Am I doing the right thing 19

[dvanommen]

I'm a new engineer at a small company which really isn't set up for engineering work. It's mostly a job shop, manufacturing parts that have been engineered by larger companies. They have been awarded a couple of contracts over the past decade, but there isn't a significant amount of experience doing internal engineering projects. I was hired in May after graduating from university, and I was brought into a project that was nearing the end of the design phase. Now it's going out for product certification testing. The CEO and lead engineer (who doesn't have any formal engineering training) is guiding me on this project. If we just focus on the project at hand, there are quite a lot of things he's doing and asking me to do that I don't feel ethically stable on. For example, our customer's approved qualification testing plan document specifically states that all of the units we send to be tested must be production quality units. However, most of the detail parts and subassemblies that make up the final unit are test parts that were made as design validation, not made through the proper methods of tracking material and parts used, having quality inspection buy-off on all stages of the process, etc. We're doing all that now, after everything has already been completed, which leads to a lot of guesswork (we can't verify hardware lot number, for example, so we just pick one that was ordered around the time we think the units were assembled). These certainly aren't production quality units to me.

Another example of this is minimum electrical clearance on electrical assemblies (for the same product I discussed above). We're performing high voltage tests at 1000 V through the unit to ensure there aren't short/open circuits anywhere. I calculated MEC based on IPC-A-610, and there is a part of the design which violates MEC for 1000 V. However, operating voltage is 200 V, and MEC isn't violated at that level. I was instructed to not worry about it because MEC is for operating voltage, not testing voltage, even though the document states "rated voltage" (which to me is whatever our tests run at) as the basis for MEC.

All of this comes down to us being late for certification testing. The unit was supposed to be sent for testing weeks ago, but that kept getting pushed back because of design changes and manufacturing. So it seems like instead of admitting fault and doing it right, the lead engineer wants to try to figure out a way around the system to make the incorrect design work.

Am I right to be concerned about all of this? I feel like the whole situation is unethical, but I don't have a very solid footing for making an argument against it to my boss. I keep getting told this is how it's done all the time in industry. Yesterday I told myself I was going to look for a new job. But I wonder if I'm being rash and getting worked up about nothing. Please share your advice

 

[BridgeSmith]

"A licensing exam hardly guarantees ethical behavior."

I don't see that anyone was arguing that it does. The licensing procedure is supposed to ensure the license holder is qualified in a certain design discipline, for which their PE stamp is the mark of responsibility. Some states are more prescriptive than others, though. Wyoming is one of the states where a PE in any discipline can put their stamp on anything they feel qualified and willing to take the responsibility for. Most other states require a Structural PE to stamp structural drawings, etc.

 

[oknow]

With almost 40 years experience in Quality/Engineering and an owner of a overseas consulting company I can say ethics is a hard find in my Asia travels. All about the money.

 

[drawoh]

Terratek,

I am imagining Joe the engineer, standing in an office with his hand out. A document drops into his hand. It his his professional engineer's license! There is a loud POOF, and all of a sudden, Joe knows everything, and he has become ethical!

There are all sorts of regulations out there requiring designs to be signed off by licensed professional engineers. A licensed professional engineer has had their credentials checked, and they have been peer reviewed, all of this formally, by qualified people. If you don't have the license, we don't know if you have the training and the ethics, and we probably are not well equipped to check this.

--
JHG

 

[drawoh]

oknow,

Are you dealing with everyone in Asia, or just the people who are cheaper than the folks from where ever it is you are from?

--
JHG

 

[Terratek]

drawoh,

I'll take your first statement as a funny visual and joke. I totally agree with your second statement and you have made my point better than me. As such, I don't think my advice to OP to take a licensing track is out of line - especially since the context of his situation seems to imply that licensing is relevant in his work. If you work in a field where licensing is prevalent, it seems to make sense that you seek engineering mentor-ship (including as related to ethics) form a PE rather than say, and EIT, or some-guy-that-does-stuff. This was not meant to be a slight to the unlicensed engineers who don't need to be licensed, but it sure got interpreted as such by greglocok. And in defense of myself, I have said some things that are unfair.

