During the first half of the twentieth century, engineers consolidated themselves as members of an early elite of technical professionals. To achieve this status, these professionals deployed a series of tools that allowed them to legtimise their own discourse. However, in addition to the use of their own resources, they also required compliance with other factors that depended on the outcome of the negotiations between the state, the intellectual elites and the engineers themselves. The article refers to the planning of the teaching models disseminated in the Escuela de Ingenieros and the orientation adopted by public instruction policies regarding the training of technical professionals. It also considers how the characteristics that Peruvian engineering adopted between 1911 and 1930 influenced the development of proposals that sought to break with the traditional oligarchic order and strengthen state policies aimed at building a modern national state.