Freelance via Upwork (or similar platform) 18

[rotw]

Hi,
I am considering to take some freelance mechanical engineering jobs in platforms like Upwork or equivalent. I am resident of Canada.

My questions:
- Is it required that I obtain some kind of permit / license from authorities to do freelance job ? FYI, I am not licensed as professional engineer yet. Does it has to do with the nature of the work being performed?
Or does it has to do with the regulations that apply where the client is located?
Can this activity involves "export" and therefore be subject to some restrictions (like US dept. of commerce has) ? Is there something like a "know your customer process" I would need to follow?

- I can call myself professional engineer but in other jurisdictions and that is outside Canada (e.g. use CEng style, etc.) - would this be okay as long as I make it clear in the professional title I am using?

- Is there any kind of fiscal registration do I have to do to freelance? or does this just boil down to me filling my tax return as required (contractor).

Thanks in advance

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning dance in the rain.

 

[rotw]

Sparweb,

Why are you an exception?

When I was much much younger, my absolute dream, was to become P.E. in the USA. I had later on the chance to work in close collaboration with an experienced P.E. (who was a resident engineer and I was kind of reporting to him in dotted line), he was a role model for me. My learning curve went very fast. When we debriefed our project, He was quite happy with my performance and said he will provide me with a reference anytime. By the way, he was not any better (in view of product knowledge, critical thinking - for example) than my own boss who was not P.E. himself but a great technician. In the same project context, another P.E. who was sitting next to me was civil engineer, thus I had limited interaction with, that guy was just a superhuman All this to say, that as regard to technical competency, I found there is no firm rule.

Would I love to be P.Eng? of course yes. But please remember, I initiated this thread to understand what are the obligations if I would start freelancing on Upwork (and alike platforms). I just cannot wait to become P.Eng to start this. Clear?
This is what I am saying. I have some modest skills in a certain niche application, it was hard to acquire these skills (like it is for anyone), and I just want to use my precious time in exploiting, making use and growing these kills not filling endless forms. Have I asked to be an exception? I guess no. I said I won't go through this process. I do not want this bureaucracy and I find it is an overkill and it should not be used as barrier to keep people out. In US, I feel you have way more options to land into the engineering job market and becoming P.E. comes more as a "natural" thing which will kind of happen progressively as you gain maturity and responsibility. My take on it, I could be wrong, if so I will be stand corrected.

Another thing I would like to mention, since P.Eng qualification process involves quite a lot of academic credentials evaluations.
My (very personal) experience so far:
In school you are faced with well-posed problems that admit a unique solution. In real life, you always face ill-posed problems that admit a multitude of solutions (!). So to me, academic excellence is a good marker but it is not a guarantee of future competence when dealing with real life problems. Especially in the world that we live in and that is becoming increasingly more complex. Thus I think pragmatism should be in order. Some countries are outperforming the "western" world just because the west is failing to adapt. I say you need to make use of the talents and energies that are dormant in the society. What I see from my own perspective, is that people are bringing huge skills to Canada and they end up taking survival jobs with the reason being claimed that its a zero sum game. It is not a zero sum game, you can create a demand for these jobs. You can become the new Silicon valley. Talking about attitude adjustment...

Finally, when you find out that people lack technical competency, train them and get them up to speed. If there incompetency is Blatant, that is another thing but that is why you have interviews, references, etc. as mitigation, isn't it? and if there just not willing to improve, give then a strong warning during their performance assessment and if they still do not get the message, well get ride of them. Let them sue you for discrimination if they want, you have nothing to fear if you are on the right side.

 

[rotw]

moltenmetal,

quoted
Fast forward to claims in the media that the licensure body, PEO, was acting like some kind of "old boys club", preventing qualified immigrants from achieving licensure and by so doing, preventing them from finding work. In reality, they a) didn't need licenses to find work as employees and b) couldn't find work because the labour market was massively over-supplied.

The supply of immigrants fell from those 2001-2003 highs on its own, and then was reduced further by changes to the ill-considered "skilled workers" program in 2005 or thereabouts. But the oversupply situation has continued to get steadily worse. Any engineer can see that the two lines on this graph: the upper one being supply, the lower one being labour force demand- have very different slopes...
unquoted

I landed in Canada as part of skilled worker program. As part of the process, I needed to prove that I was skilled as mechanical engineer (there is for this an official classification, a job code and a generic technical description you need to match). Typically it is your past employer that will bother with this you because they will state your job and responsibilities then Immigration will compare if it is matching the Canadian requirement. Other immigration streams included professional trades, provincial nominees and Canadian experience stream, if I do remember well. To be honest, I think all immigrants end up more or less in the same basket at the end. Some engineers will be working as skilled trades, Canadian experience stream immigrants working as skilled workers, so forth and so on. Furthermore there is virtually zero link between the stream you qualify to and the job prospects you can access, you are completely on your own. As regard the oversupply of engineers, I think you have provided eloquent figures, the question is why more and more workers are being poured to the job market from abroad while clearly it is a dead end ? If I am correct, there is plan to bring an even more higher number of skilled worked on yearly basis in the next years. I kind of benefited from the opportunity so it is a bit dishonest for me to criticize the matter, but I still find it hard to understand. It would make sense if you are onto building a new "silicon valley" in Canada, that would be great.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning dance in the rain.

