Chartered Geographers reflect: Nina MacVinish CGeog (GIS) on CPD for geospatial professionals

Continuing Professional Development or CPD, is a key step in helping you to develop your future career and developing it as part of being a Chartered Geographer. CPD acts as an enabler to reach the goals which you aspire to achieve, whether that be short-term or longer-term goals. CPD supports you to keep your skill set relevant, whilst allowing you to focus on current and future aspirations of the industry in which you work.

As stipulated in the RGS Chartered Geographer Framework, CPD can take the form of internal or external CPD. Internal CPD can be anything from on the job training to mentoring a colleague in GIS skills at work and knowledge transfer. External CPD can include participating in conferences, providing consultancy or expert advice and also writing for publications. As the geospatial industry evolves with new innovations, new skills can be achieved from CPD such as creating new web mapping applications to brushing up on the terminology used within the synergy supporting GIS and BIM workflows.

As a result of COVID19, now has never been such a great time to focus on developing your CPD and challenging yourself to learn and improve your geospatial skill set. As many international conferences, such as the ESRI User Conference, move online there is a whole plethora of online courses and resources which can be accessed from the comfort of your own home.