The dangers of unlicensed engineering

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/03/964781/citizen-activist-grates-on-state.html

by morisy • 15 years ago

120 71 15 years ago

pyre5• 15 years ago

  > 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.

Isn't this essentially saying that you can be too smart/thorough for your own good, and that the government is going to punish you for not getting a license to use your abilities? What the hell is 'engineering-quality work' anyways? Talk about an amorphous term...

hvs2• 15 years ago

I think it is in reference to:

"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.

amalcon• 15 years ago

Given that I first read the terms "trip generation" and "route assignment" when I was in high school, and in reference to SimCity, I think we can safely assume that the problem is actually the recommendation.

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.

arch_hunter• 15 years ago

This is sounding a lot like a profession making it illegal for others to do anything that could decrease their own income.

jefe78• 15 years ago

Agreed! I shouldn't need an M.D. to stitch you up!

notahacker2• 15 years ago

However dubious this instance of censuring someone's comments simply because they've bothered to do some research to support their case may be, I think it generally is in the public interest that people actually representing themselves as engineers have a sound understanding of what they're actually doing (e.g. designing bridges that don't fail and kill people). I doubt civil engineers in the US are disproportionately well paid.

siculars• 15 years ago

re. unions.

OO7• 15 years ago

What about the licensed to kill? Pirates and Emperors?

notaddicted• 15 years ago

You're refuting the weakest possible interpretation of his statement. "This" is essentially saying, that it is possible to mislead the public by producing work that has some of the qualities of engineering work, but is not actual engineerng work. The alleged violator clearly started with the conclusion, and put together some official looking research to support it ... one of the many things you learn not to do in engineering school.

pyre5• 15 years ago

  > The alleged violator clearly started with the conclusion, and put
  > together some official looking research to support it

So he was biased for his own argument? As much as people try to be unbiased, I think that it's probably impossible for humans to be completely impartial. If the arguments in the recommendation are so weak/faulty then the DOT engineers should be able to rip it to shreds with a counter-argument. I'm having a hard time caring about the fact that the guy put together a 'professional-looking' analysis without having a professional license. He didn't represent himself as a professional engineer, and he was putting together information for to present his viewpoint to his local representatives.

brudgers• 15 years ago

>"one of the many things you learn not to do in engineering school."

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

Anechoic2• 15 years ago

The alleged violator _clearly started_ with the conclusion

What are you basing this on?

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

one of the many things you learn not to do in engineering school.

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.

flogic• 15 years ago

So long as you're not selling yourself as a PE or trying to use non PE work in a situation that requires a PE, you should be allowed to write whatever god damned report you want. Otherwise, we have a serious breach of the first amendment.

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

So a convincing argument with "maps, diagrams and traffic projections" and referencing information on official documents, is ipso facto itself "official"?

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.

jrockway3• 15 years ago

However, it's the first thing you learn in law school. Petitioning the government is law, not engineering.

tyhjnmyh• 15 years ago

  > He said there is a potential for violation if DOT
  > and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"

Could be a problem here. If I make a complete balls-up of a project would the public be misled into thinking that the government had done it - even if I wasn't a government employee?

pyre5• 15 years ago

Clearly the DOT employees engineers that are severely lacking if someone is able to put together a report of 'engineering-quality' that bamboozles them into doing something that doesn't make sense.

glenjamin• 15 years ago

As I see it, either his report is solid and contains no factual errors or incorrect assumptions (and thus is "engineering quality work") - in which case since it's correct then there should not be any issues in following its conclusion.

Or alternatively, his report contains fallacies and invalid conclusions - but by extension is no longer of engineering quality.

hvs2• 15 years ago

The title of this post is inaccurate. The article is discussing how someone (who is not an engineer) provided "engineering-quality work" which could mislead the DOT and the public that it was done by an engineer.

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."

pyre5• 15 years ago

Considering the forum, I think that the title is sarcasm.

bmccormack• 15 years ago

That's certainly possible, but I personally find sarcasm very difficult to detect on the web. I generally avoid it when communicating online and via text.

benvanderbeek• 15 years ago

The punchline:

"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."

bennysaurus• 15 years ago

If my brother has a headache and I give him an aspirin, am I practising medicine?

jrockway3• 15 years ago

Don't do that again.

Love, The AMA

ew6082• 15 years ago

This should get laughed out of court. You only need a PE license to approve drawings and design work on an official level, not to perform studies.

jessriedel• 15 years ago

Seeing as that the potential punishment is just a strongly-worded letter, I don't think anything will be going to court.

