Engineering Deliverables requiring PE stamp in Texas

[Luigi2021]

I am reposting from "how to improve myself forum" my inquiry regarding Texas requirements for PE stamping.
Below is the thread so far and I hope to be continued here. Thanks to phamENG by the way.

Luigi2021 (Electrical)
(OP)
29 Jun 21 16:37
Is there a place anywhere in the web that provides a list of engineering deliverables (documents) per discipline required to be stamped by a Professional Engineer in Texas?
Thanks for the help

LC

csk62 (Mechanical) 29 Jun 21 20:45

In general some private customer specifications as well as some municipalities may require some documentation to be pe stamped in addition to any such requirements from the state. I would think such a list would be highly dependent on the nature of the work and project. The list may be very different for a construction of a large chemical plant and a US post office.
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Not making a decision is a decision in itself

phamENG (Structural) 29 Jun 21 20:57

Luigi - I can't speak to Texas specifically, but generally any document produced by a professional engineer is required to bear his or her seal. Those items that constitute the practice of professional engineering are spelled out in state law. If you have a specific question, you may want to call your local building department.

fel3 (Civil/Environmental) 29 Jun 21 23:22

I don't know about Texas, but I do know about California. And I really know about California because one of the young engineers I work with asked this very question mid-morning today. smile Texas should have something very similar, but you will need to read the applicable laws in Texas to be sure. You might be able to find something on the website for the state agency that governs professional engineers in Texas.

In California, this is governed by the Professional Engineer's Act (Business and Professions Code §§6700–6799), specifically §6735, which states:

(a) All civil (including structural and geotechnical) engineering plans, calculations, specifications, and reports (hereinafter referred to as "documents") shall be prepared by, or under the responsible charge of, a licensed civil engineer and shall include his or her name and license number. Interim documents shall include a notation as to the intended purpose of the document, such as "preliminary," "not for construction," "for plan check only," or "for review only." All civil engineering plans and specifications that are permitted or that are to be released for construction shall bear the signature and seal or stamp of the licensee and the date of signing and sealing or stamping. All final civil engineering calculations and reports shall bear the signature and seal or stamp of the licensee, and the date of signing and sealing or stamping. If civil engineering plans are required to be signed and sealed or stamped and have multiple sheets, the signature, seal or stamp, and date of signing and sealing or stamping, shall appear on each sheet of the plans. If civil engineering specifications, calculations, and reports are required to be signed and sealed or stamped and have multiple pages, the signature, seal or stamp, and date of signing and sealing or stamping shall appear at a minimum on the title sheet, cover sheet, or signature sheet.

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"Is it the only lesson of history that mankind is unteachable?"
--Winston S. Churchill

csk62 (Mechanical) 30 Jun 21 02:04

While these PE stamp requirements you listed may be applicable to civil/structural functions, there may also be additional PE stamp requirements for things like HVAC systems in hospitals and pressure vessel designs IAW asme section viii div2. My point is that without a scope listed all we know is that it is to be installed in TX, which isn't much to go on.
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Not making a decision is a decision in itself

Luigi2021 (Electrical)
(OP)
30 Jun 21 16:47
Thank you all for all the replies but I am still struggling trying to identify which documents (by discipline) need to be Designed or directly supervised by a PE that will ensure compliance with the Texas Engineering Practice Acts (TEPA) requirements. Once identified then these are the ones that need to be stamped.
It seems to me, as a consulting engineering company, that every process or equipment for a project of an industrial client that may pose a treat to the health, safety and welfare of the public need to be engineered, either designed or directly supervised by a PE.
In the engineering and design of petrochemical facilities there are hundreds of drawings, specifications, and documents that, directly or indirectly, may affect the health, safety and welfare of the public, shall all these be engineered by PEs and therefore stamped?
During a HAZOP there are hundreds of hazards identified that may pose a risk to the health, safety and welfare of the public and lots of safeguards are implemented to minimize that risk. Is all the documentation related to those safeguards (ejm. relief valve calculation, specification, installation drawings, engineering manual, etc. etc.) supposed to be directly designed or supervised by a PE and finally documentation stamped? P&IDs, civil structural steel and concrete specifications, roads and paving drawings, vessel specifications, grounding drawings, piping material specification, relief valves calculation and specification, Cause and Effect diagrams, etc. etc. are all these PE stamped?

So, the real question is...what is the criteria to identify which deliverables need to be stamped to meet TEPA requirements?
In my experience, I have seen some engineering documents being stamped by PE such as P&IDs, Cause and effect diagrams and most civil structural calculations and specifications but what was the criteria used, if there was one, to identify them as the only deliverables in order to meet with the TEPA requirements?

