We are pleased to announce Rachael Picken as the winner of our 2020 CPD Award.
Rachael was nominated by our assessors who review a sample of CPD records each year in a routine monitoring exercise and beat competition from 21 direct entrants to become the first winner from Scottish Water.
The assessors loved Rachael’s thorough and honest approach to planning her development, which showed an evolving approach to CPD. Rachael made good use of our CPD portal to record a variety of development activities, proving that learning doesn’t just take place during formal training or at conferences. She used a robust reflection process to identify any gaps which she fed back into her development plan to refine her learning objectives – a great example of the CPD cycle.
Two of the direct entries were exceptional and made the shortlist: Izzie Peters from Southern Water and Karen Gove from Anglian Water. Izzie’s submission had a huge breadth of development activities and well structured, comprehensive reflection, while Karen’s was notable for its thorough reflection that highlighted the way the development benefitted others and identified further learning requirements.
Rachael was ‘presented’ with her award by Lynn Cooper (Institute of Water CEO) in an online event which included Douglas Millican (Past President and Institute of Water Board Member and CEO, Scottish Water) and Matt Bower (Institute of Water CPD Champion and Operations Team Leader, Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland).
Douglas said he wasn’t surprised to learn Rachael had won as he knew she is talented and committed to leadership and personal development but it was really impressive to have won with a routine submission against those who had actively applied.
Douglas also said that what we can achieve as a sector is enabled through the skills, capability and attitude of the people we employ and the skills agenda is massively important to Scottish Water.
Rachael said it was good to be selected for monitoring, to receive feedback and learn how to improve. She was pleased her commitment to keeping up to date and recording her CPD had been recognised and said that being selected for monitoring is not as bad as you think: it is good to be up to date and to know that it can be recognised.
Thanks to all who submitted an entry and to the assessors who facilitated our annual monitoring exercise. Thanks also to Sarah Dunn – our Professional Registration Manager who manages the whole process and to Matt Bower, our CPD Champion who judged the CPD Awards along with Nicola Johnson and last year’s winner Lucy Hird.
Congratulations to Izzie Peters, Karen Gove and, winner of the 2020 CPD Award, Rachael Picken.
Watch our awards presentation below:
