THE P.ENG.

APPLICANT
The journey to become a licensed professional engineer in Canada

S E P T E M B E R 7 , 2 0 1 4 B Y P. E N G A P P L I C A N T

Engineering Experience: Example 2

Here’s another example from my engineering experience record for the PEO. The company
developed software for the television industry and it was my first job after grad school.

Work Experience
The only wrinkle in this introductory section is that my direct supervisor at the company was not
licensed engineer. Fortunately, one of my team members was licensed and agreed to act as a
reference.

Start Date (after school finished)

End Date (a couple of years later)
Company A company in the TV industry
Position Software Developer
Supervisor (My direct supervisor, not a P. Eng.)
(Mailing address)
P. Eng reference (A former colleague, who was a P. Eng.)
(colleague) (Mailing address)
License: 123456789 (PEO)
Responsibilities Member of a software development team that developed and tested
(programming language)-based software for digital cable television. My
 team was focused on (specific feature list) functionality on the client (set-
top box or TV) and server.

2.2.1 Application of Theory

The most notable thing here is that I put N/A for the implementation section. Some might say “but
you developed software – surely you implemented something?”. Perhaps, but that is not my
interpretation of the categories in this section. Software development is part of synthesis (Design &
Synthesis). Implementation means putting what you created into practice. This company did that, of
course, deploying our software to millions of customers. I was not, however involved in that process
(release engineering). We developed and tested the software, but were not involved in deploying
it. Besides, I have the Implementation section covered in other jobs.

Analysis To support multiple hardware platforms (different set-top box and TV

models), the software team maintained a set of automated tests to confirm
that a particular platform confirmed to the expected application
programming interface (API) behaviour. I wrote tests in (programming
language) to evaluate if specific engineering change notices (ECNs) had been
included in a firmware version. I executed these tests on beta releases of new
hardware and reported issues found to the 3rd party hardware vendor.
Design and I co-designed and developed the module responsible for the (general feature)
Synthesis implementation. Specifically, I developed the software module responsible
for enabling and managing (specific feature).
Testing Methods We employed the test-driven-development (TDD) method of software
development. For all software that I wrote, I first wrote unit tests to verify the
basic functionality of new (programming language) classes. Then, I wrote
integration level tests to verify correct functional behaviour from a collection
of classes. These tests were run continuously on the team's software as it
was developed. I investigated test failures to determine whether the failure
was a defect in the production software, test software, hardware platform, or
environment (example environment elements when developing for TV).
Implementation N/A
Methods
 2.2.2 Practical Experience
If you’re anything like me, when you are writing your experience record, you’ll feel good and
confident about some of what you write and then you’ll write things that feel shaky and a bit of a
stretch. This section, for this job, is one that I felt went well.

Function of The (description of software that I helped develop) was one

components as part of component in a system that delivered a functional (TV feature
the larger system descriptor) experience to the user. The middleware interfaced with the
set-top hardware via the firmware. The user interacted with the system
via the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) software running atop the
middleware. The middleware retrieved program data via the digital
cable network from the head-end (central server). Debugging and
resolving issues discovered by the QA team required an understanding
of the entire system. I investigated and uncovered defects in both the
firmware and EPG layers which were originally filed as a defect against
the middleware layer.
Limitations of The (specific TV) schedule was required to contain specific duration
practical engineering days of data. The resultant size of the data file meant that download
and related human time from the head-end to the client was unacceptably long. I co-
systems in achieving developed and tested a modification to the specific software to
desired goals unpack a compressed version of the schedule (packed at the head-
end). The compressed file was less than 10% the size of the original file
and reduced the download time to an acceptable value.
The significance of One hardware vendor, located in Japan, was late in bringing their
time in the platform up to the expected level of API conformance. In order to get
engineering process back on schedule, the vendor's principal engineer visited our site,
where we worked a significant amount of overtime together for one
week. I demonstrated the areas of API non-conformance to this
engineer and verified the firmware patches he developed to address
those issues.
Knowledge and The middleware I co-developed was required to conform to the
understanding of (speicific software standard) to satisfy a requirement of the (regulatory
codes, standards, body) that by July 1, 2007 set-top boxes and other digital cable
regulations and laws television 3rd party devices should be interchangeably usable on any
 that govern applicable proprietary cable television network. I read and interpreted the
engineering activities relevant sections of the specific standard in order to design and
develop the (software description). For one issue related to (specific
feature), I discovered an ambiguity in the (spec name) specification,
which I worked with the specification authors and various hardware
vendors to clarify.

