The development of critical thinking is a transversal competence that complements other necessary competencies in the training of engineers and that today has become reasonably necessary. Critical thinking is a skill that traditional methods cannot teach, and it is necessary to provide spaces that allow putting into practice those elements that make up critical thinking. This article presents a framework that seeks to develop the cognitive abilities of critical thinking and its affective dispositions. The framework is circumscribed in the cognitive theory of the writing process but oriented to an article-conference format. We present the different stages of the article writing process and how these activities allow developing the cognitive and affective elements of critical thinking. Although the article writing program has been taught successfully since 2014, it is the first time that activities have been articulated to promote the development of critical thinking; this characteristic makes this work exploratory. We consider that the first results will allow proposing an initial framework that can be replicated in other engineering firms, adapting the topics of interest specific to each specialty.