Stamping Requirements

[rk58]

I am a licensed engineer and the small agency I work for has restructured such that we now have a number of non-licensed engineers who report to non-engineering managers in some of our field offices. I am trying to formalize some design/review procedures so that I have the appropriate level of involvement in the design work of these field engineers to be comfortable stamping their work.

I am thinking of something along the lines of defining and requiring reviews at certain stages .. for example 30%, 60%, 90% and 100% complete , but am very interested in how other folks may deal with this in their organizations. One challange for us is that we are a small agency and we don't have a lot of standardized design procedures or tools, like some of the larger state DOTs seem to do, so it is going to take quite a bit of review on my part as each design will likely differ a fair amount from each other.

If anybody had a written summary of their procedures that they would be willing to share that would be great and much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Ron]

rk58...kudos to you for wanting to keep the level of involvement up and meet your obligations as a licensed engineer. Way to go.

As to how you can go about this, I think you're on the right track. I doubt that you'll get much in terms of a written summary of procedures since this will be somewhat unique to each agency. Develop procedures that you think fit your agency. You seem to have that capability.

 

[dhengr]

Rk58:
That’s a pretty interesting and scary question. Most engineering licencing laws say you can sign work which was done by you or under your direct supervision and control, and then you are responsible for that design. Since the company/agency doesn’t want to spend the money for real engineers why not have them have the various managers sign-off on the work under their direct supervision and control, and hold you harmless. I would most certainly want to know how my P.E. licence, liability and integrity were protected by the company’s insurance or a government agency’s immunity. And, only you should be the judge of your ethics and integrity, not your boss, but maybe with his understanding of your position. After all, if push comes to shove, all you really have is your licence to practice and integrity/reputation, if the stuff ever hits the fan.

Are these people out in the field offices real/unlicenced engineers, under your control and supervision; or are they people pretending to be or just titled as engineers? While there is plenty of room for a difference of engineering opinion amongst qualified, and generally equal, engineers, you can’t have twenty seven know-it-alls running around out there pretending to do engineering and then you should sign the design and ultimately be responsible for it. While there may be different design options depending upon the site conditions, there must be office standards which you are comfortable with and can defend. Your idea of regular review is very important until you get to know what the field people can do and how they think. Over the years I’ve had techs. and draftsmen who I’ve trusted enough that I’d put them up against some engineers that we worked around, and know what I was going to get when they got back to the office. I didn’t watch those guys as closely, or regularly, as I did some of those engineers. There has to be an engineering chain of command, with you at the top, if they expect you to stamp things. Those non-engineer managers, may shuffle paper and keep the field office running, but they should not have much real influence on engineering. There is also the difference in acting as a real Design Professional (P.E., Consulting Engineer) or acting as a Dept. Head under the industrial or government agency umbrella sort of protection/immunity.

What kind of an agency are you working for, a County Highway Dept., or what? What is your position and title? You should certainly be taking part in this restructuring, and at first glance I’d expect to run it like consulting office, with branch offices, from an engineering standpoint.

 

[civilman72]

I'd be surprised if someone gives you a copy of their procedures (too many proprietary issues), but it sounds like you are taking the right path. Without a standardized design procedure your job will be much more difficult, particularly without other PEs working under you.

You obviously will have to create a manual, but a few specifics to consider:
-Having to review all of your plans at four different levels seems unrealistic, or a major overload on you.
-Format your computer programs to output/present data the same way. This will go a long way in standardizing the information that is presented to you for review.
-Get all of your staff to save data the same way (with a common folder/file naming system). This will help you and your staff locate data faster.
-Use a lot of templates for your computer programs and make it easy for your staff to access and use these templates. This will help help alleviate the lazy-factor by making "standardization" easy on your staff.

You probably will need a few of your more experienced designers to make this happen and training time for the staff. Be prepared for a good amount of non-billable time, but it will be worth it for you in the long run.

Good Luck.