On March 27, 2019, we filed a request for investigation with the Association of Professional Engineers of Alberta (APEGA). Specifically, we had by then amassed quite a mound of evidence that a number of APEGA members were paying money to the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) in trade for influence over domestic legislation.
Now (US), you can’t hardly dig and place a mail box with out a engineers stamp.
“Civil societies are supposed to be above this kind of conduct.”
Supposed to be.
As things stand, there’s a reason the backs of (private-sector, anti-communist) trade unions were broken by successive globalist governments only for blue-collar workers.
The guys who work indoors got to keep their cartels—excuse me—“professional associations” who would pay white-shoe lawyers to make their brothers’ problems go away if they risked being held accountable for incompetence or criminal behaviour.
That includes engineers as well as lawyers. The money that goes into their pockets is profit. The money putting bread on the table of the people who do all the actual work is loss.
That includes engineers as well as lawyers. The money that goes into their pockets is profit. The money putting bread on the table of the people who do all the actual work is loss.
Would you feel safe going into a building or driving over a bridge designed by just anyone who calls themselves an “engineer” without proper proof of qualification?
I commented the following:
In your report on the circling of the wagons of Alberta’s professional engineer’s association, you questioned the ethics of a self regulating body. The problem as I see it is not the concept of a self regulating professional association, but the guild socialism inherent in right to practice legislation granting monopoly status to professional and trade associations. The CSA is now contaminated by virtue of the same incestuous relationship with government. Governments rubber-stamping the CSA standards as law undermines the “voluntary” nature of the CSA or any other standards organization.
Professional associations without right to practice status must compete within a free market. Engineers can be ensured work commensurate with their record of safety more appropriately recognized by insurance professionals than through the existing rent seeking and political activity that in so common today
the guild socialism inherent in right to practice legislation granting monopoly status to professional and trade associations
So you’d be in favour a free market in medical care in which anybody who calls themselves a physician can practice?
Absolutely, because I would consider what association if any he is registered with in the context of what it is I want from him. We already have a third party with the insurance industry, we don’t need the corrupt and coercive presence of the state in every part of our lives. Engineers, like virtually every profession and trade have pimped their way into protected work well below what their qualifications would dictate.
Engineers, like virtually every profession and trade have pimped their way into protected work well below what their qualifications would dictate.
I’m a professional engineer. Do you include me? And, yes, I do consider what you wrote an insult.
I was referring to all professions and trades including my own (professional forester-retired). I don’t know you or anything about your work experience and intend no personal insult but I have witnessed P. Engs take work from competent technicians and foresters through the work of both respective associations and their right to practice powers. I have also had to pay to have P. Engs sign off on truss designs that came from CMHC house building tables (likely originally designed by engineers) used for decades without them. Professionalism is people knowing the limits of their own abilities and qualifications. That doesn’t come from legislation.
I accept your explanation, however, I need to correct some of your last comments.
Much of what an engineer does is dictated by legislation, often imposed upon us by politicians who claim that it was demanded by the public.
That also includes what is considered professional engineering. Certain activities, certain products or services, can fall within our scope of practice, even though they have been provided or performed for years by someone else, and without question. That scope of practice often expands whenever there’s a failure or something new comes on the market.
For example, the trusses you refer to may be safe but legislation and applicable codes and regulations now dictate that they require the approval of a P. Eng.
I’ll add injury to that insult.
In British Columbia Professional Engineers can self declare their expertise. The Province and municipalities are requiring a Professional Engineer in more and more spheres. I dealt with a situation recently where a customer had hired an Engineer to oversee an installation requiring a Professional Engineer. To say he was incompetent is an understatement; he repeatedly said that “I’ll stamp it and they have to accept it”, except that he wasn’t able to convince the people who wrote the BC Gas code that he knew more than them. The client is trying to figure out where the tens of thousands of dollars required to fix the problem is going to come from. The problem is that no one except the Engineer society can question his design. The society is utterly useless; a self regulating body that doesn’t self regulate.