 

[Sparweb]

Sparweb, Why are you an exception?

Lots of reasons that will get us sidetracked. Basically, my education was... eventful... and I work in the aerospace industry. This is NOT a provincially regulated industry. While licensure is handled by the provinces, my work is regulated by the federal government, and all laws I obey as a professional are federal laws. My provincial association doesn't understand what I do, nor do they care. Enough about me.

Immigration is a federal responsibility. Professional licensure of engineers is a provincial responsibility. The two do not talk to each other, much to everyone's dismay. Your Mech Eng credentials can help you immigrate, even when they mean nothing to the provinces. Should the two levels of government work together? Absolutely! It would make sense! Will they? Only if the other guys pay for it. I do feel bad about this, and some people are working on it. At least in Alberta they are...

Take a look at this:

https://archive-

http://www.apega.ca/assets/news-releases/2019-06-19-News-Release-Bill-11.pdf

This has been a meaningful change to one of my co-workers, who earned her EE degree in the Philipines, but has not been recognized by APEGA after working for over 10 years in avionic system integration and design in Canada.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[rotw]

Moltenmetal,

Quoted
You can call yourself out as a "technical specialist" and see what happens. Maybe you'll get lucky. And if you ever end up in a contract dispute or otherwise in contact with the legal system, you'll be totally screwed. Definitely not recommended
Unquoted

Ok noted.
I can make it clear from the start that - as a disclaimer - I am not a licensed engineer. I would be willing to offer services as technical specialist without implying some sort of responsibility. I suppose there can be some type of technical work that you can perform without impacting or putting at stake the safety of the public. For example: If I make a study and issue a recommendation to choose between two types of heat exchangers, say as part of a <total cost of ownership> study. No equipment is being order, designed nor built yet and selection may all be revisited during detail engineering. Similarly, if I provide mark ups on a P&ID on a valve that should be added to help during equipment start up during a FEED project, all this will probably be reviewed, amended, hazoped during detail design, yet a user still needs that sort of input from me with some kind of substantiation to move on with the project. These are fictitious examples but I just wanted to put things into perspective. On top of this, say my client is in France and the project will be installed in Zimbabwe. Can I get in troubles with the legal system in Canada in a way or another?

There is no option for me to work under the radar, I just want to understand how much maneuverability do you have without being a P.Eng as of now. Rational people think at the margin.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning dance in the rain.

 

[miningman]

I give up!!!!!!!!!

 

[moltenmetal]

@IRstuff: Here are a few more stats which help to tell the story more fully.

First, here's a comparison of engineering to other professions in Canada:

Engineering has the WORST match rate, by far, of all the registered/licensed professions in the country.

30% or so work as engineers or engineering managers. 33% work in jobs for which no university degree of any kind is required. Sorry, but that spells out only one thing, clearly, visible from outer space: a massive labour market over-supply of the B.A.Sc. or B.Eng. credential, relative to labour market demand for that credential.

Second: here's what students want to do when they graduate, when surveyed in 4th year. This is an ongoing survey, with substantial numbers of students surveyed each year by PEO in Ontario so that they can get a handle on how many Ontario grads they can expect to receive in the licensure applicant pool in subsequent years:

The results are fairly consistent year over year, with at least 90% of 4th yr students either definitely or probably seeking employment in engineering when they graduate.

The actual graduate attainment rate is better than the pathetic 30% average- it's over 50%. But that still leaves 40% of the graduating class, each year, having to seek employment in a field they weren't originally looking to be employed by. That's not a result primarily of a last minute mindset change in 4th year, or a response to a stunning new opportunity during their job search that they weren't aware of before that. It's a result of being UNABLE to find work in the profession. And once you're out, if you're out for more than about 4 years, you're no longer considered qualified to be an engineer by the labour market.

The 70% of engineering degree holders in Canada, earn on average 20% less than the 30% who do work as engineers. If they're choosing to leave the profession, they're doing it in net terms significantly against their economic interest.

The source of the data is this report:

https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis-in-engineering-labour-market.pdf

And its sources are listed, but most of the data is derived from the Canadian census, so it's pretty solid.

