Time for licenced Engineers?

Mehmood Birdi:

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.

Hi Mehmood,


Always good to hear from you  But, errrr...what??? Ok, I suppose there are CEngs who say this, but no, that's not the idea at all, it's the other way around. In any organisation dealing with critical systems (however you like to define that) there need to be some people who "have technical accountability for complex systems with significant levels of risk" - to quote UKSpec - who sign them off. The organisation needs to justify why these staff are competent to be final signatories, which will be because of their experience, expertise, and - if the organisation has any sense - their personal attributes such as openness, honesty and integrity. This competence will need to be demonstrable to third parties. In some industries, such as Roy P's and mine of rail, this will be during the introduction of the engineering, in others it may only be when things go wrong. These signatories are acting on behalf of the company, so the company needs to do everything it can to make sure they are not liable to land it in the lurch. Ok, if the signatory is deliberately negligent then in most countries they will be personally liable, but the more likely scenario is that they just make a human mistake, perhaps through lack of experience or knowledge, and then the company has to explain why they were put in that position.


So pity the poor company who has to appoint final signatories (if you try doing the final signatory role by committee nothing ever gets done!) and somehow has to limit its risk of appointing the wrong people. And then there's external assessors like me who have to go in and check that these final signatories are competent to sign what they're signing. How are we supposed to judge that? If only there was a third party accreditation service that gave at least some level of assurance that signatories had at least some level of demonstrated professional awareness and competence...but there is, it's called professional registration! Phew, that's a bit of luck 


Now, as I always say, it's only one part of the story (and actually quite a minor part), if I'm assessing a safety case I'm not going to believe that the signatory is competent just because they are CEng. I'll want to see a CV summary that shows why they are competent to that level in that particular field. But seeing CEng (or, depending on what I'm assessing IEng or EngTech) does save me some digging into their general level of engineering competence, someone's done that bit for me.


However, if the signatory in question doesn't have a registration status - as they often don't - ok, we just need to see the same evidence (pretty much) that they would have submitted for professional registration. 


If you like, CEng etc is all just a way of saving us all wasted repeated effort and hence saving tax payers or customers money. But it only reflects the status that person had already - you can't get CEng unless you can show you are already working at CEng level! 

 

Happy New Year! 

Mehmood Birdi:

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.

Hi Mehmood,


Always good to hear from you  But, errrr...what??? Ok, I suppose there are CEngs who say this, but no, that's not the idea at all, it's the other way around. In any organisation dealing with critical systems (however you like to define that) there need to be some people who "have technical accountability for complex systems with significant levels of risk" - to quote UKSpec - who sign them off. The organisation needs to justify why these staff are competent to be final signatories, which will be because of their experience, expertise, and - if the organisation has any sense - their personal attributes such as openness, honesty and integrity. This competence will need to be demonstrable to third parties. In some industries, such as Roy P's and mine of rail, this will be during the introduction of the engineering, in others it may only be when things go wrong. These signatories are acting on behalf of the company, so the company needs to do everything it can to make sure they are not liable to land it in the lurch. Ok, if the signatory is deliberately negligent then in most countries they will be personally liable, but the more likely scenario is that they just make a human mistake, perhaps through lack of experience or knowledge, and then the company has to explain why they were put in that position.


So pity the poor company who has to appoint final signatories (if you try doing the final signatory role by committee nothing ever gets done!) and somehow has to limit its risk of appointing the wrong people. And then there's external assessors like me who have to go in and check that these final signatories are competent to sign what they're signing. How are we supposed to judge that? If only there was a third party accreditation service that gave at least some level of assurance that signatories had at least some level of demonstrated professional awareness and competence...but there is, it's called professional registration! Phew, that's a bit of luck 


Now, as I always say, it's only one part of the story (and actually quite a minor part), if I'm assessing a safety case I'm not going to believe that the signatory is competent just because they are CEng. I'll want to see a CV summary that shows why they are competent to that level in that particular field. But seeing CEng (or, depending on what I'm assessing IEng or EngTech) does save me some digging into their general level of engineering competence, someone's done that bit for me.


However, if the signatory in question doesn't have a registration status - as they often don't - ok, we just need to see the same evidence (pretty much) that they would have submitted for professional registration. 


If you like, CEng etc is all just a way of saving us all wasted repeated effort and hence saving tax payers or customers money. But it only reflects the status that person had already - you can't get CEng unless you can show you are already working at CEng level! 

 

Happy New Year!