My experience with professional engineers has been with exceptions negative. I had one write an email to me trying to convince me to ignore the safety regulations to do with asbestos in his office. Others have made clear mistakes of design, but refused to own up to them. They definitely do not deserve the power that their credentials give them, and the issuing body doesn’t give a damn. The ‘professional ethics’ that prevent someone hiring an engineer to fix the problems another has created are not ethics, but a protection racket.
Interestingly, jurisdictions are requiring the opinion of two engineers before accepting the proposals. Because they don’t trust them.
You should be screaming at your society for their incompetence.
I have also worked with excellent engineers from a variety of disciplines. Competent and capable, and with a very clear understanding of the limits of their knowledge as well as deep experience in how to solve problems presented to them. They are qualified, not credentialed.
Derek:
If you have a grievance against a professional engineer, there is a complaints procedure in place and each is taken seriously and investigated. I often read of such disciplinary cases.
And, yes, professional engineers are disciplined. They can be temporarily suspended from practicing or they can be struck from the register.
Sure. Three years later there will be a decision. And you have the privilege of having to find and hire one to prove that the original design was wrong.
I talked to the local building regulator about the situation and from his standpoint it was am I willing to lose two years of my life trying to force the engineering society to deal with it. He wasn’t willing to do that, who was going to pay for it?
I’m in a technical trade and if I don’t serve the customer properly they just get rid of me and call someone else. You can’t do that with a professional engineer. Because of professional ethics.
In this situation the client is screwed because to operate they depend on the engineer signing off. It is far cheaper to simply fix the problem than try to fight a flawed protection scheme.
The professional ethics and the engineer society processes are the problem here. This guy’s opinions should be disregarded by everyone, but that signature had legal weight. Where are other engineers who all know what is going on? If you want protection and self regulation, do it! At your cost.
I’m in a technical trade and if I don’t serve the customer properly they just get rid of me and call someone else. You can’t do that with a professional engineer. Because of professional ethics.
And if I didn’t meet my client’s requirements, I got canned.
I suggest you review the applicable legislation to see if what you claim is actually law.
The professional ethics and the engineer society processes are the problem here. This guy’s opinions should be disregarded by everyone, but that signature had legal weight. Where are other engineers who all know what is going on? If you want protection and self regulation, do it! At your cost.
You imply that what you describe is acceptable practice. You clearly don’t understand engineering or, for that matter, contract and tort law.
yo, jc, what an insurmountable fcukin challenge is it if E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E had to research the qualifications, er,
‘qualifications’ of said practitioners with YOUR scenario.
what utter blathering nonsense you present.
jeezuz murphy. where to start . . . .
Exactly. hb, good point.
How about starting with asking for a certificate from the governing body eg provincial college of physicians!
Just because they may not be covered by right to practice legislation doesn’t mean they do a lousy job of self governing their members.
I often read of disciplinary cases in my profession and for a matter to reach that point means that it’s considered to be quite serious.
The governing bodies receive numerous complaints against their members. The process begins with an initial investigation to see if further action is warranted. Many of those complaints are regarded as frivilous and are dismissed.
Those cases that aren’t are examined more closely. Even then, some of them don’t proceed beyond that point and the matter is often settled between the parties in question.
However, when a formal disciplinary hearing is held, the member(s) in question retain legal counsel.
As it turns out, many disciplinary cases aren’t matters of competence but of ethics. Frequently, the member(s) in question stamp or seal drawings or documents which they did not prepare or which were not prepared under their supervision.
Come on now, Canada is the most corrupt country on the planet next to every other Islamic country and communist and socialist country. Go with the flow, learn how to be corrupt and criminal, you may rise to the top if you become ruthless enough. Not sure how many fellow white Canadians will have to die, but who cares as long as our welfare immigrants prosper.
Are they new?
It’s Canada.
Where The Fix is always in.
Makes sense to me,of course they deliberately cannot see the problem.
Square peg round hole =Ingineer.
The purpose of such bodies is to prevent any ethical standards,not promote them.
