SPCE was founded in 1962 and inaugurated by the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru. At the time, it was only the fifth Engineering Institute in the Bombay region after VJTI, UDCT, IIT Bombay and M. H. Saboo Siddik College of Engineering. The college started with three disciplines of engineering - Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Computer Engineering were started in 1995, Information Technology (IT) in 1998 and Electronics in 2005. These three courses were privately funded by the college management whereas the Civil, Mechanical and Electrical courses are provided funds by the government.

Mumbai University recognized the college as two separate institutions - SPCE (Aided) offering Civil, Mechanical and Electrical engineering courses and SPCE (Unaided) offering Electronics, Information Technology, Computer Science courses now known as Sardar Patel Institute of Technology (SPIT). The unaided section was formally separated from its parent college in 2005 and established as Sardar Patel Institute of Technology (SPIT). However, the day-to-day operations of the two institutions is often a joint effort as they share some common facilities. The students of the two colleges mingle freely in extracurricular activities and share the same campus and hostel facilities.