Grout/Light Weight Concrete

Hmm, I wonder if there was one reply on here by an actually practicing licensed Civil Engineer, besides mine obviously. Not really sure if the Civil Engineering forum was an appropriate place for this blog.

You are wecomed to provide a critique of my post (as long as you don't charge).
If I only commented on stuff I was licenced and practicing it would be a sad state of affairs, after all I have no formal qualification as a bowyer, but I smertainly is one.
Del

He got suggestions, the quality is debatable. However, like everything on the web you have to question the qualifications and knowledge of those supplying the opinions.

That wasn't the point of my comment however. This really doesn't seem like a question that really involves civil engineering , maybe at the most a architectural question, but more like a question for marketers and salesmen of various household products or smaller residential contractors. It just brings up the question regarding why have a forum for Civil Engineering, if most of the people responding have no substantive demonstrable knowledge in the field, and the questions presented aren't really relevent anyways. It is comparable to having a blog under the heading of cosmology, but discussing Britney Spears or any reality TV personalities recent activities.

He got suggestions, the quality is debatable..
Maybe but you seem unwilling to debate them.
Ok, maybe it's not posted on the most appropriate forum, but hey, you want to sue the guy?
I'd have thought a usefull answer, or a debunking of any bad answers would be handy.
Del

Do you think CR4 should open a blog on residential architecture and product reviews? Should "product reviews" be excluded from all blogs? I know that such product reviews may come dangerously close to spam, so I can see where you are coming from. On the upside, I would never have known about that stucco like product unless I had read about it here.

I checked and there is no suitable blog at this time. Me...I don't really have time to moderate one, (maybe after the construction season ends) but if it was there, I would like totally lurk on it! Why don't you start one!

They should probably open a Blog on residential architecture sure, if they want to discuss such topics on a engineering site (of course, since architecture is about the aesthetics of buildings, this could open arguments for blogs on landscape architecture, cultural resources, archeology, biological resources, arts and humanities as all potential fields for blogs). Then product discussion could fall under those disciplines it is related too. Obviously, it might be innane to have a purely product discussion blog because you'd be discussing stuff that had nothing to do with engineering (could end up discussing the best looking finish for a table top, definitely not engineering). I personally would not be interested in discussing products reviews or residential architecture, both are more about arbitrary personal preferences so the discussions really have no solutions to resolve the question, just many possibilities. Plus I am not an architect or product marketer, so...

Seems like it was interesting to others -

What does the LPE stand for?

Hi bakerjohn,

LPE denotes Licensed Professional Engineer.

Hopes that helps...

Oh never heard of it must be a NY thing.

Kind of like a LPE lower than a PE like a LPN is lower then a RN?

Oh, in the State Law it says that you have to have a license to work as actual Civil Engineer (the title is protected by law), except for those working for some utilities company personnel under specific situations and the federal government (which is beyond the jurisdiction of the State Laws, but frequently still requires licensure to practice even as their employees). I think the State Laws definitions are much more applicable to which ever jurisdiction you practice under, rather than some online dictionary, though you should feel free to practice in the field as you like, some people don't mind the jail time and fines that can be incurred. Claiming to be a Civil Engineer is much like claiming to be a medical Doctor, where you are required to have a MD license. Actually, education is not necessarily a legally defined requirement, however, just working experience under a licensed Civil Engineer. So to work in "civil engineering" you must be a Civil engineer or work for a Civil engineer who is the resposible charge for the project and you are his subordinate. To give advise, well as long as it is free you do not need a license, as soon as you receive payment for it you need a license. And, well free advice is available from any number of sources, and the quality is debatable and no recourse for anyone who is willing to take free advice, much like free medical advice online from a bunch of bloggers.

Oh BTW you are working under the responsible charge of the PE. You A. can not make contracts to do civil engineering, B. can not offer to do civil engineering, C. Can not finalize any of your "work products" for delivery to a client, D. offer a professional opinion to a client, E. you can not manage a engineering firm. So much like a nurse, or even just some routine non-medically trained person offering a medical opinion, or practicing medicine. You can claim engineers do nothing (except of course take on the liability for the work products), but if you were as competent as you claimed you would simply go get your own license so you could practice without the impediment of another guy rubber stamping your work. the reason they require PE or RG to stamp thiose environmental documents, is because of the reponsible charge aspect, not because it is really a main stream aspect of civil engineering (or even something the States consider for the licensure). They want someone trained in ethics and licensed under a ethical code who they can come after in a manner that would keep them at least partly honest (the loss of a license in one State, especially a State like CA or NY, is essentially a killing blow for your career).

