South Africa is currently experiencing a difficult economic climate. Some of our difficulty can be related to the lack of technical skills and in particular mechanical engineering skills. Graduates coming out of our tertiary institutions are needing to find ways to develop their levels of competency so as to be able to contribute to existing industry and perhaps even start new industries to enable our economy to grow. SAIMechE offers a unique opportunity to graduates to develop their competency and professional skills by using the Professional Development Programme (PDP) offered on our website. We would like to engage with those members via this blog site to assist you to get what you need and put yourself on the path to competency and professionalism.