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As a licensed professional engineer, I find the effort exerted by various state and provincial licensing bodies to regulate the use of the term 'engineer' a bit
by eigenvector 8y ago
As a licensed professional engineer, I find the effort exerted by various state and provincial licensing bodies to regulate the use of the term 'engineer' a bit tiresome. Yes, it's important to regulate the practice of engineering, but unlike some other types of professionals engineers rarely if ever offer their services to Joe Public. It's not like we have guys putting up billboards on the side of the highway advertising their services as an engineer.
In every context where the services of a PE / PEng (Canada) are truly required, no one will be relying on that person's email signature or business card, they will be asking for the relevant documents to be signed and sealed.
Licensing boards would do well to devote more effort to regulating large engineering firms which often play fast and loose with the rules, hiring cheaper, unlicensed people to do most of their work and then have one or two PEs seal all of it with minimal review.
- sandworm101 8y agoI once worked in the live entertainment industry. We often had engineers sign off on stage/tower structures. When they got the math wrong things fell on heads. Our insurance demanded licensed engineers. Anyone using that term, professing, to be an engineer better be one. This case essentially removes engineer from the list of recognized professions. That club now only belongs to the doctors and lawyers. Even hairdressers cannot call themselves such without state recognition.
- justinpombrio 8y ago> Our insurance demanded licensed engineers. Anyone using that term, professing, to be an engineer better be one. The guy didn't claim he was licensed. All he said was "I'm an engineer". All the court said was "He can say he's an engineer". This doesn't sound very problematic to me. Like, presumably you'd ask where they were licensed, right? You wouldn't just accept anyone who said they were an engineer, and then rely on the state to issue a $500 fine to anyone who dared use the "E" word without being licensed in the US?
- DaiPlusPlus 8y agoWhat should we call the people who stoke fires on steam locomotives then?
- jdeibele 8y agoTraditionally they're called firemen. Steam locomotives aren't commonly used anymore, so I assume you're making a joke about somebody on a train being a "firefighter".
- lsiebert 8y agoI think the term stoker also applies.
- jdeibele 8y agoCould be, although I think of that as a nautical term. For example when they were talking recently about the coal bunker fire on the Titantic, they said that two stokers per every shift were delegated to shovel the bunker that had the burning coal.
- nkurz 8y agoI think instead he's making a joke about locomotive engineers. Which is actually a good point, but marred by couple issues. First, the "engineer" is the person who drives the train, rather than the person feeding the fire. Second, the term is only frequently used in English speaking North America. Further description here: Why are US train drivers called engineers? https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-32758223 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-32758223
- Taniwha 8y agoNo - the judge affirmed that the state can still control who can call themselves a "professional engineer" or "licensed professional engineer" - but allowed anyone to claim to be an "engineer" ... it's a situation akin to being an "accredited teacher" with a teaching credential compared to all of us who teach at one time or another
- naasking 8y agoI guess anyone can call themselves a doctor then, and we'll just have to call proper doctors "professional doctors" or "licensed professional doctors".
- wl 8y agoCall them what they are: physicians. A four year entry level degree in a subject is a bachelor degree, not a doctorate.
- vonmoltke 8y agoWhat's a "proper doctor"? Is someone who obtained a Ph.D. in English Literature not allowed to call themselves "doctor"?
- naasking 8y agoThey have a doctorate don't they?
- chaseha 8y agoCompletely disagree. It says he can call himself an engineer in a non-professional context. Having a ChBE BS, I am an engineer (although no longer working as one). I am not a Professional Engineer (not a licensed PE). There’s a difference - doesn’t mean I should not be able to call myself an engineer, and I’m sure others w engineering degrees would agree
- caseysoftware 8y agoBS EE here. I am also an engineer and approach the world with an engineering mindset. And I would never use "Engineer" as part of my title. For me, once it becomes a title/capitalized, it's no longer an adjective but a designation. My first initial is D and I use that instead of my first name. When people address me as "Dr Casey" I correct them on that too.
- grogenaut 8y agoNon-sarcastic question: Everyone at my company has "Software Development Engineer" on their title if that's their role. That's a capitol E. What's your thoughts on that?
- ghaff 8y agoEngineer is an incredibly widely-used term as part of titles. In addition to SWEs etc., you've got sales engineers, systems engineers, field engineers, etc. When I was in the oil business there were titles like mud engineer (which people joked should have been called mud salesmen). The majority of these people don't have engineering degrees and have never worked in what most would consider an engineering role.
- gerdesj 8y ago"As a licensed professional engineer, I ..." He is an engineer as far as I am concerned (and time served as well as his quali): Jarlstrom, who holds a bachelors of science degree in engineering from Sweden
- 4thaccount 8y agoA professional engineer has to pass a pretty rigorous test that takes every bit of 8 hours for most folks. I studied for hundreds of hours for mine (not kidding) and it took me two tries to pass. I know great engineers who are trying for the sixth time. Getting an engineering degree is really hard at most colleges. Passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam is also challenging, but a joke compared to the P.E. exam. A professional engineer has both passed that test and worked for usually four years in industry according to most state laws and can testify in court as an expert. The commenter you quoted likely isn't being snarky, but trying to point that out. If Sweden has a completely different set of requirements, I would similarly not be able to practice in the same professional context there. This was rotten of Oregon, but there are generally laws like this to make sure everyone knows what to expect from an engineer. Of course it looks rediculous that a Swedish engineer wasn't allowed to point out a flawed system (I agree it is a violation of free speech), but they also can't take his background at face value, just like someone with a medical degree from Cuba probably can't practice medicine in the United States without going through licensing and taking classes to make sure the degrees truly are equivalent.