The level to which “Engineered Prints” are now required,reflects a profound ignorance of the work, by both regulators and insurers.
Self serving parasites unite,Can Ahh Duh will protect you.
The only difference between here and other corrupt states,is in Canada the fee is fixed,in more honestly crooked states,the fee is negotiable.
We have so many laws,rules and regulations that we have no law.
As for the Engineering Associations ,protecting the public,har har,they serve to ensure Engineering services are costly and near impossible to hold accountable for their mistakes.
Protect the monopoly and cover our ass.
Just another bureau.
The purpose of such bodies is to prevent any ethical standards,not promote them.
As for the Engineering Associations ,protecting the public,har har,they serve to ensure Engineering services are costly and near impossible to hold accountable for their mistakes.
Hold it right there! Do you have any idea how the system works? That the provincial government has granted the profession the authority to regulate itself? That there is a code of ethics that every practitioner is bound by?
If you’re considering making such comments in the future, perhaps you can do yourself a favour by becoming informed with what’s involved. Cheap comments come easy to those who don’t know, or want to know, what’s going on.
And, yes, I am a professional engineer and I’ve been registered for 40 years.
My father is a P.Eng. I bailed out of engineering in third year. I’ve worked with professional engineers, off and on, for a total of twelve years in the environmental, civil, and electronics engineering fields.
I know exactly how the system works, and it is damn well corrupted from the inside out. The most shockingly unethical and corrupt people I have ever had the misfortune of working with have all been professional engineers (well, and one pharmacist, but that’s also a self-regulated profession).
The myth of the noble engineer serving mankind is a total crock.
The myth of the noble engineer serving mankind is a total crock.
In that case, I wouldn’t suggest that you go into a building, go over a bridge, drive a car, or fly in an airplane. How about receiving medical care using diagnostic electronic equipment? Do you get your water from the public system? Use a computer? Play with a smartphone?
That’s right: all of those were designed by engineers.
Well BA,my experience is mostly electrical engineers with the odd structural engineer thrown into the mix.
I started in the Power Generation business in 1976.
Found Electrician more fun and the office was killing me in the late 80s.
Your profession is suffering a nasty decline.
The last two jobs I worked on,that required engineers,were fiascos.
The “Engineer” supposedly doing the acceptance inspection was too fat and too lazy to check anything above the ground floor.
The Cable Trays bent the roof trusses when finally loaded.
Nobody was too blame,but those trademen who had pointed out the coming collapse were “trouble makers” according to the Engineer.
Last one a Hospital,conduit hot to touch at rated loads…
But any queries from the trades had been blown off,”We know what we are doing..obey the print”.
The quality of electrical prints are non existent,imaginary grid line,with no onsite reference.
Equipment larger than the rooms designated.
After 40 years you might want to take a closer look at your replacements/underlings.
I worked with some very dedicated professional engineers in the 1980s, but also some truly slimee tree climbers as well.
And since I switched to Electrical Contractor the decline has been steady.
Occasionally I have worked with competent Engineers,great problem solvers and persistent.
But in the last 20 years it seems I spend more time showing them how to do their jobs, solving problems engineered into systems and soothing the egos of nearly useless graduates.
As for the “Complaints Department”, the most common explanation from Senior Engineers and the Engineering Firms, has been money.
“Well no one will pay us to do it right”.
For many years, I’ve been concerned that engineering professors have been hired directly out of university and that industrial experience is considered detrimental to one’s chances of getting a faculty position. Rather than teaching students about industry in their courses, academe has fobbed off its responsibility by claiming that industry could do that instead.
In addition, one shouldn’t overlook the contribution of educational policy in such forms as “student as customer”, leading to an erosion of academic standards. Add to this government policy which rewards academic departments for high graduation rates, as well as “customer satisfaction” and the result could be graduates who may be ill-prepared.
Sorry to nag , but while you BA are defending your profession, I would suggest the point is being missed.
“If you have a grievance against a professional engineer, there is a complaints procedure in place and each is taken seriously and investigated. I often read of such disciplinary cases.
