I can only speak for the area where I am licensed - British Columbia - but the presence of a professional engineer's seal on something should mean more than "th

I can only speak for the area where I am licensed - British Columbia - but the presence of a professional engineer's seal on something should mean more than "this person thinks it's OK". It is supposed to mean: 1. This person has performed the work that went into this plan/design/report or, if someone else performed it, the signing person carefully verified every important aspect of the work 2. If they used software to perform calculations, they have designed a reasonable method to check and verify the output of that software, either by using selected hand-calculations or comparing to another, independent, software system 3. They have employed a quality assurance process that is suitable for the type of work being done, which may include peer review, non destructive testing, testing to failure of a sample, etc. 4. If field work is being sealed, the PEng has personally verified the field work, or provided detailed specifications for another qualified person to do quality assurance on the field work Now whether most PEngs really follow these "best practices" is an entirely different story. And yes, for fields that often involve very complex systems, the idea of any one single person meeting the quality management guidelines to place a professional seal on, say, an entire 787 aircraft, doesn't make sense. And when those systems also have life safety implications, it makes sense to test rigorously wherever possible. In many fields, professional engineers are effectively delegated the authority of government under a system known as "professional reliance". Rather than the city government hiring hundreds of people to review the plans of every building, they simply require developers to have a professional engineer certify that the plans meet the building code. This strikes a balance between the city having to review everything (and the associated increase in costs), and the developer being able to tick the box saying everything is fine with no real accountability beyond their numbered company that is owned by another numbered company in the Cayman Islands.