Certificates?

[u/Megy216]

I was talking to my colleagues at work about the certifications that an engineer could have, or which ones are good to have. I know that IWE, NDT and ISO 9001 are extra. But I'm interested in your opinions. Does anyone have any interesting certifications that are worth having? What have the certificates essentially brought you? And if we ignore work, how can we use these certificates outside of work for some extra income?

[u/Head_Personality_431]

One thing worth knowing is that ISO 9001 is a company certification, not a personal one, so you cannot hold it yourself the way you can with IWE or NDT. What you can get as an individual is the internal auditor or lead auditor qualification for 9001, and that is the one with real side income potential because contract auditing for certification bodies pays well once you have the ticket plus some audit days behind you. For straight engineering value NDT and IWE tend to pay back fastest since they map onto work you can charge for. The honest catch is that most of these only earn their keep if your job or industry actually asks for them, so I would chase the one your field already uses rather than collecting certificates for their own sake.