

The dangers of unlicensed engineering - morisy
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/02/03/964781/citizen-activist-grates-on-state.html

======
Anechoic
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_user
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>

------
pyre

      > 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...

~~~
notaddicted
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.

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

~~~
pyre
Ah. So he was practicing law without a license.

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

~~~
jrockway
Don't do that again.

Love, The AMA

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ew6082
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
Seeing as that the potential punishment is just a strongly-worded letter, I
don't think anything will be going to court.

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dadro
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
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 ;)

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hvs
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."

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

~~~
bmccormack
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.

~~~
te_platt
Funny how good your comment is if you are being sarcastic. But now I can't
tell if it is sarcasm or not.

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3pt14159
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_baker
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.

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sili
_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.

~~~
sofuture
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.

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URSpider94
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.

~~~
barefoot
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.

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flyosity
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.

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thrill
More like the dangers of unapproved thinking.

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davidcoallier
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

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zemanel
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)

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

/ringed BASc (non licensed)

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jammur
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!

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

~~~
Andys
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
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.

~~~
gloob
_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._

That, divorced from further arguments, is not an extraordinarily strong
argument against liability for defects. After all: the engineer who builds
upon such a stack has presumably, more or less consciously, made the decision
that defects are acceptable - otherwise they would have chosen something less
complex. Is there any particular reason someone should not be held accountable
for that decision?

~~~
jbri
The question is, would we expect authors of libraries to indemnify other
developers against liability if the fault is in the library itself?

~~~
jarek
If it's life critical software, then yes.

You don't get to blame civil engineers for structure failure if the steel
provided had material faults (that couldn't be detected by said engineers
exercising due diligence).

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

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jwcacces
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.