2.2.3 Management of Engineering

As I mentioned previously, sectioned marked as N/A are covered in entries for other jobs. If you’re
only writing up a single job for your experience record, I recommend breaking your experience
record into different projects. Either way, make sure that each sub-section has at least one answer
throughout your record.

Planning Our software development followed the Agile methodology, instead of the more
traditional Waterfall method. This entailed planning our work in bi-weekly
iterations. I participated in and eventually led iteration planning meetings where
team members discussed and then estimated upcoming tasks in terms of effort
required.
Scheduling Adhering to the Agile methodology, I updated burn-down charts that showed the
progress for a given bi-weekly iteration, represented the team at company-wide
stand-up meetings to discuss blocking issues and participated in retrospective
meetings to review the strengths and weaknesses of our scheduling and
estimation techniques.
Budgeting N/A
Supervision I represented the team at daily company-wide stand-up meetings intended to
review and address any schedule-blocking issues. When the (name of my team)
team's manager was not present (e.g. due to sick leave or vacation), I fulfilled his
duties, including moderating the team's daily internal stand-up meetings and
being the team's external representative to other development teams and 3rd
parties.
Project N/A
Control
 Risk N/A
Assessment

2.2.4 Communication Skills

If there’s one thing you get exposed to quite a bit during graduate studies, it’s communication.
Heck, I took a graduate level course on scientific communication. Let’s face it, in the majority of jobs
when you are fresh out of school, you will rarely have the opportunity to give presentations,
internally or to the public. However, even the most junior positions involve some form of
communication.

Preparing written I wrote daily e-mail correspondence with internal and external team
work members, management, and 3rd party partners. I wrote weekly status
reports on my activities during the previous week. I wrote and revised
design documents for (general feature) components, such as (specific
feature).
Oral Reports or I provided daily oral updates to management at the company-wide stand-up
Presentations meeting on the progress and challenges facing the (name of my team) team
in their current development iteration.
Presentations to N/A
General Public

 2.2.5 Social Implications of Engineering

If I can describe a benefit to the public, from developing software that enables people to watch
television, you can do it for your past work experience.

The value of benefits The implementation of the (standard name) platform on the (big North
of engineering work American cable company) cable network meant that (cable company)
to the public customers were no longer required to rent or buy hardware from a single
vendor. This introduction of competition into the set-top technology
space resulted in increased choice at competitive pricing for the
consumer.
 The safeguards in
place to protect the
employees and the
public and mitigate
adverse impacts
The relationship N/A
between engineering
activity and the
public at large
I co-implemented and tested the parental control module, which allowed
parents to implement a PIN-protected access to a subset of viewing
content (e.g. content inappropriate for children). This module included a
PIN lockout functionality, which would disable PIN entry for a period of
time if the PIN was erroneously entered on 3 consecutive tries. If the
set-top box lost communication with the program schedule server, all
non-described content would become PIN-locked, in order to protect
children viewers.

The significant role of
regulatory agencies
on the practice of
engineering
The FCC's ruling that cable customers must be able to use 3rd party
hardware to view digital cable content is what motivated the
development of an standard name-capable middleware. The deadline of
the ruling (July 1st, 2007) also placed an aggressive constraint on the
engineering timelines.

That’s it for my stint in TV land. If you actually read through the whole thing, please take the time to
leave a comment, tweet at me, or send me an e-mail. It would be invaluable for me to hear whether
these posts are of use to anyone. If I’m not providing the type of information or advice you need, let
me know and I’ll do my best to rectify that!