Thanks in advance for your help,

LC

Mr Leaf (Mechanical) 30 Jun 21 18:09

Luigi,

The Texas code states the following (TEXAS ENGINEERING AND LAND SURVEYING PRACTICE ACTS AND RULES CONCERNING PRACTICE AND LICENSURE):

§ 1001.401. USE OF SEAL.
(a) On receiving a license, a license holder shall obtain a seal in a design authorized by the board, showing the license holder’s name and the legend “Licensed Professional Engineer” or “Registered Professional Engineer.”
(b) A plan, specification, plat, or report issued by a license holder for a project to be constructed or used in this state must include the license holder’s seal placed on the document. A license holder is not required to use a seal required by this section if the project is to be constructed or used in another state or country.
(c) A person may not place a seal on a document if the license of the license holder named on the seal has expired or has been suspended or revoked.
(d) A license holder is not required to use a seal under this section for a project for which the license holder is not required to hold a license under an exemption provided by Subchapter B.
(e) A license holder shall not be required to provide or hold any additional certification, other than a license issued under this chapter, to seal an engineering plan, specification, plat, or report.

In my experience working with Texas under an A/E, all generated drawings, specifications, calculations, datasheets, reports, etc. are stamped by a licensed individual. Where drawings were provided by other subcontractors, those drawings were stamped by the applicable originator, with the governing PE reviewing for acceptability to the project and final discipline stamp on the applicable package (this is only a seal that states are all required documents are present and is not on a drawing/spec, but a package coversheet with aforementioned statement.)

To answer your question on everything being stamped - This does not mean every nut and bolt needs a deliverable with a stamp, just those documents generated by the engineer, or uniquely designed by the subcontractor. For example, details or the bounding criteria for equipment and components to be used can listed in the specifications, drawing schedule, or detail call-out and those documents stamped. We have not stamped commercial HVAC unit drawings from vendors, but our drawings we call them out on are, as they have been reviewed and selected by the engineer (or the spec detailing what size and type to get). If it was a unique one-of-a-kind, then yes, I would likely consider a stamp from the vendor.

In summary, everything generated by engineering has been stamped. I would imagine with a large facility that it would be broken into manageable groups with enough PEs to oversee the work. I highly recommend reviewing the contract requirements and reaching out to the board office for specific resolution.

https://engineers.texas.gov/downloads/lawrules.pdf

https://pels.texas.gov/

phamENG (Structural)
You're probably not getting much traction on this since you posted it in the "how to improve myself" forum. Ethics or business practices may have been more appropriate.

It comes down to the way the act is written and how the exceptions are written. Nearly every state has an "industrial exemption" to licensure which allows employees of companies to work and do engineer without a license under certain restrictions. A lot of companies take that to mean everything on their property. That may be true in some states, but not all. In many states it's limited specifically to engineering of the products they manufacture and sell - so all facilities work would have to be sealed if it meets the definition. If Texas falls into that category, then it sounds like your interpretation is correct.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, In summary, I am seeking for more replies to the following:

I am still struggling trying to identify which documents (by discipline) need to be Designed or directly supervised by a PE that will ensure compliance with the Texas Engineering Practice Acts (TEPA) requirements. Once identified then these are the ones that need to be stamped.
It seems to me, as a consulting engineering company, that every process or equipment for a project of an industrial client that may pose a treat to the health, safety and welfare of the public need to be engineered, either designed or directly supervised by a PE.
In the engineering and design of petrochemical facilities there are hundreds of drawings, specifications, and documents that, directly or indirectly, may affect the health, safety and welfare of the public, shall all these be engineered by PEs and therefore stamped?
During a HAZOP there are hundreds of hazards identified that may pose a risk to the health, safety and welfare of the public and lots of safeguards are implemented to minimize that risk. Is all the documentation related to those safeguards (ejm. relief valve calculation, specification, installation drawings, engineering manual, etc. etc.) supposed to be directly designed or supervised by a PE and finally documentation stamped? P&IDs, civil structural steel and concrete specifications, roads and paving drawings, vessel specifications, grounding drawings, piping material specification, relief valves calculation and specification, Cause and Effect diagrams, etc. etc. are all these PE stamped?

So, the real question is...what is the criteria to identify which deliverables need to be stamped to meet TEPA requirements?
In my experience, I have seen some engineering documents being stamped by PE such as P&IDs, Cause and effect diagrams and most civil structural calculations and specifications but what was the criteria used, if there was one, to identify them as the only deliverables in order to meet with the TEPA requirements?

Thanks in advance for your help,

LC

 

[Luigi2021]

The more I read, the more confused I become...

Can anybody help me to decipher the following statute in the TBPELS Act?

