Responsibilities of a CVE and of a preparer of a stress report 1

[Markeng512]

Hi all,
I have a question that concern the legal aspect of our work.
I am an Aerospace Engineer with 3 years of experience in stress. I work for a consultancy company and at the moment I am preparing a very complicated stress report for a costumer company. Since there is a lot of work, it has been distributed in our office between some other engineers but I have no time to check their calculations also.

So, here comes the question: since I have to sign this document which is the part of my responsibility?

I has to be considered that this document will be also checked (signed) by an employee of the costumer company and from the CVE.

Thank you.

 

[rb1957]

you could have multiple authors sign (though no traceability as to who authored which section ... does it matter? since the report is checked and approved).

You could delineate who did which sections (traceability, but looks like a "piss-fight" to me).

You could do incremental releases (internally only), so that each author adds their piece, and eventually you get the complete doc

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[Markeng512]

Thank you rb1957 for your fast answer.

Yes you are right, it doesn´t matter to have multiple signs since the report is checked and approved.
It is a bit complicated because the data prepared by the other are not visible in the report, but I use them to make other calculation.

But here comes another question:

Which are the shares of the responsibilities of the Checker, of the CVE and of the Engineer that prepared the report?

Thanks

 

[rb1957]

IMHO the engineer is signing that he did the work.

Once the report is approved by someone else they have accepted the report and it's conclusions.

"CVE" is your airworthiness sign-off, "certification validation engineer" ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[Sparweb]

It's a bit more complicated than that - as the OP has pointed out, there is data in the report generated by other engineers, but the OP has not been given the opportunity to check that work for him/herself. They also mention that the calculations that the OP has done, are based on inputs from this other work. If the underlying analysis is later found to be invalid, then the other calculations must also be corrected. The bottom line is that it's won't matter much if you wrote only part of it.

Markeng512, in any case, it has become your responsibility to show that you have accepted the work, and the conclusions you make on its basis must be your own, too. Whether this is strictly fair, or if you have been given enough time to verify the work before you use it, is another matter, and one that we commonly face in engineering. Never enough time... Without turning this into the kind of fight that RB1957 warns about, make sure that you have expressed to the one who supplied the underlying analysis that you will rely upon them to make any corrections needed later, and to your superior (the one who assigned you this analysis) that they should make that person's time available to you, too.

When the document leaves your organization, it will usually be viewed as property of your organization, not to you personally, so corrections that come back will reflect on the company, not you personally.

STF