Engineering License Quesions Accross Boundries

[Slugger926]

How can companies have engineers do work accross state or international boundries when those engineers are not licensed where the company or work is needed?

Examples: A) A non-licensed engineer sitting in Texas doing projects that will be implemented in New York.

B) An engineer not licensed in Arkansas doing work for a company in Arkansas while living in South Africa. The project will be constructed in Arkansas.

C) A non licensed engineer that works on projects that will be constructed in multiple states (pipeline, electrical, or telecommunications) but the engineer is not licensed in any of the states.

D) Then how about when all of the above examples never have a PE sign and seal any documents?

 

[DRC1]

A couple of points to consider: If you are providing engineering services, even if the work does not require stamping, you or your supervisior must be a PE. Second most structures are required by law to be stamped. You have to be registered in the state whre the work is performed. (100% manufacured systems, such as trench boxes, can be stamped in the state of manufacture or use). Third, not only must the engineer be licensed in the state, but the corperation he represents must also be licensed. What happens if the plans are not stamped? aside from the liabilites to the engineer, the owner and the contractor have a problem should a dispute arise. Since the plans are not legal and they form the basis for the contract, the contract will be considered illeagal. That means it does not exist, there is no agrement among the parties and nobdy owes nobody anything. So from that sandpoint alone it usually makes sense to spend the extra few bucks and get the plans stamped.

 

[BobPE]

dozer:

I agree that lay people can read the law from many a different angle. At the end of the day however, "science and art of telephony" says just that, and this does not cover the science and art of building design, or anything else with regard to engineering for that matter. The law is in our favor as we as engineers should seek the advice of the PE boards for anything we engineers think is a violation, including telephony design, let these unlicensed persons defend themselves.

Bob

 

[bimr]

Slugger926,

It's just a matter of law enforcement. There is little or no enforcement of the laws that are in place until an incident happens.

Here is an analogy: You are driving to work speeding with no insurance and there is no cop present to enforce the law. You broke the law but were not caught. That is basically what is happening in the engineering field.

Now, if you had an accident or went through an area with camera, you would be caught and punished. That is the same thing that happens when there is an engineering disaster.

Unfortunately, there is little or no enforcement and the profession is more or less self-policing.

 

[jakin]

I hope it is not too late in the day to contribute to this thread. There is an aspect of Slugger926's initial thread that I thought could do with some additional attention: that of doing work across international boundaries. The effect of globalization means that engineers now practise across the globe. The challenge is for licensing authorities to catch up with the need for appropriate regulation of the profession from country to country with an eye for meaningful recognition of equivalencies across national boundaries.

I am a PE in two states in the US, but prior to that, I was licensed in two other countries where I had my training and initial engineering experience. Thousands of engineers like me from other countries now practise in the US just as very many US-trained engineers also practise overseas. ABET and accreditation agencies in seven other countries (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Hong Kong, South Africa) have come up with "The Washington Accord" to address some of the problems of cross-border accreditation. (See

http://www.washingtonaccord.org

and

http://www.abet.org.)

Then, there is the Engineers Mobility Forum Agreement aimed at establishing and maintaining an international register of professional engineers. An old paper in the Professional Issues Journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers (Jan. 1996, pp. 26-30) addressed some of the experiences of engineers practising in the US with backgrounds from other countries.