It's all I'm saying. If you're not a PE, don't make yourself available to the public as an engineer who can perform professional services.
Mathematical Criticism Without a License
- Thread starter Ozclone
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It's all I'm saying. If you're not a PE, don't make yourself available to the public as an engineer who can perform professional services.
Well, yeah...that would be illegal. I think we agree there. You asked for an example of something that was engineered but didn't need to be certified by a licensed engineer, and the industrial exemption is the non-specific answer to that question.
Was the guy in the OP's article providing engineering services to the public? Unless he was going around giving a "professional" opinion to everyone under the guise that he was a licensed engineer, I would argue the answer to that question is "no".
While I totally disagree with Oregon here, the value of the PE cannot be understated which it has been in this thread. You mention industrial exemption and what I'm saying is that everything which is engineered for public consumption ultimately must come under professional scrutiny. There is no public exemption. So, you can call yourself an engineer because your company says you are one but at some point down the line some person outside your office is going to want a signature or a stamp.
I totally agree, 100%. It wasn't my intention to diminish the value of professional engineering licensure. I'm a PE myself, so understand the importance and necessity of it first hand.
One can deliver certification artifiacts to a certification authority to have one's work certified without having any special license. And depending on the field, those individuals are very often hired - even as private contractors - without special certification outside of their degree and prior experience.
So, what title would you like to give those individuals if they can't be called engineers? You are applying the "engineer" title specifically to individuals who certify work. In many areas of engineering, those individuals do nothing more than validate process and do not make any technical judgment on the validity of the work.
And in many areas of engineering, a PE in the applicable field is meaningless in being able to certify a product. I think you are applying your PE standard for the definition of an engineer in a very simplified view based on a specific engineering field.
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I hope that when technical conferences get wind of this, they start to pull out of Oregon due to its treatment of engineers.
And I think your use of engineer is overly broad. What you and others are describing are designers, not engineers.
And I'd say that term completely ignores the "build" aspect of engineering. Many are involved in refining the build of product and are not active in design.
Your definition is too black and white especially when you use the PE standard which is very meaningless in many fields.
But whatever, we are arguing vocabulary at this point.
