Post No. 1,401 - Cross Posting: Backward step for engineering

This post originally appeared on my political blog at

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Compulsory registration for engineering has been introduced in my state, and, although well intended, it is ill conceived and a backward step for engineering and the community.

There have been some disasters - e.g., the collapse of one of the buildings in the Christchurch earthquake - that showed the need for qualified engineers, but others - such as the collapse of the Westgate bridge during construction - show that there is more to this than just being an engineer.

The government has been poorly advised, and I have to say the communication I've received from one body makes me think this is about elitism and ego ("maintaining engineering's prestige") than community safety or quality of work.

A few more points:

• getting a degree is a licence to start learning. Having got that licence to start learning, people have different talents and abilities, and some will be good, others not; 
• staying up to date can be important - for example, changes in legislation, changes in design tools. I am already registered in one of the voluntary engineering schemes, and under that I have to do  150 hours/year of continuing professional development (when I've been audited, the actual number is around 400 hours/year). The fact is, owing to my specialisation, 70% of that is utter rubbish - it is irrelevant, and some fundamentals DO NOT CHANGE; 
• UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT THE SOLE CREDIBLE SOURCE OF ACCURATE, TRUSTWORTHY KNOWLEDGE: UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT THE SOLE CUSTODIANS AND ARBITERS OF KNOWLEDGE (although I want to make it clear that they are CORRECT about the climate crisis!); 
• I mentioned specialisation. This is a major aspect of the problem, and one of the engineering organisations I am thinking of in particular thinks that once you have a degree, you must remain up to date and capable in all aspects of that degree. THAT IS NOT HOW ENGINEERING JOBS WORK! If you want to call yourself an engineer of that qualification, fair enough, but I actually don't: what matters to me is the area I have specialised in, and I don't give a rat's arse about the other areas; 
• in my four decades of practice, my experience is that there are two main threats to doing good, competent and safe work: 

1. the focus on money, and drive for profit, which has led to inadequate time for thinking, understaffing (glitzed up as "being agile", but it is just understaffing), and pressure to focus on limits of Contracts rather than good service or what is good for the community (incidentally, the organisation I am registered with has a code of conduct that includes focus on community wellbeing: a lot of engineers think that doesn't apply because they're not members; not so, it is likely to be relied upon by courts in a legal matter as an indication of reasonable expectations of professional standards); 
2. getting proper checks of work. This is also impaired by understaffing, resulting in not enough people being available (it can take me 4 hours to find someone to do a 2 hour check), the time pressure of the profit motive leading to inadequate time or too much stress to properly take a step back and THINK, and the incompetence of some engineers - not in terms of professional competence, but in terms of thinking that the advantage of engineering is that it can do things more cheaply than others, which is utter BS. (There are, on that aspect, also a lot of engineers who are incompetent at human interactions. That doesn't mean "they're on the [autism] spectrum", it means that they are incompetent at being human beings. Conversely, there are also some who are outstanding as humans.) This where the Westgate bridge went wrong; this is where there is room for improvement in the profession, and in terms of community oversight;

• unlike the AMA, this will be administered by a government bureaucracy who may know nothing about engineering: that is inherently going to be a problem;
• there are also transphobic aspect to this, if the regulations require testamurs, but that is a topic for another post.It may not happen, but given how ineptly the rest of this process has gone, I wouldn't bet on it.

There is more to write on this topic, but I will end it here so I can think - in many more sleepless nights after I wake feeling sick with the ongoing uncertainty and fear this act of utter stupidity has created - about other ways I can support my family.

While I am thinking on that, I am also thinking on the fact that, after about three decades of trying, bosses have finally succeeded in their ongoing attempts (especially under Kennett) to turn workers - employees, which is what most engineers are - into contractors, taking on the risk that bosses - who drive the overwork, stress, inadequate time and inadequate resources and inability to get checking done - should wear, and they have done it with the accedance of a party that is supposed to be for workers . . .