 

[IRstuff]

That's certainly one interpretation, but I have to ask, how in 13 years, these poor schmucks haven't gotten the message that engineering can't support the influx?

When I went to school 40 yrs ago, the school knew that there wasn't going to be a there, there, for wanna-be physics majors, so Phy 1 "weeded" all but the hardiest out of that major. So, how is it that the engineering majors haven't gotten that news, or haven't gotten weeded out?

Moreover, why your sources appear to say something, it's unclear whether there's a different story, since nothing presented is showing, for example, the unemployment rates, or whether 100% of engineers actually majored in engineering, i.e., the chart is only showing the one-directional matching.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[Sparweb]

ROTW,

Now it sounds like you're looking for the cracks and loopholes to squeeze through.
Can't you tell that on a forum for professional engineers that this just isn't cool?

Moltenmetal,
Thank you for the reminder - reading it is more stark now that my son is in his first year of Chem Eng. I just want you to know that the effort you put into that last message was read and appreciated, by at least 1.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[moltenmetal]

IRstuff: the stats are that engineering grads are roughly equally likely to be unemployed 2 yrs after graduation as the average university graduate. That's the average, mind you, including all the dance and journalism majors as well as the doctors. People with student loans, find jobs to pay them. That's not the question: the question is, are we training too many people to be engineers, relative to the labour force demand for engineers? The answer to that question, based on the data, is YES- by a large margin. The resulting under-employment rather than unemployment is definitely evident in the data. The actual unemployment simply shifts down the line of credentials.

Why haven't the "poor schmuks" gotten the message that engineering can't support the influx?

I can only relate the answer given by the dean of engineering at a major Ontario university known for its engineering program. When asked, her response was that there was "plenty of demand for the program"- meaning that there were plenty more students seeking entry to the program each September than there were spaces in that program, despite the fact that enrollments have increased steadily over the years.

Note that to her, the only meaningful metric of "demand for the program" was how many wished to enter it. In her view, "our graduates don't have difficulty finding employment". That half of them find employment outside their field of study wasn't a worry to her- in fact, it's a statistic neither her institution nor any other in Ontario actually collects. And sadly that's very deliberate, as they know full well already what the result would be. Instead, the Council of Ontario Universities asks a deliberately nebulous question of graduates in its survey: they ask if the education they obtained in university was "relevant" to their employment work. Hard to see how many people who suffered through 4 yrs of any program at university would consider the entirety of the education they obtained during that time to be completely irrelevant- and surprise surprise, few graduates from any program answer "no" to that question. And of course that satisfies everyone, including the governments who still fund the majority of the cost of a university education.

Universities in Ontario LOVE programs like engineering. Professional programs had their tuitions un-regulated for a time in Ontario, meaning the tuition rate was permitted to rise more or less as fast as they saw fit- and tuitions as much as tripled in that period. Tuitions in non-professional programs were and are subject to regulation.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/81-004-x/2006001/9183-eng.htm

Engineering is "in demand" in the mind of the public because it is "in demand" in the mouths of the media- because they here ONLY from the business lobby on this file- the licensure bodies stay silent because they feel it isn't their place to say anything, and the only province with an advocacy body for engineers (Ontario) chose to make membership in that body voluntary- so it has a tiny membership and hence is not an effective advocate. They did write that report, and a decade earlier, they advocated for the labour market study by the national council of regulators CCPE (now Engineers Canada) that obtained the data the report is ultimately based on- though that study itself was derailed by corporate interests in process.

Engineers are actually the hardest people to convince there's an issue. They over-generalize their own anecdotal evidence- I'm doing OK, and my firm "can't find people" (meaning people with 10 yrs of experience that weren't hired by the profession as fresh grads 10 yrs ago), so therefore there's no evidence of an over-supply. It's no surprise then that the profession in broader terms is silent on this issue. Medicine, law, nursing and teaching all have either unions or effective advocacy bodies with broad membership or both- and hence in those professions, problems like this do not go un-noticed.

 

[meltedEng]

ROTW,

What you are really asking here is 2 things. What are the rules, and what are the consequences?

First what are the rules?

Why don't you read the laws regarding licensure in Canada? Professional Engineers Act - R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 941. Go to PEO website and read the summary for consultants and engineers. You can't call yourself a C.Eng, a P.Eng, W.Eng, or any variation of the title which would convey professional or technical expertise (unless preceded by say AWS CW.Eng – but that could be hot water too, and looked down on, I’m not a lawyer). You could call yourself a specialist or technician etc. You can’t be a consulting engineer or any variation. You could call yourself a consultant, but consultant carries weight, so your marketing matter should heavily avoid any “technical” expertise language. You could safely call yourself a contactor and list yourself as technician or drafter, this is quite safe, your employer needs to understand you aren’t an engineer and you aren’t providing professional services. You would be the same as a drafter in India being sub-contracted to fix AutoCAD.

