The dangers of unlicensed engineering
newsobserver.com
newsobserver.com
For one, it's not necessarily improper for a non-licensed engineer to do "engineering-level work" - the way you become a licensed engineer is to do "engineering-level work", typically under the supervision of a licensed engineer, but some of your experience has to come on your own ("responsible charge"). But more importantly, just doing engineering work isn't the problem, it becomes a problem if you represent yourself as a licensed engineer when your not.
Quite frankly, Cox should file his own complaint with the NC engineering board against Lacy (assuming Lacy is licensed, his name didn't come up in a license search).
Edit: This is not the first time Mr. Lacy has faced criticism either: http://charlotte.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=453
> He said there is a potential for violation if DOT
> and the public were misled by "engineering-quality
> work"- even if the authors did not claim to be
> engineers.
"When you start applying the principles for trip generation and route assignment, applying judgments from engineering documents and national standards, and making recommendations," that's technical work a licensed engineer would do, Lacy said.
There's some legal precedent* in blocking unlicensed people from making recommendations, notably pertaining to legal advice given by people who are not members of the bar association. On the other hand, Will Wright could clearly not be held liable if some loony city planner tested his designs out in SimCity. Also, individuals are generally permitted to represent their own interests with legal argumentation, and this guy is apparently someone with an interest.
* -- Ironic though it is given the subject matter, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
The basic rule here in Australia is:
1. Give all the legal advice you like, just don't be surprised if you're sued because it's wrong. Non-lawyers do not enjoy solicitor's indemnity.
2. You cannot give legal advice in exchange for any form of payment, unless you have been admitted to the bar.
Just stick to friends and/or people who won't sue you.
If you can get a hold of a medical stapler they're even easier.
In other words, utter fucking bullshit.
That said, it's definitely not a bad idea to keep your CPR training up to date. Mine was renewed last December.
It's not clear to me what calculus should be used to decide "the public interest" much less what calculus should be used to threaten otherwise peaceful adults on its behalf.
Further, while it is good for engineers to have a sound understanding of what they're doing, the issue at hand is whether or not one has the permission of some state bureaucracy. While the latter may intend to yield the former, one should take care not to unnecessarily conflate them.
Someone presenting an argument to whomever (the public, the city, etc.) has every right to make their case to the full extent possible (implied: honestly, without representing themselves falsely). No one has represented themselves as an engineer falsely so... Uhh, this sounds like a big load of crap, both specifically and generally.
I'm arguing that the implicit argument that state engineering boards exist and act [primarily] to protect the jobs of engineers overlooks the benefits of ensuring that people actually representing themselves as engineers are suitably qualified and competent. I also seriously doubt it's in the financial interests of engineers to reduce the amount of paid work they need to do to to alleviate public concerns over their plans.
> The alleged violator clearly started with the conclusion, and put
> together some official looking research to support it
Practicing engineers, however, figure out how to do what the client wants within the limits of the law. I usually don't link to youtube videos, but this pretty much sums up the real world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9BUyWVg1xI
What are you basing this on?
I always start with the conclusion- "I want this to do X"- and then I throw together something that will hopefully do X.
If you don't know what your desired conclusion is, you'll get utterly lost and unfocused along the way.
Amateurs then must be forced to make unconvinced arguments unless licensed by the state?
It may be that there's a danger of ignorant people being fooled by those who can spout seemingly convincing, technical arguments. But in a democracy, the only defense is to argue against them and educate the populace. Any other course clearly invites the "dictatorship of officialdom", something that has prevailed in many places throughout history.
> He said there is a potential for violation if DOT
> and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"
Or alternatively, his report contains fallacies and invalid conclusions - but by extension is no longer of engineering quality.
"If Cox is found to have practiced engineering without a license, Ritter said, the likely action would be a letter telling him not to do it again."
Love, The AMA
If anything, this article is highlighting how licensing is more often used to protect a select few rather than showing the "dangers of unlicensed engineering."
Don't compare the US's extreme case to Canada's normal case.
I might be too literal here, but if you did not intend to mislead anyone, why should you be responsible for how "the public" interprets your work.
Traffic engineering is one of those fields where there probably haven't been a lot of hobbyists, until recently, when the Internet has allowed geeks to become expert on pretty much any subject with a few weekends of study. I would also imagine that the PE licensing rate among practicing traffic engineers is pretty close to 100%, whereas I have yet to meet a PE-licensed software engineer... I'm sure the half-dozen or so licensed engineers at NCDOT were probably pretty freaked out to see a study like this from an amateur. Who knows, maybe the group did blow a lot of the conclusions -- it's almost certain that Cox's team disagree with the report, since it is counter to their recommendations. Anyway, the last thing the state engineers want to do is to validate the standing of the community group by engaging with them on the issues, even if it's to educate them on where they made mistakes, so they're going to look to discredit them.
As an analogy, practicing medicine without a license is a crime, even if you're really good at it, and even if all of your patients know you're not licensed.
Again, I think this is a terrible way to try to solve the problem, even if it is supported by laws or regulations. Professional fields of all kinds need to cope with the fact that organized groups of laypeople are going to be able to mount credible challenges to their opinions, on their turf and using their tools.
In the startup world this is almost taken for granted. For example, I needed to learn how to collect money from customers and didn't want to use PayPal. One weekend later I had a basic understanding of payment gateways, merchant accounts, PCI compliance, etc... The next, I had working code processing customer transactions that has been running for years now without a single issue.
I've learned a lot about payment processing since then but I _still_ trust that code and by extension my former self that was able to quickly get up to speed on a specialized topic.
I imagine the NCDOT engineers had ascribed a lot of value to the time spent obtaining their degrees and licenses ...instead of the practical benefits obtained. They anchored that pride and sense of accomplishment to the specialized format of the reports they work in.
It's interesting to see these two world views collide and certainly this won't be the last time it happens.
Peer reviewers traditionally have 5 main rules to follow when reviewing papers and one of them is "Fairness" which essentially states: "Avoid biases based on gender, institution affiliation, nationality, and career status."
Interesting to finally have proof that this doesn't only apply to academia but also to "real-life" engineering and that people discriminate no matter what.
Considering that the definition of engineering is: "The discipline dealing with the art or science of applying scientific knowledge to practical problems" — I can't even imagine why one wouldn't have the right to do "engineering" studies.
I digress, my point is made and I'm sad to still see such reaction to well put studies—Assuming it was well put [1]
[1] David M. Cox — PhD: http://bit.ly/hyf5Lj The aforementioned assumption is made based on the academic knowledge of Dr. Cox and that he would know how to make a study and make an elaborated point explained in details.
[2] American Scientist — Volume 99 — Number 1 — January-February 2011
/ringed BASc (non licensed)
Better not make that research for small claims court TOO thorough Mr. Smith. You wouldn't want anyone thinking you're a lawyer!
In certain highly restricted domains (typically embedded systems), liability for bugs becomes somewhat more realistic.
That, divorced from further arguments, is not an extraordinarily strong argument against liability for defects. After all: the engineer who builds upon such a stack has presumably, more or less consciously, made the decision that defects are acceptable - otherwise they would have chosen something less complex. Is there any particular reason someone should not be held accountable for that decision?
You don't get to blame civil engineers for structure failure if the steel provided had material faults (that couldn't be detected by said engineers exercising due diligence).
The DMCA, or like in this article's "engineering" case, outlaws the whole act of thinking. Some areas are just off limit, no matter what you think, Sun rotates around the Earth or Earth around Sun.
On a serious note, I have no idea if unions are involved, I'm just reminiscing about dealings with union members in my old job.