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Professionalism


Ed's an EE, an inactive PE, and author in Poughkeepsie, NY. Contact him at ed [email protected] with "Dr Dobbs" in the subject to avoid spam filters.


Q: What's the difference between an electrical engineer and a civil engineer?

A: Electrical engineers build weapon systems. Civil engineers build targets.

There's another difference: About half of all CEs display a Professional Engineer license on the wall, but only one in 10 EEs can do that.

Software engineers, even those near the hardware end of the embedded systems field, aren't legally engineers because they're not licensed as Professional Engineers. You have surely followed the discussions about licensing for software professionals, so my experience as a Professional Engineer, albeit of the Electrical variety, may be of interest.

Late last year, I checked the "No" box in response to the question "Do you wish to register for the period [3/1/06-2/28/09]?" on my New York State PE license renewal form so that, effective this month, I am no longer a Registered Professional Engineer. After almost exactly two decades, I can no longer produce engineering drawings stamped with my PE seal. Not, as it turns out, that I ever did, because all my work has been in areas and for clients that did not require sealed plans.

With that in mind, here's my largely anecdotal description of what Professional Engineering means, how I got in, and why I bailed out. You'll also see why the existing PE license structure has little relevance and poses considerable trouble for software developers.

The Beginnings

When I emerged from Lehigh University with a shiny-new BSEE, I didn't know much about Professional Engineering. I moved to Poughkeepsie and became a Junior Engineer at a locally important computer manufacturer (the name isn't important, but its initials were IBM). Very few of my colleagues were PEs, as a license wasn't a job requirement.

After about a decade, I decided that I could have more fun on my own and started looking into what was required to become a consulting engineer. I contacted the NYS licensing folks, described what I was planning to do, and received, in no uncertain terms, a directive that I must become a PE. Well, okay, ask a stupid question and get a snappy answer.

The New York State Education Department's Office of the Professions regulates 47 distinct professions defined by Title VIII of the Education Law. In that extensive list, among the Acupuncturists and Landscape Architects and Midwives and Social Workers, you'll find Engineers. Each must display a similar certificate on the wall showing compliance with the rules.

Section 7201 defines the practice of engineering as:

...performing professional service such as consultation, investigation, evaluation, planning, design or supervision of construction or operation in connection with any utilities, structures, buildings, machines, equipment, processes, works, or projects wherein the safeguarding of life, health and property is concerned, when such service or work requires the application of engineering principles and data.

Section 7202 states that:

...only a person licensed or otherwise authorized under this article shall practice engineering or use the title "professional engineer."

I asked the NYS folks why it was that I had to be a PE to call myself an engineer, while Microsoft Certified System Engineers didn't. The answer boiled down to, basically, "nobody confuses them with real engineers." Huh?

Engineers within a company need not be PEs, even if the company provides engineering services, as long as a PE approves the final plans and projects. Section 7208-k also provides an "industrial exemption" for:

...the practice of engineering by a manufacturing corporation or by employees of such corporation, or use of the title "engineer" by such employees, in connection with or incidental to goods produced by, or sold by, or nonengineering services rendered by, such corporation or its manufacturing affiliates.

That's why most EEs aren't PEs.

The NYS requirements for a prospective PE include an engineering BS degree, a total of 12 years of relevant experience, passing a pair of examinations, possessing the usual citizenship and good-character attributes, and, of course, paying a fee.

The Tests

The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) designs, administers, and scores the engineering examinations. The Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) test is generally taken shortly after graduation, followed by the Principles and Practices of Engineering (PE or PP) test after acquiring at least four years of experience.

The Fundamentals of Engineering exam covers the broad range of knowledge included in an undergraduate engineering curriculum because, regardless of your major, you're expected to have some knowledge of how things work in all disciplines. The morning session includes 120 questions in Mathematics, Statistics, Chemistry, Computers, Ethics, Economics, Mechanics, Materials, Fluids, Electricity, and Thermodynamics.

A sample question from my exam review book should give you pause:

102. Ethane gas burns according to the equation 2C2H6+7O2 → 4CO2+6H2O. What volume of CO2, measured at standard temperature and pressure, is formed for each gram-mole of C2H6 burned?