And, yes, professional engineers are disciplined. They can be temporarily suspended from practicing or they can be struck from the register.”
Exactly what PS Knight did.
Followed APEGA’s complaints procedure.
The response is the subject of this post.
That response, also making a mockery of the pretence of taking each claim seriously.
I haven’t heard anything official from APEGA about the matter, so I can only speculate as to what happened.
B A, good job standing your ground!
Today I drove in a car designed by highly educated professional engineers, on roads likewise carefully engineered, over bridges both engineered and architected by highly trained and accountable professionals. Above water, power, sewer infrastructure built and maintained by professionals and specialists.
I would not ride in an elevator designed by your handy cousin. I would not seek witch-doctoring from any unaccountable charlatan (holistic–shudder).
If a doctor, engineer, lawyer, architect, accountant, etc. negligently or criminally mess up then they are absolutely accountable and are shielded only by their insurance (and probably not if criminal).
If there’s corruption implied, then it is incumbent on the professional society to work with the authorities to address it appropriately, within the law.
Even though I’m not practicing any more, I am still required to take an ethics course periodically.
Being a P. Eng. is more than just working as an engineer. It carries a great deal of legal responsibility, not just to a client, but to the general public as well the profession. One is expected to conduct oneself in a professional and honourable manner. One can be struck from the register for disreputable behaviour and I know of two instances in which that occurred.
Checking a bit, this seems to be part of a larger campaign by P.S. Knight:
// The Canadian Standards Association (“CSA”) is presently suing P.S. Knight Co. Ltd. for copyright violation. P.S. Knight is the publisher of the Electrical Code Simplified (“ECS”) series of guidebooks. These guidebooks quote from and interpret Canadian Electrical Code, which CSA coordinates. // https://www.restorecsa.com/lawsuit
The APEGA connection may be just involved in order to get at the CSA [for allegedly taking bribes]
There’s nothing a private corporation likes more than to acquire information paid for by the taxpayer for nothing.
Don’t know much about this but there’s a fine example of where this can go in the U.S., where AccuWeather makes its money by “repackaging and selling National Weather Service information” and is lobbying the Trump administration to prevent the Weather Service from making its data available directly to the people whose taxes paid for it.
In this case it is the CSA that acts as the greedy non-government entity. They develop the standards based on participation of various organizations. They then copyright the standard and governments then almost always accept the standards, examples being a building or electrical code. Then if anyone wants to see the laws they are then governed under, they must buy copies from the CSA directly or indirectly. This is a Canadian situation as when I lived in the US, I could download building, plumbing codes etc from the state as public property for free. Kate has been making this point for a long time about the “privatization” of (ownership) of laws.
So then it’s two private organizations fighting over copyright.
I know a lawyer who specializes in this: when next I meet her [if I can get a word in] I’ll ask.
// when I lived in the US, //
My experience has been that the U.S. is more open. In some areas it does the job for the western world.
That may not continue. In 2013, Obama had passed an executive order “that all unclassified government data be made publicly available and that it be machine-readable. ” and appointed a Chief Data Scientist D Patil https://twitter.com/dpatil to get it done.
But “After Trump took office, DJ Patil watched with wonder as the data disappeared across the federal government.”
[Quotes from The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis ]
Years ago a geologist for Cartaway Resources (you can’t make this stuff up) claimed the large intersection of sulphide they had drilled in northern Labrador contained at least 2% nickel – and he was being conservative. Assays came back – no nickel. Stock went from $26 to $2 (the dead cat bounce) and then to nothing.
A brilliant and forward thinking person working for the government pushed for a mandatory professional geoscientist group (P.Geo.) claiming if that geologist was a P.Geo. he could have faced fines of up to $5,000 (like I said you can’t make this stuff up).
Boeing, the bridge in Tampa that killed those people, SNC Lavalin paying off people to get away with who knows what, an entire TV program dedicated to engineering disasters…
People build and protect their empires within engineering and every other organization where they are supposed to be trusted to do the right thing, they don’t. And they’re supposedly too dignified for anyone to call bullshit on them.
