“Only holders of a P.Eng. licence are legally permitted to use the title P.Eng.’ or the term ‘engineer’ in their job title, or to use any other term, title or description that may lead to the belief that they are authorized to practice professional engineering,” McCutcheon said.
That’s interesting to me. We’re looser with the term “Engineer” here in Switzerland. So I wanted to ask, do you have Network Engineers in Ontario? If not what are the people who design, plan and implement new computer networks called instead?
I am a P. Eng. in Ontario, Canada. It’s “Professional Engineer” license. As someone else has mentioned, you can be a mechanical engineer, a software engineer, an electrical engineer etc and a P. Eng. The requirement for P. Eng is passing an Engineering Ethics exam, receiving an engineering degree from accepted universities/college (doesn’t have to be a Canadian school) and completing an certain number of years of Canadian engineering work experience (ie. the work must be qualified as engineering type work, and must be in Canada). Now, I received my P. Eng more than a decade ago so the rules may or may not change.
Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) is our organization which regulates the exams and licensing. It is also a sort of watch dog which ensures that engineers are ethical and don’t cut corners. PEO also provides networking (they may organize a plant tour or conferences etc) and volunteering activities for engineers. We, engineers, pay annual fees/dues to PEO but if you work for an engineering company, your company may pay your dues for you.
In the United States, it’s loose. A PE license is required to stamp plans, which is very important if you’re a civil engineer working on buildings or infrastructure or an electrical engineer working on utilities.
That said if you’re a mechanical engineer, you probably aren’t going to work on anything that requires you to be a PE. (Though the Federal Aviation Administration has the DER [Designated Engineering Representative] qualification, which is separate from the PE but useful in aviation.) Because of that, most mechanical engineers don’t bother. The same is true for a lot of disciplines.
That said, this guy didn’t get his undergrad degree in mechanical engineering and worked as a millwright. At that point, we’re definitely stretching what counts as an engineer.
A key derivative of PEs having the right to stamp plans is that certified (stamped) plans are often a requirement or stipulation in all sorts of laws, permits, and settlements. Fraudulently certified plans can unravel all sorts of legal liabilities far beyond the engineer.
A lot of people do use the term loosely even though it’s illegal to do so here, but then there are some people who use the term Network Architect instead.
In common parlance they will call themselves software or network engineers, but their official title will be something else, a title my company uses is “senior software engineering 1/2/3” the -ing considered enough to change it. It’s usually not a big deal unless you falsely represent yourself like this guy is doing or you’re going through a legal process (I got a US work visa and the lawyers stressed that I should not refer to myself as an engineer during any immigration process unless I really was one for instance).
My work generally does the same thing, but for the record if PEO starts to pay attention to software engineers then adding the ----ing will absolutely not be distinct enough.
They made EITs switch to calling themselves EITs rather than Engineer In Training.
In Ontario, basically the professional engineering organization complains about people using the term Software Engineer, and occasionally goes after a big company because of it, meanwhile on a day to day basis everyone uses the term anyways.
If you’re applying for jobs from companies that are not based in this province, and refuse to call yourself a software engineer, you’ll be passed over for someone equally qualified from one state over who will.
When you’re on a team and you’re the only one in Ontario, you’re not going to insist that you don’t refer to your team as the engineering team.
If you’re applying to an Ontario company, that’s usually when you’ll start seeing them respect the distinction more, but even then, jobs will almost always just be posted for developers because most places don’t actually care about the distinction and want both to apply.
A bit off topic but please indulge me:
That’s interesting to me. We’re looser with the term “Engineer” here in Switzerland. So I wanted to ask, do you have Network Engineers in Ontario? If not what are the people who design, plan and implement new computer networks called instead?
I am a P. Eng. in Ontario, Canada. It’s “Professional Engineer” license. As someone else has mentioned, you can be a mechanical engineer, a software engineer, an electrical engineer etc and a P. Eng. The requirement for P. Eng is passing an Engineering Ethics exam, receiving an engineering degree from accepted universities/college (doesn’t have to be a Canadian school) and completing an certain number of years of Canadian engineering work experience (ie. the work must be qualified as engineering type work, and must be in Canada). Now, I received my P. Eng more than a decade ago so the rules may or may not change.
Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) is our organization which regulates the exams and licensing. It is also a sort of watch dog which ensures that engineers are ethical and don’t cut corners. PEO also provides networking (they may organize a plant tour or conferences etc) and volunteering activities for engineers. We, engineers, pay annual fees/dues to PEO but if you work for an engineering company, your company may pay your dues for you.
In the United States, it’s loose. A PE license is required to stamp plans, which is very important if you’re a civil engineer working on buildings or infrastructure or an electrical engineer working on utilities.
That said if you’re a mechanical engineer, you probably aren’t going to work on anything that requires you to be a PE. (Though the Federal Aviation Administration has the DER [Designated Engineering Representative] qualification, which is separate from the PE but useful in aviation.) Because of that, most mechanical engineers don’t bother. The same is true for a lot of disciplines.
That said, this guy didn’t get his undergrad degree in mechanical engineering and worked as a millwright. At that point, we’re definitely stretching what counts as an engineer.
A key derivative of PEs having the right to stamp plans is that certified (stamped) plans are often a requirement or stipulation in all sorts of laws, permits, and settlements. Fraudulently certified plans can unravel all sorts of legal liabilities far beyond the engineer.
In practice, you still see people calling themselves “network engineers” and “software engineers” in Canada, even without a P.Eng
A lot of people do use the term loosely even though it’s illegal to do so here, but then there are some people who use the term Network Architect instead.
Architect can be a protected title too
In common parlance they will call themselves software or network engineers, but their official title will be something else, a title my company uses is “senior software engineering 1/2/3” the -ing considered enough to change it. It’s usually not a big deal unless you falsely represent yourself like this guy is doing or you’re going through a legal process (I got a US work visa and the lawyers stressed that I should not refer to myself as an engineer during any immigration process unless I really was one for instance).
My work generally does the same thing, but for the record if PEO starts to pay attention to software engineers then adding the ----ing will absolutely not be distinct enough.
They made EITs switch to calling themselves EITs rather than Engineer In Training.
In Ontario, basically the professional engineering organization complains about people using the term Software Engineer, and occasionally goes after a big company because of it, meanwhile on a day to day basis everyone uses the term anyways.
If you’re applying for jobs from companies that are not based in this province, and refuse to call yourself a software engineer, you’ll be passed over for someone equally qualified from one state over who will.
When you’re on a team and you’re the only one in Ontario, you’re not going to insist that you don’t refer to your team as the engineering team.
If you’re applying to an Ontario company, that’s usually when you’ll start seeing them respect the distinction more, but even then, jobs will almost always just be posted for developers because most places don’t actually care about the distinction and want both to apply.