§ 1001.057. Employee of Private Corporation or Business Entity
(a) [highlight #FCE94F]This chapter shall not be construed to apply to the activities of a private corporation or other business entity[/highlight], or the activities of the full time employees or other personnel under the direct supervision and control of the business entity, on or in connection with:
(1) reasonable modifications to existing buildings, facilities, or other fixtures to real property not accessible to the general public
and which are owned, leased, or otherwise occupied by the entity; or
(2) activities related only to the research, development, design, fabrication, production, assembly, integration, or service of
products manufactured by the entity.
(b) A person who claims an exemption under this section and who is determined to have directly or indirectly represented the person as
legally qualified to engage in the practice of engineering or who is determined to have violated Section 1001.301 may not claim an
exemption until the 10th anniversary of the date the person made that representation.
(c)[highlight #FCE94F] This exemption does not prohibit[/highlight]:
(1) a licensed professional engineer who intends to incorporate manufactured products into a fixed work, system, or facility that
is being designed by the licensee on public property or the property of others from requiring the manufacturer to have plans or
specifications signed and sealed by a licensed professional engineer; or
(2)[highlight #FCE94F] the board from requiring, by rule, that certain manufactured products delivered to or used by the public must be designed and
sealed by a licensed professional engineer, if necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare.[/highlight] (d) For purposes of this section, “products manufactured by the entity” also includes computer software, firmware, hardware,
semiconductor devices, and the production, exploration, and transportation of oil and gas and related products.
[highlight #FCE94F]If a full‐time employee of a petrochemical company, including piping or process engineers, works exclusively on
that company’s property or products and meets the other conditions in § 1001.057, he or she could create any
of the six listed documents without a license[/highlight]. If the company hired an outside entity or consultant, the
exemption would not be applicable and any of those documents that constitute engineering, would be required
to be done by a licensed Texas Professional Engineer.
It should also be noted that in accordance with Section 1001.401(d) of the Act shown below, [highlight #FCE94F]if a licensed Texas
professional engineer works for a private entity as described above and his or her engineering work is covered
by Section 1001.057, that engineering work is not required to be sealed.[/highlight]

Thanks,

LC

 

[JStephen]

Luigi-
How this usually comes up, buildings, etc., have to be sealed to get their building permit, and those people doing the permit require the seal. That's pretty clear-cut.
However, there are a lot of instances where the Texas PE rules would require a seal, but the customer may not care at all.
Read the rules, seal anything that looks like it might require it per the rules, and figure it's good.
If you're trying to exempt yourself from any sealing work, that's a bit different.

 

[phamENG]

These are numbered in the order your highlights appear:

1) This is the industrial exemption. Not surprisingly, Texas has a broad one. If manufacturer A decides they want to do a bunch of work to modify their facility, they can do it themselves without an engineer so long as the general public can't get in (i.e. guardhouse, pass access, etc.). Of course it has the 'reasonable' in there. So if you want to take the roof off and quadruple the height, the building official might have some words for you.

2) If I design a building and I put in my specification that I want the manufacturer of structural widget DooHicky2000 to give me sealed shop drawings, they can't point to this exemption and say "I don't have to."

3) Similar to above, but on a much broader scale where it's decided that certain things just have to a PE sign off. In the structural world, I would imagine things like viscous dampers for seismic response would fall into that category.

4) Similar to the first one. Of course they specified oil and gas to make sure it's 'extra' exempt. It is Texas, after all.

5) Simple as it sounds. If I go to work for a manufacturer doing site engineering and facility maintenance oversight/design....I don't have to seal anything if the work falls in line with the rules above.

 

[Luigi2021]

Thanks phamEng, maybe you or someone else can expand a little on what is your interpretation after I tell you mine, in particular regarding the following exemption to the exemption:

" 2)the board from requiring, by rule, that certain manufactured products delivered to or used by the public must be designed and sealed by a licensed professional engineer, if necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare."

My interpretation: It seems that the Texas board can require, by rule what is described above including for oil and gas products, if necessary to protect the public health safety and welfare.
The TBPELS Acts and Rules cites all possible violations but maybe only a couple related to sealing engineering documents under "Improper use of Seal" violation, as follows:
"Failure to sign, seal, date, or include firm identification on work" and
"Sealing work endangering the public"
Also, in Figure: 22 TAC §139.35(e)there is another violation related to the sealing of engineering documents, as follows:
Accepting engineering plans, specifications and estimates that were not prepared by a professional engineer.

The violations are very broad, so, my question is, again, what is the work required to be sealed by a PE? is it engineering deliverables that may impact the public health, safety, and welfare of the public??? If there are no guidelines in the TBPELS Laws and Rules or any clear way to identify which deliverables need to be designed or supervised and ultimately sealed by a PE how can there be sanctions???

A very personal conclusion is that all engineering work that will eventually be released for construction in the State of Texas, if not executed by a Private Corporation or business entity, and if necessary to protect the public health, safety, and welfare of the public need to be designed/supervised and sealed by a PE. Does anyone agree with this conclusion?
If yes, then is it up to the Non-Private Corporation or Business Entity (e.g. an EPC contractor)to decide which deliverables need to be designed/supervised and sealed by a PE? Will this satisfy and meet the TBPELS rules?