Someone stole your teddy bear?

I love it you and Moosie getting all ticked off because a lowly non-PE dared to speak-out against you. It's truely amazing about your ego and your superority complex you guys have.

Just rember without nurses; Doctors could never accomplish their jobs.

With-out experts in other fields "rubber stamp" PE wouldn't have jobs.

Actually PEs, and their authority, long pre-existed the other experts. I am not particularly ticked off about the whole PE thing, I deal with that in a 50,000 person Engineering design corporation. It is not uncommon for some non-engineer to come along with the idea of being the principal or project manager on a engineering project and then realize that the fees would be so large and the client so astute that they might just report them to the State Board, unless they can devise a way to show the responsible charge can not be usurped by the non-engineering managers. So, as has happened on a number of recent projects it comes down from above to remove the non-engineering management to a specialty category and move licensed engineers into lead rols to avoid legal consequences. It is not uncommon for non-engineers to routinely violate the laws and do work they are not legally qualified to do, and it is kind of funny when they try to claim ignorance of the Law. What I am a bit annoyed at is the blatant ignorance of the Law you claim. It is those personnel that I hate working with as subordinates, they tend to routinely break the laws and then whent ehy get in trouble look for others to blame. whaty will happen, and I have seen the State Water Resources Control Board staff do this here (very frequently when they have gotten even slight attitude or just were in a bad mood about a project), you will exceed your authority and there will be some state agent, astute agency/potential large client, or a competitor who will turn you into the the State board. It could be anything form presenting a proposal to do engineering work to a large client, actually doing a high value project that a competitor was banking on getting, or just claiming to do Civil Engineering or work as a Civil Engineer. They will file a complaint with the State Board, you will get fined and it will go on the boards records, and your company may get fined for letting you do whatever it was. If they are a large organization they will probably terminate you and toher companies will fear hiring you for similar potential for risking their eligibility to work for Local, State or Federal public Agencies. in the mean time some engineer is going to get blind sided for letting you do what you did, he will be the responsible charge fall guy, though he probably deserves it also. Heck, I see complaints file by Cities against engineers for exceeding their authority in land surveying by even a marginal amount, and they are allowed to do the actual physical surveying work (just ot the legal boundaries).

Something to bear in mind, much like Engineers and Attorneys and their paraprofessionals, doctors do not need nurses, nurses are a luxury so they can attend to more important issues. Doctors can legally do anything and are more qualified to do what nurses do, they just prefer to have someone else deal with the bed pans and such. doctors can legally work without nurses and fully practice all aspects of medicine within their field of expertise, nurses on the other hand can not. your argument is much like saying contractors can not work without day laborers, when they can it just may not be as profitable or more labor intensive for the contractor himself than he wants. this is the kind of argument where you show your own over valued self estimate of worth. Keep in mind you are not even close to being necessary as a paraprofessional, you are a luxury for the companies where there is a huge short fall of engineers at a certain level, or in the past where profitability could be adversely impacted (During the housing boom this went out of whack due to the labor shortage of professionals). If a engineering company could retain you or a PE at the same price, which do you think they would choose in a tight market. If a midcial practice could retain a Doctor or a nurse, or a Law office could retain a paralegal or a Lawyer... One they need to be able to sell the work, the other is a luxury, that they could do without if they themselves were willing to tighten things up a little and pick up the slack they had grown to lazy to do themselves. That is not arrogance, just the reality of the market. My dentist recently did something just like that about 2 years ago, he terminated all his dental hygienists, and the dentists in the practice started doing the cleanings themselves since business was slower. On the plus side, he informed me it helped him identify problems earlier, since he was hands on during the cleaning he was able to also evaluate the teeth at the same time and not be rushing through patients. I worked for a huge engineering comapnay a few year back and they terminated a bunch of the mid level managers in the west, one of the reasons was their inability to retain engineers and geologists after they received their licenses, they were great at retaining technicians, but corporate was much more concerned about the lack of retention of professionals who then went to other competitor firms. My own corporation is laying off tons of planners and biologists, I think mostly because they perceive them as over paid under current economy because they hire others cheaper in locations not far from the layoffs. However, they retain civil engineers who have minimal work and are losing money, even naturalized citizenswho may not speak passable english in the US. They feel they need to weahter the market and retain the core labor force, and can always rehire the paraprofessional and the non-core professional labor later, and probably cheaper and younger.

Need an engineer of a certain classification - you buy one (hire or rent) for the necessary time. No big deal.

You really are an insecure individual! Many of your facts I doubt!