Second, what are the consequences?

Other than being charged with violating the law:

Read some common law. Donoghue v Stevenson is the basis of which you will be sued in almost all western jurisdictions, you owe a Duty of Care to anyone who purchases your technical services. It is the basis of the existence of “engineers” and our title and laws. It is required study materials for engineers in Canada, and part of the exams for your P.Eng.

Common law is quite simple; if you hold yourself out as a "technical specialist/expert" (read professional/authoritative voice), then you will be treated as such in a court of law in any jurisdiction which follows common law (Canada, US, UK, EU) and be sued under that if you make a mistake. You will be personally liable (in both criminal and civil law) not your LLC or any other structure. If the courts reviews your qualifications (years, experience, education, licenses) and does not agree with you avoiding your local laws, you’ll also be found criminally negligent.

In any jurisdiction you provide work, you must comply with their jurisdictional law and the one in which you work or export from, or you will face those countries laws and your local one (most say what you must be a P.Eng in an acceptable country or have a P.Eng review your work in their own country). You can be a drafting contractor for an engineering firm in Zimbabwe, sure, but you can’t be the one recommending technical solutions, unless you read their laws and comply.

 

[IRstuff]

@MM, sure, but is that a blip? See:

https://www.ediweekly.com/demand-for-100k-engineers-over-next-ten-years-in-canada/

and

https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/Labour-Market-2015-e.pdf

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

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[moltenmetal]

@IRstuff: yes, quite sure that 30% capture of graduates into employment, and getting steadily worse per that graph, isn't just a blip.

I'm well familiar with the Engineers Canada (formerly CCPE) report with its idiotic projections into 2025- which take the 30% utilization rate as NORMAL and then look at the changes to that "normal" situation into the future by looking at deaths and retirements versus expected supply via university graduation etc. The methodology is fundamentally flawed, and that's not Prism Economics' fault (they're the ones who did the study)- it's the result of the industry influence on them via the study's steering committee who didn't want to hear anything about an oversupply.

 

[IRstuff]

Well, I have no dog in this hunt, but there's this:

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016025/98-200-x2016025-eng.cfm

which seems to have a slightly different spin.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[moltenmetal]

Broad category though- what fraction of engineering grads "work in science and technology occupations", don't you think?

55% of them work as engineers, round numbers. That another 15% work in "science and technology occupations" so broadly defined would not be surprising to me. And it's not an indication, at all, that they are properly employed.

The 30% figure isn't for fresh Canadian grads- it includes immigrants, who are only 20% likely to be employed as engineers. The match rate DROPS with age. The details are in that OSPE report.

 

[CWB1]

Now it sounds like you're looking for the cracks and loopholes to squeeze through.
Can't you tell that on a forum for professional engineers that this just isn't cool?

This is an engineering forum, not a forum for professional engineers. Scolding the OP for seeking work via loopholes is also rather comical on this forum given the number of PEs here who post about similarly exploiting loopholes in the system, bending ethical rules for their own profit.

 

[Sparweb]

Scrolling up to the top of the screen momentarily...

I stand by what I wrote.
What may not have been apparent was that I was deliberately being provocative, by using an extreme interpretation of the OP's words. A rhetorical tactic, not very kind I confess. In my earlier responses, intended to encourage ROTW to be registered, my recommendations were rejected. I was worried. Any further constructive suggestions could be interpreted as encouragement to practice without a license. If ROTW truly is prepared to practice without a license we'd better get that admitted to in the clear, rather than implied by the previous questions. I don't think it actually worked - or maybe it had the desired effect but ROTW chose not to respond. If we gave them something to think about that's all we can ever actually hope for on an internet forum. We won't know until they return with a reply.

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[Sparweb]

Another article on the struggle people can have getting credentials when they move to another country:
(This article from Alberta's ASET)

https://www.nxtbook.com/dawson/aset/ta_winter_2019/index.php#/16

http://www.sparweb.ca

 

[rotw]

In the picture, he looks like he just returned his meal or something??
hum...hum...

PS: BTW, looked at ASET website, seems not too bad...will dig a bit more into it...thanks

 

[rotw]

Craig_H
Quoted
You mention that you previously carried a C.Eng designation. A colleague of mine once went through that transfer from C.Eng to P.Eng (via Engineers Ireland), and I do not recall that being overly difficult for him. I believe that there's equivalency agreements with several jurisdictions Link. That might be something that you want to look into pursuing.
Unquoted

Do you happen to know in which province he/she transferred CEng to PEng?
Thanks

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning dance in the rain.

 

[Craig_H]

rotw: in that specific instance, he transferred to Alberta.