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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.

Parents

  • Roy Bowdler:


    De-facto an academic semester of calculus is held to have more value than many thousands of hours of relevant vocational practice. 

     


    Roy,

    I share your frustration. As someone who has always done well at maths and having had no problems with calculus either at school or university, I can confirm that it has been next to useless to me compared to the relevant hours of experience I need to be a good engineer. I also fully support your comment that "Where the risk is modest it can be carried by an individual or SME" and (unusually) disagree with the other Roy (Pemberton) where he says "I'm not including Eng Tech as I feel it would be unreasonable to place the burden of sign-off on an engineering technician". If the sign off is within the expertise and capability of Eng Tech then why can't he/she sign it off? As an example I wouldn't expect to need a CEng to sign off a BS7671 installation (and many CEng will probably not have the right experience to do so - myself included, having always dealt with different regulations). It is always a case of having an appropriate individual taking the responsibility.

    Alasdair

Reply

  • Roy Bowdler:


    De-facto an academic semester of calculus is held to have more value than many thousands of hours of relevant vocational practice. 

     


    Roy,

    I share your frustration. As someone who has always done well at maths and having had no problems with calculus either at school or university, I can confirm that it has been next to useless to me compared to the relevant hours of experience I need to be a good engineer. I also fully support your comment that "Where the risk is modest it can be carried by an individual or SME" and (unusually) disagree with the other Roy (Pemberton) where he says "I'm not including Eng Tech as I feel it would be unreasonable to place the burden of sign-off on an engineering technician". If the sign off is within the expertise and capability of Eng Tech then why can't he/she sign it off? As an example I wouldn't expect to need a CEng to sign off a BS7671 installation (and many CEng will probably not have the right experience to do so - myself included, having always dealt with different regulations). It is always a case of having an appropriate individual taking the responsibility.

    Alasdair

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