Fortunately, that's a multiple-choice question and perhaps you could pick (in my case, that's pronounced "guess") the correct answer:

(B) 44.8 liters.

In the afternoon, you're tested on your major: Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Environmental, Industrial, Mechanical, and Other/ General engineering. Software engineering isn't an option, so you'd probably pick EE and face 60 questions in nine topic areas: Circuits, Power, Electromagnetism, Control Circuits, Communications, Signal Processing, Electronics, Digital, and Computer.

Each topic generally has a diagram and a group of questions along the lines of:

The power drawn by the bank of synchronous motors is most nearly...

followed by five possible answers. You must answer questions in all topics, although you may choose one of two separate question groups for some topics.

If you've been out of school for a few years, you may vaguely remember learning that stuff and subsequently forgetting it. If you're now in school and plan to get a PE license, take the FE exam as soon as possible after Graduation Day, very early in the first half-life of your book learning.

Frankly, had I taken the FE as a new graduate, I probably wouldn't have passed: Thermo and Chem weren't my strong subjects.

The PE exam, taken after a few years of applying your knowledge, measures your mastery of more complex topics. You pick a relevant test in your area of specialization, ranging from Agricultural through Nuclear to Structural Engineering. The current exam list includes a specialization in "Electrical and Computer" topics, and you must know quite a bit about both.

The morning Electrical and Computer test measures your breadth of knowledge with 40 questions on Basic EE, Circuits and Components, Controls and Communication, and Power Systems. The afternoon test assesses your depth of knowledge in a subspecialty. In particular, the Computer exam poses 40 questions on General Computer Systems, Hardware, Software, and Networks. If you've been concentrating on wireless networks and forgot whatever you once knew about digital circuit metastability, you might have some difficulty.

Being in need of a PE license and realizing that I wasn't ready for the exams, I signed up for a pair of 60-hour review courses for the FE (then known as the EIT: Engineer-In-Training) and PE exams at the local community college. I took them simultaneously, then nailed the FE and PE exams on two consecutive spring days. I can't say whether this was a good idea or not, but it worked for me.

Hint: Clear your calendar during the review courses. Unlike many adult-education classes, these provide copious homework, you will need your calculator, and you won't have time for anything else.

The Licenses

After clearing the requisite hoops, I hung my PE license on the wall, quit my day job (a decade before the mass layoffs, so the exit interviewer could say, "We don't get many people quitting after ten and a half years" with a straight face) and discovered, unsurprisingly, that my clients neither knew nor cared about my PE license. Because my projects never involved public works or safety, none received an impression of my seal.

For reasons that made perfect sense each time, over the course of the next two decades we moved from New York to Connecticut, to North Carolina, then back to New York. Both states had comity with New York, so that acquiring a license involved filling out some paperwork and paying the fees.

However, they required references from PEs familiar with your work, which posed a significant problem for a solo practitioner in a field with very few PEs. I press-ganged friends and clients into producing canonical reference letters, although I was certain that this simply measured my arm-twisting ability rather than my engineering competence.

Shortly after we moved out of North Carolina, the state imposed continuing education requirements for PEs. Although I maintain that my actions had nothing to do with the new rules, New York recently imposed similar requirements. NYS Education Law Section 7211 defines the requirements:

2. During each triennial registration period an applicant for registration shall complete a minimum of thirty-six hours of acceptable continuing education.

Because my registration renewal date came due two years after the rule went into effect, I must take 24 hours of Professional Development Hours (PDH) or Continuing Education Units (CEU).

The flyers filling my mailbox tout a wide variety of courses, most of which clearly fall outside my specialty: Toxic Mold Part 1 (8 PDH) and Stormwater Sediment and Erosion Control (7 PDH). Some have broad appeal that might be relevant: Engineering Ethics 1 (4 CEU) and Contracts for Engineers and Surveyors (4 PDH). A few might work: Electric Motor Application and Selection (3 PDH) and Digital Electronics (3 CEU). None relate to firmware, software, or embedded systems.

In round numbers, one PDH costs $50. Fulfilling the three-year education requirement thus costs about two kilobucks, reasonable in light of typical college- tuition rates.