Basiclly your just a number, pretty easy to replace. No wonder you hold on to your PE so closely. I work for a company where we have two "engineers" in the Engineering Department and I run the Environmental and Engineering Unit. I have two Environmental Specialists also besides the two PE. I go to them once and a while for a stamp, their at my office door multiple times daily for services from me and my specialists. Who needs who the most.

I or some one with the same skill and experience as I have would be hire long before a PE because they are looking for someone who could offer a wider and more varied knowledge base then some PE fresh off the school bus with no field experience or knowledge.

still the issue is you have to have their stamp, they are just being lazy by having you do the field works and drafting they would rather not learn to do or do themselves. I have worked for very large corporations in both civil design, geotechnical and environmental (haz waste), I have never seen a case where an engineer could not do it themselves (except in the case of NEPA which really is not related to engineering design), just many cases where it was easier not to do it themselves. On the other hand, I have only seen a few independant environmental technicials and biological services groups, and they have contracts for engineers to review their work (and alwasy subcontract to engineering firms for design related projects). The thing you don't seem to get is anything you can have a RG stamp is not a board mandated CE requirement, it is a local regulatory authority like a State Water Board requirement because they want the general expertise, regulated ethics code, and licensure. The problem isn't my worth it is that you are defensively protecting your own self inflated worth. You obviously know the market value of the PEs, and you know your own, and you are arguing with some hope of people supporting your position to essentially deregulate in your own favor. It is surprising how many people want the regulations to be different and less stringent (because they think they are stupid) when they are not qualified, and we wonder why the banks got away with it. There are more biologist and engineering technicians graduate from universities in one year then registerd engineers working, so no shortage of people to do that work. Lower semi-skilled labor management is only of value when they have enough labor to need special separate management. I kind of get the impression you are feeling some heat, and are tilting at windmills against what you perceive as the eventual reduction in manpower, knowing where you will stand against the PEs in senior managements mind ( i would guess thatthe senior management is likely PEs?).

Quote - In all cases, however, engineers are ethically required to limit their practice to their area of competency, which is usually a small portion of a discipline. While licensing boards do not often enforce this limitation, it can be a factor in negligence lawsuits.

The wide area that you give yourself credit for being able to cover is only applicable in the event you do not use it.

Nothing wrong with being a PE - nothing wrong in not.

I have found over the years that the people who get too worried about 'status' are a pain. Kind of like being in South America where people are expected to address you as engineer - even in public - really silly.

That might be in the state of CA but here in PA an engineer is a dime a dozen. In Philadelphia area alone there are a dozen engineering colleges, some big names at that you have Lehigh Univ, Lafayette College, Temple, Penn State, Villanova, etc, etc, etc. I can't swing a stick with out hitting a PE around here. Now Biologist and Environmental science majors are a different story very few can be found maybe a half dozen with mining and construction experience plus someone that know most of the environmental rules and regulations.

The problem with having a PE it gives you a feeling of entitlement like your smarter then everyone else. Well guess what your not. There is always someone smarter. My experience and my education count. I have every right to educate, direct, give advice to someone in the field of civil engineering which I do on a daily basis as part of my job. I've worked since I was 16 in construction and mining. I'm done just about every job working my way up the ladder from design to construction to maintenance. There are tons of individuals on this CR that don't have a PE but do civil engineer work for a living and have every right to give there opinion and advice too.

You can actually check the number of licenses issued since they began licensing Civil Engineers a century ago. I bet you the license number are less than 70,000 in pennsylvania, since that is the number they are at in California. Even the federal government claims there is a severe shortage of professional engineers, much like Doctors (surprisingly no shortage of lawyers). In any typical major university, there are more biological "sciences" majors (especially when you consider all the pre-meds and the nursing concentrations) than all the engineering and physical sciences combined.

Excuse me while I get up off the sidelines bench and join the fray. I've been sitting on it way too long this week and now's the time to say somthing of importance to John Boy.

John, why don't you admit it that you're a PE-Wannabe, and can't stand it not being one while everyone around you of importance (as in dire necessity) to you and your work has one? I can just imaging what your Boss would think and say if he had read any of your postings herein? If I'm not mistaken, you "practice" Civil engineering somehow under a PA-licensed and Registered PE, correct? That's really the bottom line here is it not, regrdless of your scientific prowless and certification, correct?

I guess the only way to change your stinky mindset is to have the Commonwealth of PA issue you your PE license somehow.....

Would that make you any happier?

Ummmmm nahhhhhh, forget that train of thought for a moment. I must have just awoken from a bad nightmare somehow, or am quite literally out my freaking mind to think such thoughts..... Nah, scratch out my previous statement above; the one about issuing John here a PE license.... And, you may ask the reason why?