 

[oknow]

Drawoh

I have been to hundreds both very large and small. Should have stated that Japan ia an exception.

 

[BridgeSmith]

Neither extensive training in ethics, nor licensing, ensures an engineer will perform ethically in their job. Licensing, however, does provide a direct line of responsibility, in the event that a failure does occur. Having to seal designs or plans also provides, speaking for myself at least, a very obvious and unavoidable reminder that people's lives depend doing the job right.

 

[CWB1]

CWB1, your description of your industry makes it sound fairly haphazard, but somewhere in all of that, we end up with very few truly dangerous products in use by the public.

There's nothing really haphazard about it. For innovation to exist and also for anything to be done in a timely manner we need to enable employees by trusting them with the freedom to alter the standard process. In the case of exempt engineers their jobs are a matter of evolution, survival of the fittest rather than state or union protectionism. If an engineer isnt talented and ethical then they generally don't survive long in the exempt design world before their employer replaces them with someone who is. They don't need legal requirements for continuing education, every 3-5 years for most of their career these engineers are placed in a new role learning/developing new technology, new analytical methods, and the associated tribal knowledge. I will always encourage colleagues to seek any/all certifications and training from advanced degrees to licensure to trades courses as a benefit to themselves, but IMHO our current method of licensing stateside creates more potential issues than it resolves and does not result in a competent engineer. As to tracing a "direct line of responsibility," even before modern PLM systems prints had names and signatures on them as do other documents. At the end of the day, all engineers report to the same court for judgement of our work regardless of license.

 

[WKTaylor]

Not sure this has already been stated, but...

In a closely inter-linked aerospace business community... like the Wichita KS metro... the reputation of EVERY company and their managers and production staff is already a 'not-so-secret known quantity'. As a young engineer leaving a less than stellar company for 'higher ground' in the same community... I seriously doubt that much detail needs to be stated. Learn the lessons this job taught you and move-on.

An old adage in the mishap [accident] investigation world is worth restating... "What you don't say you don't have to take-back."

Other phrases/considerations relative to this are...

"You can't un-ring a bell."

"Did I just say that out-loud?" Is a question that may haunt you [as I have painfully discovered].

"Good humor can often diffuse a tense situation."

When writing about, or discussing, a sensitive/emotional matter... like this... WAIT! Cool-down, before hitting the 'send', 'submit post', 'talk' [etc] [button]. Your 'internal editor' will usually kick in and the 'final draft' [if there is one] is likely to be far superior to the hasty draft [hasty words]... including upgrades to basic grammar, spelling and the intonation of the words.

LL... Just saying...

Regards, Wil Taylor

o Trust - But Verify!
o We believe to be true what we prefer to be true. [Unknown]
o For those who believe, no proof is required; for those who cannot believe, no proof is possible. [variation,Stuart Chase]
o Unfortunately, in science what You 'believe' is irrelevant. ["Orion", Homebuiltairplanes.com forum]

 

[drawoh]

WKTaylor,

On my Linux computer at home, I use an email tool that features a [Send-Later] button. When you hit this, your email goes into a queue, and is only sent when you hit a general [Send] button. Up until I hit [Send], I can re-edit the email, or delete it. I selected this program because at the time, I needed the ability to process email off-line. I hit [Send] when I reconnected.

I have had cause to hit [Send-Later] because I wanted to spend twenty four hours thinking about my email. This was an unexpected capability.

--
JHG

 

[IRstuff]

We've almost always had a 24-hr rule for any sort of technical result, simple because we often find that the solution, or, at least, the path to a solution reveals itself after some calm rational thought. Or the alternative, where some knucklehead GM decides to commit an entire production run on good results that are leter shown to be a fluke (BTDT; it cost the company $500k, back in 1986).

There's nothing worse than sending an email stating, "OMG, the sky is falling," only to find that you simply got hit on the head by a rock someone or something threw by accident.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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