Professional Civil Engineering: Responsibility

This article discusses the definition of the practice of professional engineering through practice and education. The definition is compared with the existing educational practices and faculty. Many faculty are not practitioners of the profession and cannot provide the insight into the engineering processes. Little is taught beyond some basics. The complete engineering process of planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance is needed. The education system replaces a senior professor with a junior assistant professor, inhibiting many able practitioners from applying to relieve the faculty shortage. A profession should seek to fill slots with professionals. This would require that incoming faculty have engineering as well as academic experiences. A profession must be able to control its work products. Engineering has failed and enabled the courts to mandate many changes through civil law suits and tort claims. Failure to act as a profession has created many of the tort claims and litigation problems. Illustrations of these failures are given.