Against a Separate Structural Engineering License in Florida or Anywhere Else 15

[gendna2]

Hello all,

I would like to bring your attention a move by the Florida Structural Engineer's Association to make a separate Structural Engineer license (SE) from the current Professional Engineer (PE) license that a civil engineer now must have to design structures. Here is a link to the Structure magazine where you can read more on page 21.

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a4d69279#/a4d69279/20

I disagree with this move by the FSEA because it is part of a pattern to push more regulation onto businesses in the name of “safety.” Currently, a PE has an 8 hour exam, on top of another 8 hour fundamentals of engineering exam, on top of 4 years of experience. A PE is required to only practice in areas where he is competent, just because you have a PE license doesn’t mean you design structures if your knowledge is in waste water. An SE license is a 16 hour exam, and most SEs will take that on top of their PE license. Where does it end?

I think the truth is that structural engineers pushing for this are looking at their bottom line. To me, this nation wide push for a 16 hour exam, in the nation where the Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building, and Hoover Dam were designed without such an onerous requirement, is guildism. Not only that, but it sets a bad precedent. Pretty soon, we’ll see a push for a separate geotechnical license, after all, foundations are important too and people can die if they fail; a separate license for mechanical engineers designing hospital HVAC, after all, people can get really sick when the HVAC is malfunctioning and they can die.


While we're at it, let's just dismember civil engineering as profession and have a separate license for all our niches. As long as we can have the word "death", "catastrophe", or any fear words, I'm sure we'll have a license for it.

Finally, for all the talk of STEM education in our society, how do we promote civil engineering to young people by saying “well, you see, you take an 8 hour exam, then wait 4 years, then another 8 hour exam…but that’s not enough see, you need to then take another 16 hour exam…oh, and you have to fill out lots of paperwork and documentation too.”

If you want to end the madness, find a Florida legislator and let them know your thoughts.

http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/#Senators

I doubt the FSEA or the "experts" are going to change their minds; they've made them up a long time ago and are pushing this on all 4 cylinders because it'll mean more money for a few at the expense of the many. Make sure you mention that businesses and governments will incur greater costs overpaying overqualified engineers and that will kill jobs.

Don't believe me, just look at the "great" state of Illinois, one of the most business unfriendly states, where, (suprise, suprise), you cannot even design a 3 story building, 20 foot bridge, any structure without an SE license. Manufacturers in Illinois felt too warm and fuzzy about the safety of their structures, so they've been moving them across the border to Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin...any place but the land of Lincoln.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

And I'm not talking about designing a structure or structural component. Any competent engineer can design simple structures or learn a structural code and so on. That's not what I mean nor what a structural engineering license should be for. Illinois is completely wrong and this Florida proposed SE license and the California SE license get it right are only required for specific structures. This is what I mean, to be competent in designing an entire building with multiple stories and of various materials requires the body of knowledge I'm referring to.

Also, I'm not saying that this is right. Believe me, I agree theonlynamenottaken (above) and think that the size and complexity of the building design codes are ridiculous when combined with the absurdly short code cycle. The need for a SE license is entirely fabricated by the engineering community. I would fully support a push to simplify design requirements such that a SE license is not required. But, as that's probably not going to happen any time soon the SE license makes sense.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[appot]

On top of THAT I took vertical twice before I passed it

Be glad I am not governor of your state: 1 strike and you're out. No retakes!

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Wow...on a test where the combined passing rates for both halves is less than 20% that's just ridiculous.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[appot]

I was only joking. Congratulations on passing!

 

[davefitz]

I support the florida measure due to the unique demands of that part of the country ( hurricanes). Civil engineering is a broad discipline , and in theory one could have an expert in wastewater treatment stamping a structural design for a building in a severe hurricane zone without such a measure. The same reasoning was applied to California regarding their earthquake potential . When a bank or insurance company wants to under-right the risk associated with a large structure in an area that has significant risk from hurricanes or earthquakes, they have the right to know it was designed by a structural engineer and not a wastewater expert. To avoid starving the CE's that currently are stamping drawings outside of their expertise, one could compromise by allowing any CE to stamp a structural drawing for smaller, lower risk structures.

