, until 2025 when the grades are scheduled to be closed completely. Following the grade review, these members were encouraged to upgrade to chartership through various routes and there are now only around 8,748 remaining in these grades combined.

Non-Chartered Grade Review Group

In May 2020, the Non-Chartered Grade Review Group was set up by the Education, Qualification, Standards, and Practice Board (EQSP), chaired by trustee Christine Gausden, on the recommendations of the 2020 Members Forum. The concept of a non-chartered grade was approved for development in recognition of a changing education and industry landscape. The working group includes key international members and stakeholders including academics, industry members and members’ forum representatives.

Purpose

a) To provide an inclusive grade with its own distinctive set of competencies that have value for learners and stakeholders in the validation of skills in supervision, site management and other existing and new technical roles.

b) To broaden our built environment community and our understanding of how buildings are put together.

c) To ensure that an infrastructure is built around the grade to enable career progression for those who seek it and in keeping with Privy Council preference for the so-called ladder of opportunity.

Scope

The review group agreed that the grade should reflect CIOB’s broad church membership and include existing as well as emerging roles. Unlike the ACIOB and ICIOB grade, the new grade must have a distinctive value in its own right while being inclusive in terms of the range of roles. This is to be accommodated in the assessment through the use of weighted competencies and options which reflect the more specialist nature of the roles in scope.

Title & Benchmarking

The Review group looked at a large range of professional bodies with non-chartered grades, including four Built Environment Bodies, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA); and three bodies outside the built environment but with relevance to our industry were also reviewed, namely the Association for Project Management (APM), the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD).

A number of titles were reviewed, along with their purpose. It was agreed that Associate grades are often designed as stepping stones to chartership rather than as grades in their own right with meaningful competencies. Based on this, and the review of other bodies such as ICE and CABE with well-established technical grades, the group agreed that the Associate grades suggested that the members work was peripheral and not central to the discipline while ‘Tech’ grades are implicitly more aligned and integral to the discipline represented by the body. The group therefore agreed that a ‘Tech’ type title was more attractive and fitted better with the rationale for, and purpose of, the grade

The MCIOB and FCIOB have been benchmarked at Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) level 6, with some aspects of level 7 and at RQF level 7, with some aspects of level 8 respectively. The review group agreed that the new qualification should be benchmarked at Level 4, with some aspects of level 5.

Application Process and Competencies

The group recommended using a competencey-based report as the means of assessing candidates for the grade and that the interview is reserved for those opting for it rather than being the norm. The report should cover the knowledge, skills and behaviours expected at the level and defined within the competencies for the grade.

The competencies have been developed from the standards at Level 4 and Level 5 of the undergraduate Education Framework.

Recommendation

The EQSP Board is due to provide comment on and approve the proposal for the new non-chartered grade to progress the project to the next stage; a full member consultation, to be commenced in Autumn 2021.