The purpose of this paper is to raise important issues in the area of CAPE education in the face of contemporary changes in knowledge development, information and communication technology advances and the practice of professional engineering. The paper does not seek to prescribe specific solutions but considers curriculum design principles that can help address the challenges faced by educators, professional and industry partners in developing graduate attributes within the CAPE domain. It is provided as a catalyst for further discussion and action on this important educational challenge. We discuss a range of important drivers for enhancing CAPE learning and teaching within the context of shifts in engineering practice and important developments in information and communication technologies. Effective development of graduate attributes in the CAPE domain requires innovative, unified curricula and pedagogies that centre on a range of learning strategies, the clever use of technology, collaborative learning spaces and authentic learning experiences. CAPE activities must be contextualized within systems-based courses in the curriculum and those courses must have a cohesive structure and justifiable learning progression. Such strategies can engage learners in situations and tasks that address a range of learning goals such as domain awareness and knowledge through to the deeper aspects of analysis. synthesis and evaluation - all aided by computer based methods. A review is made of the current trends in professional engineering activities across the product and process life cycle. These activities provide an important set of drivers for enhanced CAPE learning and teaching in engineering education. These considerations are coupled with an examination of approaches to curriculum design that sketch out important learning pathways, knowledge integration and pedagogies that must be considered in order to address and enhance the graduate outcomes in the CAPE education domain. We must adopt similar principles used within the application of process systems engineering to design and implement the educational environment for CAPE. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.