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad "

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

Swiver: Oh, I thought you meant that your actual state had such a rule. Whoops, missed that joke. Also, haven't passed yet, waiting on results in December.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[woodman88]

davefitz
"The same reasoning was applied to California regarding their earthquake potential . When a bank or insurance company wants to under-right the risk associated with a large structure in an area that has significant risk from hurricanes or earthquakes, they have the right to know it was designed by a structural engineer and not a wastewater expert."

Nope!!!

"CIVIL ENGINEERS may design any building of any type EXCEPT public schools and hospitals."

As stated in the attachment.

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[cvg]

perhaps better codes and regulations requiring risk assessment, higher factors of safety, engineered O&M plans, licensing and mandatory inspections, and emergency action plans would be more effective than a longer exam.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I could have sworn there was a height limit in CA where the SE had design authority, or was this changed recently?

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[woodman88]

TehMightyEngineer

The height limit in California was changed a long time ago.

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

cvg, perhaps, though that may only seek to raise costs and provide even further incentives to cut corners and not build or design the building properly. I do agree entirely that avoiding the need for an SE exam is a much better approach but with the huge push the building industry has made to refine structural design codes to their limit, resulting in their stupid level of complexity, I doubt they'll backtrack now.

Perhaps a balanced compromise is best, improve the codes to reduce complexity with minimal sacrifices of efficiency, keep the SE exam but limit the design authority to only critical buildings like hospitals and such (as apparently CA does), provide more teeth to states to pursue engineers practicing outside of their experience, and provide some system to improve on the continuing education system to verify continued competency without too much impact on the bureaucratic hoops needed to jump through to maintain a license.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

woodman: thanks for correcting me, I do seem to recall reading that a while back. Being about the farthest from CA one can get and still be in the US it's not something I run into often.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[theonlynamenottaken]

I like your thinking cvg.

perhaps better codes and regulations requiring risk assessment, higher factors of safety, engineered O&M plans, licensing and mandatory inspections, and emergency action plans would be more effective than a longer exam

If this call for separate licensing of structural engineers is actually driven by a history of structural failures that would be the most apt way to address the problems and not the symptom.

 

[spats]

I'm really surprised that the consensus seems to be in favor of special SE licensing with a 16 hour exam. I live and work in Florida, and have been designing building for longer than I'd like to admit. I think it's a dumb idea.

What's to be gained? Increased safety? Right! I feel safer just because somebody knows how to pass a test, with all the study guides, refresher courses, etc. available to them. And of course, the contents of the test are a comprehensive compilation of everything you need to know at a minimum in order to competently design more "complex" buildings. After all, why should I be able to design a four story building when it's so much more complicated than a three story building.

What else could be gained? More "prestige" for the profession? More respect? Do you think they'll actually finally pay us what we're worth?

I don't get it. I've earned my right to practice my profession over many years of learning something new almost every single day. A 16 hour exam pales into insignificance in comparison, and proves nothing.

 

[theonlynamenottaken]

@spats
It seems that most here agree that the actual issue is the engineers that knowingly or unknowingly practice outside of their competency. I regularly encounter structures that were obviously designed by engineers practicing outside of their competency; wholly inadequate or even nonexistent lateral force resisting systems, wood flexural members called out with no specification of connections that end up end-grain nailed, steel and wood beams obviously designed using strength without checking stiffness/deflection, compression members designed that completely neglected any axial load eccentricity, etc, etc. While the test doesn't give an engineer,

everything you need to know at a minimum in order to competently design more "complex" buildings

it does cull out the folks that exhibit that level of deficiency in structural knowledge. So, to that extent, I would feel safer knowing an SE designed something. There is the chance that a non-SE such as yourself with years of experience could be the designing engineer if an SE wasn't required, but in requiring an SE you know that the aforementioned level of inadequacies won't be occurring.

As I said in an earlier post above, a more robust mechanism for identifying those engineers or those designs on the regulatory end would be more fruitful. I've had 300 page calculations packages for buildings in Florida come back to me with very minute and specific redlines from building departments that proved that someone with some knowledge went through every single line of calcs. But in some parts of the country I've seen building plans stamped with a NCBDC (residential building designer) stamp instantly get permitted because all they know to do is to look for a "stamp".

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

You bring up plenty of good points spats so I'll provide a counter-argument as I'm quite curious was your responses will be. Doubly because unlike most (all?) of the other posters here, myself included, you actually have a fair amount at stake here it seems.

