For you to take the Professional Assessment Examination (PAE), you have to be registered with BEM for 3 years. IEM is just a society of engineers. BEM is the regulatory board.

There are 2 ways to obtain your PE (Ir.).

1) Mentoring system, this way you have to become a graduate member with IEM and request them to assign you a mentor. For the next 3 years, quarterly, you will have to meet up with your Mentor and discuss what you've learnt over the past 3 months. And also fill up your log book. Very very tedious system but sure way for you to learn throughout your 3 years.

2) Submitting a design report - After 3 years of experience (usually 5 years would be a good time to apply), you will have to fill in the necessary forms and write 2 reports. 1 report would be the Experience report of what you've done throughout your working life, sort of like a resume. The other report is the design report which during your working career, you choose a project that you were involved in and write about that. So it can be anything from designing a pump system for mechanical engineers, designing a water treatment plant for chemical engineers, etc. Then you submit both your reports to your Interviewer and then you will go for the interview where you will be questioned on the design report just to make sure that you didn't copy it. Depending on the interviewer, you might just fail there and then if you don't know basic stuff. After the interviewer is satisfied, you will be required to write 2 essays. 1 with regards to your design report and 1 from the Code of Ethics.

Let me know if you need help. I hope I didn't confuse anyone further.

For me, I never was an IEM member until i sat for my PAE. So I actually applied to become a Corporate Member instead of the normal process of converting your Graduate membership to a corporate membership. I didn't see the need to waste my money for 3 years when my company would pay for me if i wanted to go for trainings hosted by IEM.

If you want to take the PAE, you can. You just have to write a report that shows what you've learnt and pick a topic to write your project/design report. For you, in quality area, maybe you can chose a topic of what you did to enhance the quality of your product while reducing the costs to make it and not cut corners....