Difference between Design and Engineering?

[alee79]

What is the difference between design and engineering?
In consulting, we start career as design engineers but way up on organizational hierarchy there are design managers and engineering managers. Beside their responsibilities described in job description sheet, what is the functional difference between two designations; design vs engineering?

 

[dbill74]

In the consulting world where there is government oversight and management of licenses, there is little difference other than title. In many states one cannot legally call himself an "Engineer" without a license. Functionally the main differences are in the responsibilities and liabilities associated with the different positions.

Things are different in other fields such as manufacturing where the designers are called engineers even though a license is not required. Another example would be software engineers (programmers).

 

[Drazen]

Have you checked overall scope of services your company offers?

 

[LittleInch]

They are fairly loose and interchangeable terms, but in general IMO, the following applies

"Design" tends to be associated with the actual deliverables of a companies work, i.e. drawings, specifications, data sheets that sort of thing.

"Engineering" is a more global expression looking at system descriptions, multi-discipline work and project management / project engineering.

But Engineers design things as do non engineers - "Designers" in my industry tend to refer to the person piloting a CAD workstation creating a "design" from the more abstract things like P&IDs, single line diagrams, control block diagrams etc which have been "engineered".

As said the terms are pretty loose so make of that what you will.

LI


Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[IRstuff]

They tend to be used interchangeably, but, in my mind, "design" is what you use to build hardware, and engineering is what justifies that the design meets requirements. Per almost any PE act, such as California's, engineering is "rendering service or creative work requiring education, training and experience in engineering sciences and the application of special knowledge of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences."

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