The time required for the courses is another matter. Although you can take some courses by DVD, the majority are in-person courses two or three hours away from Poughkeepsie. A one-day, 8-to-5, 8-CEU course thus requires an overnight stay, at least for this bear who doesn't arrive fresh and ready to learn after a protracted rush-hour commute into New York City.

So, to maintain my Professional Engineering license, I must travel to inconvenient places, take largely irrelevant courses, and pay a few kilobucks. As nearly as I can tell from the course descriptions, the net benefit would be close to zero.

Although I may be too cynical for my own good, I decided that the correct course of action was to simply stop being a PE. If having a license was required for what I do, that wouldn't be an option.

The Consensus

It seems I'm not alone. While I cannot find current figures, a 1999 article in Mechanical Engineer magazine noted that the number of engineers taking PE exams had dropped dramatically. That may have been due to the rise in employment and drop in "consulting" gigs during the mid-'90s good times, but it seems to me that anybody who didn't absolutely have to be a PE decided that it simply wasn't worth the effort or expense.

The subsequent tech implosion dumped a disproportionate number of engineers into the "consulting" market. The IEEE (of which I'm a member) belatedly discovered most of its members lacked PE licenses and, thus, weren't allowed to advertise themselves as engineers. They're now in the difficult position of "recommending" licensing to a membership that's either covered under the industrial exemption or employed in fields where licensing is irrelevant.

In the late '90s, Texas established Software as a distinct engineering field, so that "software engineers" must be licensed. Despite some effort, it seems there's no generally applicable Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) upon which to base a Software Engineering examination, so (as I understand it) a Texas engineer seeking a PE license for software activities must demonstrate a suitable amount of experience, as attested by letters of recommendation.

A 2001 ACM task force report on Licensing of Software Engineers Working on Safety-Critical Software concluded that professional licensing as it stands today simply wouldn't work in that field. They observe that very few "software engineers" have an engineering degree accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, which all state PE licensing boards require. Most programmers, it seems, don't have the opportunity to forget Thermo and Chem, having not studied them in the first place.

Software development also moves much faster than the NCEES testing process. Mechanical and electrical engineering questions dating back three decades remain perfectly useful, but most recent graduates have little knowledge of Fortran and GOTOs. Heck, even structured programming has come and gone in that time.

Another interesting side effect of being licensed should give you pause. If you produce work as a PE, you must follow established design practices or risk a malpractice lawsuit when your design fails. Software engineering, even in the embedded field, simply doesn't have any known-good design practices: Most projects fail despite applying the current crop of Best Practices.

I don't have a good resolution for this situation. I do know that current PE licensing isn't the right answer for software professionals, if only because the examinations cover irrelevant topics. Application programming and embedded programming have common features, but the difference remains so vast that a single "software engineering" test won't work.

Worse, without a good self-imposed technical solution, we're definitely going to get legislative requirements that won't solve the problem. Perhaps I should get a clue and segue into the target construction biz?

Reentry Checklist

The 2004 passing rate for the FE and PE exams was, perhaps surprisingly, 68 percent. A typographic error in one afternoon question on my PE exam probably gave me a few vital points, because, as they explained, "an arrowhead was inadvertently omitted...[so]...all examinees were given full credit for all optional questions." Sometimes you just get lucky.

Get the straight dope on PE exams from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying at http://www.ncees.org/. The National Society of Professional Engineers is at http://www.nspe.org/. The NYS Education Department's Office of the Professions is at http://www.op.nysed.gov/home.html, and the Texas Board of Professional Engineers is at http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/.

Steve McConnell has written extensively on the subject of licensing for software folks, with a relevant chapter online at http://www.stevemcconnell.com/ gr-badges.htm and participated in the SWEBOK effort at http://www.swebok.org/. Compare that with the 2001 ACM position paper at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland/cs3194/licensing-software-engineers.pdf. An article by Robert Glass is about 1/4 of the way down the page at http://www.cs.ttu.edu/fase/v10n07.txt. That ME article is at http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/may99/ features/tolicense/tolicense.html.

Microsoft, among others, still offers "engineer" certifications: http://www.microsoft .com/learning/mcp/certifications.asp. A somewhat jaundiced view of what "engineer" really means is at http://www.gardfoods.com/coffee/coffee.engineer.htm and a more worldly view is at http://www.phaedsys.org/papersese0303.html.

DDJ


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