IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 10

LETTER

Dear Editor,
his letter is about the
Licensing of Engineering Professionals.
Is there any validity to this practice?
The Education Department of the
State of New York says - there is.
IEEE Policy also says there is.
The reality, I have come to continuously over four decades in practice as an electrical power engineer
in the service of more than a dozen
U.S. firms - is that there is none!
Proponents of current licensing
procedures claim that engineering
licensing, which is mandated and
conducted by the state, assures the
holder of having minimum competence to practice the profession.
Here is what article 7.100 of IEEE
Policy says:

"...The IEEE, in furtherance of
IEEE Policy 7.6 (Protection of
the Public) and IEEE Policy
7.8 (Code of Ethics), as they
apply to the United States,
recognizes that licensure and
registration contributed to
the professions' efforts to protect the health, safety, and
welfare of t he public by
en suring that practitioners
meet minimum recognized
levels of education, experience, and competence..." etc.
(emphasize added)
In principle, we are not against
the "licensing" of engineering professionals. What we are against,
is the current methods used for
licensing, which we have found to
be illusive and lacking validity in delegating unquestioned professional
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2738079
Date of publication: 7 September 2017

Licensing Engineering
Professionals
responsibility to those holding engineering license from the states. And
as such, it is utterly detrimental to
the profession and to U.S. industry.
We can bring up many case stories
exhaustive enough to demonstrate
the picture.
The other concern is the expression of "minimum ... competence."
In engineering, there is no "minimum" a nd implied "ma x imum"
competence. In engineering, there
is either having competence, or not
having competence to handle this or
that task or problem.
The third aspect of our concern
is emphasizing constantly over and
over "to protect the health, safety,
and welfare of the public" as if
that is all there is to it in engineering, narrowly coming down to taking care of an obscure concept of
health, safety, and welfare of the
public, that is all, while ignoring all
fundamental aspects of engineering functions and roles.
The fourth thing that is very bothersome to us, is that licensing certificates do not differentiate between
various disciplines of engineering -
between mechanical and electrical engineers, between electrical
and civil engineers, etc. I had a
"supervisor" who was a mechanical engineer, and I had another one
who was civil engineer, which compelled me, an electrical power engineer, to justify and explain to them
everything I was doing, which they
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

never were capable of understanding
anyway. And then they had the right
and authority to sign and "approve"
my work, because they had an engineering license from the state, and I
had none! Their engineering licenses
were not in "mechanical" nor in "civil"
engineering." No! Their engineering licenses were in "engineering,"
authorizing them to sign engineering drawings and calculations of any
discipline - electrical, mechanical,
civil, chemical, or structural, etc.,
etc., in which they had no education,
no expertise, no competence, and
no training. How could they possibly
protect "health, safety, and welfare
of the public?" Indeed, how far can
the absurdity go? As we see, this is
very unscrupulous public policy.
These are things we would like to
bring forth to the attention of IEEE
membership in a series of articles
based on case stories and analysis
with the purpose of leading to the
adoption of a professional position
by IEEE for further action.
Gerald Aksherian is an electrical
power engineer and the author
of the recently published Illustrated Dictionary Of Electrical Power
Engineering. Generation, Transmission, Distribution.
Gerald Aksherian
Rego Park, Queens
geralexar@aol.com

∕

SEPTEMBER 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017