- abduhl 8y agoLet's not oversell the PE or the FE: I took both drunk and completed them in under 3 hours each. The true point of being a professional engineer is that you've satisfied the MINIMUM requirements to be licensed and, therefore, you are licensed by the state to sign off on documents within what you consider your expertise. It relies on you to make that determination with the understanding that you should know better, recognizing the legal and professional ramifications if you practice outside your expertise. I disagree with the Oregon ruling: holding yourself out as an engineer without licensure is not acceptable and should not be encouraged. It creates confusion amongst the public about what a licensed engineer is and who to trust. The guy could have easily put out his findings as an interested party or something without trying to invoke the goodwill that people like you and I have put so much effort into engendering.
- Gibbon1 8y agoLast time I had a discussion about this my put was that licensing is an archaic way of doing things. In short the idea is we trust the PE's signature that everything is copacetic. In more modern fields like automotive, aerospace and software engineering that idea is laughable. Everything is about process, audit and testing.
- ggcdn 8y agoHow do you propose municipal planning departments process, audit, and test the thousands of building permit drawings they receive every year? Have a staff of hundreds of engineers of their own? The professional reliance model seems to work well enough, but that isn't to say it is the optimal model out there.
- wazanator 8y agoI feel like that's something that could be at least in part be automated by a computer. If everyone is following a standard you should be able to feed the data in and start doing pass/fail tests on requirements. I assume that's what people who sign off on plans kind of already do anyway.
- sgc 8y agoThe engineer's work is largely edge cases that don't fit into prescriptive code. Ie, that is substantially the system in place: We have a set of things that can be done without an engineer because they were already designed and approved by a group of engineers, and for everything else it is bespoke engineering.
- imgabe 8y agoIt all comes down to insurance. If your building collapses, the insurance company will want to know if you did every reasonable thing possible to prevent it before they pay out on your policy. One of those things is making sure that the person who designed the building knew what they were doing, i.e. were they a licensed engineer. I think most product companies are essentially self-insured. If Ford releases the Pinto and they get sued, they're paying the settlements themselves, not filing an insurance claim. So they are free to use whatever method they like to verify the competence of their employees.
- rapind 8y agoAren't you forgetting liability? It's not exactly in the PEs interest to sign off on shoddy work as they can be found liable if it does hit the fan. And the consequences could be pretty severe.
- eigenvector 8y agoAt least where I am, for an engineer to be held liable their conduct needs to meet the standard of negligence. And realistically, enforcement action only commences when the consequences are catastrophic: someone loses their life or severe property damage occurs. The work merely being of poor quality is almost never going to give rise to enforcement action. If you design a crappy drainage system for a road and it double the owner's maintenance expenses because it keeps washing out, you aren't going to get sued.
- heyjudy 8y agoYes. Back some 20 years ago, I switched majors, spent another 1.5 years and $15k for a degree accreditation eligible for PE. I'm fine with forbiding speech regarding life/safety impact like shouting "fire" and protecting the use of PE for liability and public safety reasons, and letting anyone call themselves a hacker, engineer or whatever else floats their day. To be clear: there ought to be a level of professional rigor where lives are on the line, but otherwise it's caveat hiring manager.
- grecy 8y agoI studied a degree called "Software Engineering" and am acredited by the Australian Institute of Engineers (the first, and AFAIK, only, Software degree that is certified). Working in Canada where my degree was not certified, all the PEng people would get seriously uptight if I even said "I studied Engineering" or "I have a bachelor of Engineering".
- chrisseaton 8y ago> Working in Canada where my degree was not certified If they have an engineering conference in Canada, and a notable engineering expert comes from abroad to speak but isn't from a Canadian certified school (perhaps they're from a British one instead) do they get uptight about that as well? At some point they must accept that non-Canadian-certified people can be engineers as well?
- SilasX 8y agoI remember there was a case where an American academic headed a scientific organization in Germany but was told he couldn’t call himself Dr. because his doctorate was from America. Found a link about it: http://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/title-fight-us-academics-harassed-over-false-credentials-a-540459.html http://m.spiegel.de/international/germany/title-fight-us-aca...
- daveFNbuck 8y agoThe issue here is probably more that software engineering isn't considered to be engineering in Canada. If a notable historian from a country where they call historians engineers came to the country to speak, people probably would get uptight about that.
- logifail 8y ago>> The issue here is probably more that software engineering isn't considered to be engineering in Canada By whom? Canadian software engineers, other types of Canadian engineers, or by some professional engineering body that's trying to protect their profession?
- Shivetya 8y agooccupational licensing and the laws around them are what keep many people who go to prison without a good means to obtain a well paying job. it also keeps many in lower income strata because even simple jobs are overly regulated protecting entrenched concerns; read : hair and nail care and even interior decorating in some jurisdictions. yet there are defenders who will pop up with any threat to the licensing by citing extreme examples but most of this is to protect the businesses who both "train" to meet the licensing requirements as well as those who hire because it becomes an expensive business to compete in
- erikpukinskis 8y agoI think the laws are fine as long as they govern the words you use to describe your services and not the services themselves.