Next up: my first position in the medical devices field.

EXPERIENCE

23 Replies to “Engineering Experience: Example 2”

antonio
N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 1 4 AT 4 : 4 6 P M
Briefly read though your scope relating your experience with the sections asked from PEO, very helpful,
thank you. For the sub-sections where you put N/A, is that ok to do? Considering that would be the truth
and it really does not apply in your case, meaning would PEO accept that answer? I’m asking this
because on some sub-sections I would need to put N\A because I don’t see how my examples would
apply.
In other words, I graduated in 2006, (worked for contractors doing non-engineering work) started
working with a consulting firm in 2008, but my work is related to inspections. From time to time I get
asked to look at a change in the contract that is not practical to construct therefore implementing civil
engineering type skills while estimating the costs associated to those changes. I’m worried that as soon
as PEO sees “inspections” on my title, it’s not engineering type applications and they will not approve
my report. Any thought on this?
Also, I’m assuming you did get your P.Eng therefore making those answers of N/A acceptable.

Thanks
Anth

P.Eng Applicant
A P R I L 1 7 , 2 0 1 5 AT 2 : 3 2 P M

Hi Anth,

Thanks for your question, it’s a good one. I’m sorry it took me so long to apply – I haven’t been paying
much attention to the blog for a while and even worse, I wasn’t getting notified of these comments.

Before I answer, please consider that I haven’t received my P.Eng. yet. No problems with the application,
but I deferred writing the PPE a couple of times due to personal circumstances (various life events that
made time for studying and writing difficult to find). I recently did write the PPE though and now await
word from the PEO. I imagine because there has been such a delay between my experience record and
writing the PPE that they may ask me to update my experience record, which should be fairly simple.

As for the N/A’s, this is just my guess, and not an official answer, but I believe that using N/A should be
fine, as long as you have those categories covered in another job or position. Although I have N/A’s
throughout my experience record, there isn’t one category for which I don’t have experience listed
under at least one entry. This is probably not apparent because I haven’t posted my entire experience
record yet.

Hope this helps!

Justin
N O V E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 1 4 AT 2 : 1 7 A M
Cool write-up, sir. I appreciated the examples. My application is in massive walls of text and i’m working
to condense. Your format seems easier to read than mine (cellular and just a few sentences.

Well done!

P.Eng Applicant
A P R I L 1 7 , 2 0 1 5 AT 1 : 4 1 P M

Thanks for the kind words and I hope your application is going well!

Shkelzen
J A N U A R Y 2 0 , 2 0 1 5 AT 3 : 5 1 P M

Thank you very much for your blog, it is very helpfully. Please us know how is going you application

P.Eng Applicant
A P R I L 1 7 , 2 0 1 5 AT 1 : 4 1 P M

I’m glad it helped. I have to apologize for being away for so long. I’m hoping to add more to the blog
soon. I recently wrote the PPE (haven’t heard the results yet, but fairly confident that I passed). Now I
play the waiting game!

Ryan
S E P T E M B E R 2 9 , 2 0 1 5 AT 2 : 2 0 P M

Wow, this is such a great resource! I wish I found this 6 months earlier when I started writing this…
Would have saved me a LOT of trouble!

Congratulations on obtaining your P.Eng designation btw.

Question: you mentioned above that if you have worked only one job to list projects: how would you
display that on the record, based on your template? I’m assuming that one would put that under
“Company”; you list the company name and the name of the project you worked on at that company, or
something like that.

I’m going to pass this site along to others who still need to write their records. Thanks again!
P.Eng Applicant
S E P T E M B E R 2 9 , 2 0 1 5 AT 2 : 2 6 P M

Thank you kindly for the feedback and congratulations. It’s great to hear that people are finding useful
information here. Please do refer this site to anyone else who might benefit from it.