3pt14159• 15 years ago

Crazy talk. In Canada this computer scientist would be invited to chat with the engineering firm, not brought in front of a licensing board. Writing a report, even a very technical one, that is political in nature should always be protected. What shouldn't be allowed is people passing themselves off as if they had a license then people building things based off of their plans.

j_baker4• 15 years ago

Canada has wackos too. If Canada has no engineering managers/administrators who are willing to pull some stunt like this, I guarantee there's one there somewhere who will pull something else equally silly.

Don't compare the US's extreme case to Canada's normal case.

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

was it started by DMCA? I mean the practice of limiting, even outlawing, of analytical thinking.

Andys• 15 years ago

I think software industry is slowly headed this way: that there will come a point when you cannot let a member of the public use something based on your code without you being a licensed SE.

amh• 15 years ago

I think the uncertainties inherent in writing software that depends on many other complex libraries/frameworks will tend to discourage strong liability for bugs. The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath.

In certain highly restricted domains (typically embedded systems), liability for bugs becomes somewhat more realistic.

billswift• 15 years ago

Microsoft, for one, has been pushing for that for over a decade. I read Steve McConnell's After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering, a few years ago and had read articles in several print magazines, I'm pretty sure Dr Dobb's had several, in the late 1990s.

j_baker4• 15 years ago

Ahem... Does the name Galileo mean anything to you? How about Socrates?

VladRussian2• 15 years ago

there is somewhat fine difference. For example Galileo was allowed to think about how Universe works. The practical law limited what he was allowed to think about Universe.

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.

Anechoic2• 15 years ago

Licensed engineer here (Massachusetts). I don't know WTF Lacy is smoking. I've been in a position where community groups have performed their own analysis to challenge my work and that's fine - either their analysis is wrong and I can point out their errors, or (in the rare occasion) I have indeed missed something and I revise my report. But going after the group who prepared the analysis because it looks "engineering-level work"... I don't know where to begin.

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).

joe_the_user3• 15 years ago

The article claimed Kevin Lacy was "chief traffic engineer for the [North Carolina] state DOT". I assume that makes him a bureaucrat rather than a working engineer. And bureaucrats have all sorts of "interesting" ways of working.

Edit: This is not the first time Mr. Lacy has faced criticism either: http://charlotte.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=453

jwcacces• 15 years ago

The problem is they're all union, and you can't do their job, that's stealing work. Those guys need that work, and if you want it done, you have to pay them to do it. Now stop stealing work, and go back to your own job! </sarcasm>

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.

jammur• 15 years ago

What's that, Mr. Doe? You found a weird lump on your balls? Better keep that to yourself. You wouldn't want anyone thinking you're a doctor!

Better not make that research for small claims court TOO thorough Mr. Smith. You wouldn't want anyone thinking you're a lawyer!

lutorm• 15 years ago

The U.S. of A., land of freedom. Roflmao.

dadro• 15 years ago

It appears as though Mr. Lacy is trying to do "Lawyer Level Work". Someone better make sure he has registered with the NC Bar.

zb• 15 years ago

It's legit in his case, he's clearly doing such a bad job of it that nobody could mistake him for a real lawyer ;)

thrill• 15 years ago

More like the dangers of unapproved thinking.

sili• 15 years ago

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.

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.

sofuture2• 15 years ago

Exactly. I can't even begin to see how making a case to a third party deciding authority instantly thrusts you into taking full responsibility for public safety. What an absurd concept.

jarek3• 15 years ago

Based on the version of events presented in this article, Lacy should be ashamed of himself.

/ringed BASc (non licensed)

zemanel• 15 years ago

i was once turned down on a pay raise because "it was not like i was an engineer, i was just savvy" (highschool degree here)

flyosity• 15 years ago

Ha, funny seeing this on Hacker News. I live a half mile from the intersections they're talking about. Will definitely need to drive by and do some "unlicensed engineering" of my own.

URSpider94• 15 years ago

I don't want to defend the idiocy discussed in this article, but it's useful to try and understand where Cox is coming from.

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.

barefoot2• 15 years ago

I think this touches on an interesting point: A few weekends worth of study can produce a short term "unlicensed" practical grasp on pretty much any subject.

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.

davidcoallier• 15 years ago

This is fairly interesting, in the Jan-Feb 2011 edition of "American Scientist" [2] (The magazine) there's an article entitled "A troubled tradition" that outlines a few issues in academia with reviewing papers.

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

The dangers of unlicensed engineering

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