Thanks for all the help

LC

 

[phamENG]

Yes - I'd say it could apply to oil and gas industry components, regular building components (windows and doors certified for use in wind borne debris regions, seismic dampers, etc.) or any other manufactured product that intersects significantly with other engineering related designs; particularly where that component shoulders the brunt of the demand on it's own. So while the gears in a door mechanism don't need to be designed by a PE, the board could require that mechanism to be sealed if it meets the criteria. Hope that makes sense.

I think I would add "...if not designed and executed by and on land owned/leased byathe Private Corporation or business entity..."

The general, basic answer is this: if it is an engineered design that impacts or endangers the public health, safety, and welfare is designed by an individual not directly employed by the company who is going to use the design for manufacturing or improvement of their own privately owned/leased facility not accessible to the general public, that individual must be licensed and their work product must bear their seal and, if applicable, the identity of the firm for which they work.

 

[CWB1]

I would highly recommend consulting your employer's attorney for a few days of basic legal education, then follow it up with the usual 8-40 continuing annually. The first thing they'll likely teach you is something from high school civics - Stateside we live in a common law society, so amateur interpretations of statute are pointless.

To answer your question directly - no such list exists. Licenses are legally required for <20% of engineers stateside, specifically to keep folks honest who are selling design services to the (incompetent per the govt) public. Products are required to meet various safety and environmental standards set forth by govt agencies, so no license is necessary for their design. A tiny portion of the systems containing those products (primarily in the civil world) are required to be designed by/under a PE, so you might see a PE signoff on a roof containing trusses but there's no requirement for a PE to design the truss itself. As you mentioned being in an industrial consulting firm, those generally do not sell to the public therefore fall under the industrial exemption and all licensing, product/process/other required testing and certifications are their responsibility, not yours.

 

[Luigi2021]

Thanks to all replies!

CWB1, how certain are you regarding your last statement? "...being in an industrial consulting firm, those generally do not sell to the public therefore fall under the industrial exemption and all licensing, product/process/other required testing and certifications are their responsibility, not yours."
I mean, and EPC (Engineering Procurement & Construction) contractor prepares the engineering documents for the construction of a plant for a Client and that plant will eventually sell "products" to the public, right? So even if the EPC will not directly sell to the public, its design and constructed plant will. What am I missing here? Could you kindly explain your point of view?
Assuming that the exemption is applicable, still the Clients will transfer that responsibility on to the contractor, don't you agree?
Finally, you mention the case of the roof containing trusses... if you had to give a 2-line description to help select documents that need to be stamped by a PE (amongst the thousand of documents produced during a project) like the one you mentioned, what would that description be?

Thanks a lot,

LC

 

[CWB1]

Assuming that the exemption is applicable, still the Clients will transfer that responsibility on to the contractor, don't you agree?
...if you had to give a 2-line description to help select documents that need to be stamped by a PE (amongst the thousand of documents produced during a project) like the one you mentioned, what would that description be?

Businesses and their employees are held to much higher standards legally than the public as they're assumed to have a reasonable level of expertise and experience. Whereas its easy for the pubic to plead ignorance and sue contractors to recoup losses if they're sued/harmed, its a pretty difficult case to win in the business world unless something egregious has happened. Ethical engineering requires reviewing every design and key decision with both another experienced engineer and the client, so unless a contract engineer doesn't give due-diligence to documentation then its pretty difficult to sue them, and usually there's a contract and/or RASIC clearly defining roles and responsibilities.

What documents need to be stamped? - Those which the local AHJ requires to cover their backsides. That may include a plant's building and/or the substation built out back, but anything else would be an extreme rarity not worth mentioning.

 

[phamENG]

That may include a plant's building and/or the substation built out back, but anything else would be an extreme rarity not worth mentioning.

That was my experience working on an industrial site in NC. The AHJ was interested in major projects, like the addition of a 20,000sf building to the site. But rerouting water and fire mains, building out maintenance access platforms, etc....they didn't care.

 

[Ebowski88]

That was my experience working on an industrial site in NC. The AHJ was interested in major projects, like the addition of a 20,000sf building to the site. But rerouting water and fire mains, building out maintenance access platforms, etc....they didn't care.

We took on a project as an EPC at an industrial site that had been doing various things without permitting it. The AHJ severely slow played the permitting process for the new project which required the construction of a building due to saying they had not permitted some other things and they knew about it. It really impacted the budget and schedule on this project by around 6 months of general conditions that we couldn’t readily recover. Lots of plumbing etc is installed in these plants and is rarely inspected or up to code. It eventually catches up when the facility wants to do a major remodel and has to spend lots of money to correct past sins…