The reason why is quite obvious: you are far too arrogant, as you have aptly demonstrated herein over the past week.

Have a great freaking 4th! Philly, the City of Brotherly Love, my Ass!!!

Bakerjohn, the PE has earned the right to use those initials (TITLE) after his/her name based on education, experience and passing both parts (A and B) of the State Examinations, totalling 16 hours.

You may do the basic engineering, and then PE checks and signs off on the work, but don't belittle the PE title and what respect it demands UNTIL you yourself have actually sat and passed the examinations. You sound like a myriad of engineering techies and contractors that I've encountered throughout my 34 years in the profession......many sound off belittling PE's, and sometimes often quite disrespectful or even threatening. I think all this is rooted in the fact that they can't get advance beyond their current working conditions and actually earn the title, so they mouth off....blah blah blah.....yadda yadda yadda. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of it. Psychologically, I honestly think these people have a "Inferiority Complex" or something akin to that, maybe even a much more deeply rooted problem or problems, so they lash out in self-anger.

BTW and FYI, in the USA only a small minority of actual ABET certified engineering school graduates ever pass the examinations and become a Licensed and Registered Professional Engineer.

Don't sound off like you have done. I was offended by your statements regarding PE's not knowing what they are signing off on. I'm sure there are other PE's in here that were equally offended, but haven't spoken out like I have. Please, let me be the first...... Back to the the PE's signing off on your work and not knowing "Jack" about your engineering work....If that's the case, then IMHO the PE's that you worked with don't belong there signing off on your work. First off, that's unethical. Secondly, that sort of practice is strongly frown on by the Licensing Board and the profession in general: practicing engineering that you have no educational or work-related experience in is generally unlawful. It's like a Dentist trying to perform open heart surgery. Sure he's seen it done on TV and the movies or read a Medical Textbook on the subject, but that doesn't mean that he necessarily should be crawling around in someone's chest cavity with a scalpel does it? Nope, bad call IMHO!

Also, I DO know the difference between a Oak and a Maple leaf as well as what a FEDERAL WETLAND looks like, unlike the PE's that you have worked with......FYI, I used to work side by side with Landscape Architects, biologists, environmental scientists, geologists, and soil scientists, just to name a few....all professionals in their own right by education and experience. And I'll be the first to admit it here and elsewhere that I learned a lot from them over the years. And I also know I can't know everything there is to know concerning wetlands and the environment, and that I have to rely on there experience, advice, suggestions and conclusions. Capise?

I ask you to please refrain from further "sour grapes" statements (and attitude) regarding PE's in this forum and in the REAL WORLD (ie, Working World), else some big PE will someday either pick you up and bounce you on your head or screw you into the ground. This is not a threat to you John. I'm trying to do you a ?BIG favor and help you change your attitude. It literally stinks. Additionally, this had not been the first time that I have witnessed you making disparaging statements regarding PE's here. If you think you are far superior to a PE and know a great deal more, then prove it to the rest of the world and your State Education Dept. Office of the Professions by taking (and passing) both halves of the PE examinations. Or can't you? That is an interesting question that I'd like to see true-fully answered herein.......

And actually in california it is a 32 hour exam, with the second day a set of state special exams which are typically harder than the NCEES exam.

Good answer Captain. I agree completely.

I graduated from the US Navy's Nuclear Power School at Mare Island, CA, and received my BE degree from University of Kansas after 6 years of service. I worked the trades through college, and worked at the trades through school. I later worked for two large midwest EE/ME firms and started a GC business with a Class A license in 6 states.

I didn't respond to this gentleman's query because I have a lot of paper to hang on the wall, I did so because I felt I had some information, regardless of how "debatable" the value of it is. It is the person posing the query who should go and see what the merits of those products may or may not possess. I have used them both, but have never sold them or have an interest with the companies. I suppose we should insist that a caveat should appear with any product lest we paint ourselves in the wrong light. Go look at the information and the testing, as I did, and begin the debates.

I am not going to chastise a woebegone, wayside-waif who wandered into the wrong door seeking help and information. I signed up with CR4 because of the wide range of topics, opinions, and the occassional waif seeking enlightenment.

Now I need to go back to tapping my Academy ring on the desk and finish my briar.

Bully!

I'm of the opine most posters on this forum do present information within the fabric of the OP's enquiry and with integrity offer aid due experience and or academic/professional knowledge in the matter.

If I am in a position to gain from a suggestion this will be noted in the post however I participate because I like to see others succeed and having been hither an yon all about a plethora of projects I may bid my two cents when appropriate. I respect my elders and those of higher learning too.