For the project-based template, check out the link I provided to Darryl Stahlke’s experience record,
which was the inspiration for my template (http://pengapplicant.ca/engineering-experience-record-
template/). In his record, he lists projects performed for the same employer, if I recall.

Joshua Harris
F E B R U A R Y 6 , 2 0 1 6 AT 4 : 3 2 P M

thanks very much for the help!

P.Eng Applicant
F E B R U A R Y 6 , 2 0 1 6 AT 4 : 5 8 P M

You’re most welcome, Joshua! All the best with your application.

Sunny Singh
O C T O B E R 2 , 2 0 1 7 AT 7 : 0 2 P M

Hello Sir,

I have finished all the requirements of PEO and submitted by experience records and they called me for
interview. I have been told to get additional 1 year experience. I am an electrical engineer with 7 year
Canadian and 3 years international experience.

Is it possible if you could help me with the write up for experience records or if i can get example of
electrical design that would be great. I am working in consulting field.

P.Eng Applicant
O C T O B E R 3 , 2 0 1 7 AT 6 : 1 3 P M

Hi Sunny,
Unfortunately this is not something I can personally help you with, but I recommend you check out
Gavin Simone’s mock interview service. Good luck!

Alaa
O C T O B E R 2 7 , 2 0 2 0 AT 1 1 : 0 0 A M

Hello,
Hope you did well with your experience record and got your license by now .
Can you plz help me with writing my records , I worked in the same field
Thanks

Tariq
M A R C H 2 7 , 2 0 1 9 AT 6 : 3 5 P M

This site is very beneficial, I am also in interested in experience samples related to civil and
environmental engineering

P.Eng Applicant
J U LY 2 5 , 2 0 1 9 AT 1 : 1 3 P M

Hi Tariq,

I’m very sorry for responding far too late; I’ve been busy with other projects. We do have an
environmental engineering sample here: https://pengapplicant.ca/environmental-engineering-example-
experience-record/ for what it’s worth.

All the best!

David
O C T O B E R 2 , 2 0 1 9 AT 7 : 2 2 P M

Can you provide the experience record for electrical engineer

P.Eng Applicant
O C T O B E R 4 , 2 0 1 9 AT 1 : 4 4 P M

Hi David,
Thanks for asking. Unfortunately, I haven’t had anyone share an electrical experience record yet (and
when they do, it takes time for me to anonymize it). I will keep trying. Another resource for experience
records (although it is not free) would be Gavin at PracticePPEExams. Good luck with your application!

A PEng applicant
F E B R U A R Y 1 3 , 2 0 2 0 AT 4 : 3 2 A M

Hi,
Can you please share a sample experience record for a Project Manager planning to apply PEng
application under project and construction management?
Thanks

Ali
J U LY 3 0 , 2 0 2 0 AT 1 0 : 0 3 P M

Hi,
I have recently returned to Toronto after a decade of employment in the Middle East. I have civil
engineering Bachelor’s degree from outside Canada and USA and construction management bachelor
of tech from Canada. I have mainly worked as QC manager, Project Engineer and Manager for the last
ten years. Can you please explain if PEO accepts my academic engineering qualifications and if you can
share a sample format how should I present my experience.

Amir
J U N E 1 , 2 0 2 1 AT 1 2 : 2 7 A M

Hi,

I have applied for P.Eng at EGBC, I have near 4 years experience in Canada and 17 years International,
will they ask me to attend the interview or examination or exempt?

morteza Tamimi
J U LY 2 8 , 2 0 2 1 AT 9 : 1 8 P M

Hi,
Is there a field as a project or construction management in the PEO application?
kamran
S E P T E M B E R 3 , 2 0 2 1 AT 2 : 3 6 A M

hi all
when should I send my experience record and experience summary? shall I submit with my application
form or after the assessment of my document?
thanks

kamran
S E P T E M B E R 3 , 2 0 2 1 AT 2 : 3 9 A M

and how many records I should prefer for 8 years of working in two companies? one is enough or more?