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Time for licenced Engineers?

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
As a result of a discussion within a Linkedin group. I had originally raised the issue of the EC UK or IET legally licencing Engineers and had agreed to bring this discussion from Linkedin to the IET members in an appropriate community for a frank and open debate.

​The circumstances surrounding this discussion was the tragedy of Grenfell Towers and my personal observation that some of the alleged decision makers, had no technical qualifications to make decisions on public safety. I am wondering how far the inquiry will go to reveal that issue. 



As I currently work in Canada we do have an act of law governing the conduct of its licenced Engineers and this makes the Engineer have some higher degree of responsibility for public safety.


​Questions

1)    Given the impact of Grenfell, does EC(UK) have to now start considering licencing? What are the perceived hurdles to achieve this?

​2)    If not. What can we do within our profession to improve pubic safety with an objective to prevent another 'Grenfell' ?


I am ​Interested to get IET members responses.

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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Well said Simon. European licenced engineers always seem to come up in these sorts of debates as example to justify introducing protection of the title of engineer in the UK ; but I would remind them of a certain matter of european diesel cars emission scandal.  It wasn't the management who rigged the tests, but the so called licenced engineers. What this demonstrates, if nothing else, is the conflict of interest between a conscientious engineer and their paymaster's objectives. In the end the companies were sued for billions of euros, and no press put blame on the engineers and didn't publicise on their licenced status, that they should be struck off. Whenever I hear CEng members saying they are [required|entitled|privileged] to sign off engineering designs as a badge of recognition, I am surprised they do not add that they do it for free and do not carry indemnity insurance in case something were to go wrong; because if something were to go wrong, the company would take financial responsibility and not the CEng. Oh and how much does it cost a company to promote they employ CEngs and get them to sign off design work? The answer is the same amount it cost to pay off a CEng annual subscription. A case of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Happy New Year! devil
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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Well said Simon. European licenced engineers always seem to come up in these sorts of debates as example to justify introducing protection of the title of engineer in the UK ; but I would remind them of a certain matter of european diesel cars emission scandal.  It wasn't the management who rigged the tests, but the so called licenced engineers. What this demonstrates, if nothing else, is the conflict of interest between a conscientious engineer and their paymaster's objectives. In the end the companies were sued for billions of euros, and no press put blame on the engineers and didn't publicise on their licenced status, that they should be struck off. Whenever I hear CEng members saying they are [required|entitled|privileged] to sign off engineering designs as a badge of recognition, I am surprised they do not add that they do it for free and do not carry indemnity insurance in case something were to go wrong; because if something were to go wrong, the company would take financial responsibility and not the CEng. Oh and how much does it cost a company to promote they employ CEngs and get them to sign off design work? The answer is the same amount it cost to pay off a CEng annual subscription. A case of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Happy New Year! devil
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