One of the roles of Engineering Institutions is the registration and regulation of engineering professionals, assessing their competence in both technical and management areas. Engineers are required to work within their area of competence, so, for example an experienced water treatment engineer may hesitate to do major structural design if they are not able to do this to a professional standard. A similar approach has is being promoted for professional humanitarian workers, identifying core competencies relevant to emergency relief work. This would improve standards in the workforce, allow training and experience to be independently evaluated and facilitate the careers of people working in a very mobile sector. Thus a professional engineer working in this area should be able to demonstrate both their engineering competence and their adherence to Core Humanitarian Standards. However there is an additional area that requires attention, namely the specific engineering techniques that relate to disaster relief. . Using the experiences of RedR UK in recruiting members and training humanitarians, this paper explores the skills, knowledge and other attributes that distinguish an enthusiastic but ill-informed and inexperienced person from somebody with the expertise to work efficiently, effectively and ethically in a challenging humanitarian context.