Courage and free speech, “speaking truth to power”, etc… is a lot easier said than done within professional organizations. One of the reasons for this is the whining bitches who should be doing something else with their life, and guys who do want to actually move the ball forward don’t want to be lumped in with them.
It’s like we need a continuing revolution within civilization to keep civilization going, but a real one, not one like the academic clowns promote.
<i.Boeing, the bridge in Tampa that killed those people, SNC Lavalin paying off people to get away with who knows what, an entire TV program dedicated to engineering disasters…
And then there was the team of Morton Thiokol engineers, notably Roger Boisjoly, who warned NASA not to launch the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986 due to concerns about the effects of colder temperature on the seals of the solid rocket boosters. We’re old enough to remember what happened when they were over-ruled.
People build and protect their empires within engineering and every other organization where they are supposed to be trusted to do the right thing, they don’t. And they’re supposedly too dignified for anyone to call bullshit on them.
That, regrettably, is not restricted to engineering. I have refused to take on work given me by employers because I knew I wasn’t qualified by virtue of either education or experience to do it. (Our code of ethics is clear on that point.) That did not endear me to my masters.
I’ve also had managers who thought they knew everything better over-rule me on certain matters when I clearly pointed out to them the consequences if they didn’t follow my advice. (The code of ethics is also quite specific on that.) In one case, I turned out to be right, which was probably one reason I was fired.
Old Czech saying:
“When you throw a stone at a bunch of geese,
the one that squawks is the one that got hit”.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” There are a few people who commented on this thread all too willing to pick up a rock.
There are good and bad in every profession, competent and incompetent as well. It is a good thing if the latter were vetted and removed from any project that has the potential to cause death and destruction.
There’s a reason why engineers in Canada wear the iron ring. It’s to remind us of our obligation to be careful in what we do because carelessness can have severe consequences.
Knowing history, good and bad… is of the utmost importance. Safety rules the day!
Another slant…
Engineers like to remember history, and know their history, after all, does history not repeat itself? See article:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/westmount-group-will-use-restored-1810-cannons-to-re-enact-long-ago-battles
I am proud that ‘some’ Anglo Montrealers don’t want to change history like the Montreal Communists do. They want to re-enact the battles! After all, they have the equipment.
Retiree Patrick Martin:
“I’m an engineer, and engineers like to get things done,” he said. “We hate it when things are dragging on and not going anywhere.”
(I was born on Snow Hill, nearby—“atta boy, fellas!”)
NR
BA, have you driven across that marvelous freaking feat of engineering across Tampa Bay. 11 miles and so high it is amazing. Giant ships passing under it look small. The captcha was bridges, heh, heh.
I have OWG — the first one in 1989, the second one in 1978
… both are amazing, even a bit scary!
Barry O would say “you didn’t build that:”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Skyway_Bridge
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_Bridge%E2%80%93Tunnel
I’ve never been to Florida, so I’ve never driven over that bridge.
Maybe the closest I’ve come to that sort of thing is the Bennett Dam in NE B. C. I remember it from the very beginning. Work on it started shortly after my parents and I came to that part of the country.
We saw how the diversion tunnels were excavated, allowing the river to bypass that part of the bed on which the dam would eventually stand. That rock had to be grouted in order that the structure would remain stable.
A few years later, we saw the actual construction in progress, how the glacial moraine that was located a few km away was put in place by the belly dumps. I was also on hand in the underground powerhouse when the first three generators were commissioned and was part of the subsequent tour.
Later, shortly after I wrote my last undergrad exam, I was given a tour through some of the restricted areas, signing a waiver to do so. We went underneath the penstocks and got to look at the turbine shafts, standing right next to them. We also drove along the top of the dam to the other side as there wasn’t any overflow that day.
A lot of work went into building it. Projects like that are the epitome of what Rudyard Kipling described in his poem The Sons of Martha.