Increased safety is one thing but I would also include money. Irregardless of safety, insurance companies and owners want all buildings being built to the same standard. How many times have you heard about a hurricane coming through and ripping roofs off of buildings? How many of those buildings were under designed? There's a great article by O'Rourke on snow related roof collapses that was in the January 2013 Structure magazine (found it in our library by accident the other day). He was checking whether the number of roof collapses in 2010-2011 were due to higher snow loads than the code-level loads. His conclusion was that the snow loads were at code levels. 61% of the buildings with failures were old designs, with lower design loads. The rest failed for other reasons, which he attributes to "hidden" structural defects. Of those defects, initial design defects is his #1 hypothesis.

And, yes, safety as well. I'm sure you've more than once run into something poorly designed in an existing building. I know I have and it sounds like I have only a small portion of the experience you have.

As for prestige, respect, pay, etc.; I suspect it will do little but I can hope and it certainly can't hurt.

Obviously there is little difference between a 3 story building and a 4 story building. You have to make the cutoff somewhere. If you have an SE requirement what limit would you say is where structural design changes difficulty? Would you rather it be 6 story buildings? Or perhaps 3 stories to 5 stories the SE has to do some sort of partial review and then 6 stories requires the SE to do the design? I'm being semi-sarcastic here but my point is some reasonable cutoff has to happen. A limit after 3 stories seems reasonable to me given how most buildings are 2 stories or less.

You mention the exam a few times. You say the SE exam doesn't provide a good metric to judge competency and also imply you have nothing to learn from the exam. If that is the case then such an exam should be relatively easy for an experienced, practicing structural engineer, right? If that's not the case then doesn't it stand to reason that you can learn something from the exam? The only other way I can see this is that experience does not equal test taking ability. Obviously this is true to some degree but I would put forward that I estimate I've learned about as much studying for this exam as I did in the past few years of experience working in the engineering field. I would 100% say that taking this exam made me a better engineer and would put forward that there is something to be learned here regardless of experience.

That said, I will agree on a number of points. Exams do not prove competency, only prove minimal aptitude. Experience is more valuable than simple "exam-level" knowledge (but both are important). And the SE exam covers many aspects that may not be relevant. Seismic design for example, I've only once done anything for SDC C. That said, I'm sure it wont be the last and I feel I now have a minimal enough level of competency in seismic design from taking the exam so that learning it was entirely worth it.

Finally, last I checked the Florida SE license was going to include a grandfathering clause such that PE's who practiced in the field of structural engineering and could demonstrate past projects would be grandfathered in as SE's.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[woodman88]

TehMightyEngineer

You make some interesrting points.

But the problem, as I see it, is that the state boards are not doing their job.

We be better off fighting to get the state boards to do their jobs. IMHO

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[TehMightyEngineer]

I agree woodman but have no idea how to do this other than some sort of design audit or something similar by the state boards and/or attorney general's office. I would rather have another license than that. By all means propose a better system and I'll happily agree with it.

Maine EIT, Civil/Structural.

 

[woodman88]

TehMightyEngineer

If the state boards will not enforce the current license what good will a new license do? If the deadheads need the new license they will just take a class to pass it. Then we have the same situation we have now.

Garth Dreger PE - AZ Phoenix area
As EOR's we should take the responsibility to design our structures to support the components we allow in our design per that industry standards.

 

[spats]

theonlynamenottaken... Why would/should structural engineers be singled out for competency? All disciplines are involved in aspects of design related to life safety. Doesn't my PE, years of experience and continuing education give me the proper credentials? PE is no longer good enough?

This is really starting to sound elitist to me. You're not going to keep somebody from operating outside of their expertise by having them pass an exam. I would never try to design a high-rise building, but I'll bet I can pass the SE exam. You also cite people doing stupid stuff such as "nonexistent lateral force resisting systems". Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid, and you can't stop them from practicing outside of the expertise if they see good money that's "beyond their pay grade". It happens in all professions. That's why we have regulatory boards, disciplinary hearings, fines, criminal charges and license revocation.

tehmightyengineer... I don't think I ever said that I couldn't learn something from taking the exam. I also didn't say that it's not a good metric to judge competency. I have no direct knowledge of the types of questions or problems involved. I do, however, strongly suspect that they would ask me questions about things that have nothing to do with what I do for a living... a living that they're threatening by not allowing me to design certain types of structures because I didn't get yet another license.

I'm glad to hear that I might be able to get grandfathered in, because I am a grandfather.