Should Automation Engineers Be Licensed?

no

we need less paperwork

this makes me sick

I could care less what 'paper' a person has. I just want them to be able to do the 'job'

a licence will assure you of nothing. if it stood for capability and quality as intended..

..well that's a joke

Who's idea is this? When you "follow the money" to answer that question you'll find who benefits from this is NOT working engineers. It's professional organizations like ISA and NSPE that are pushing memberships and training courses, and corporations that want to hide from liability. I have also seen companies like J & J push for this as a way to raise the bar for who they will hire or keep (that flopped). If you're designing a road, a bridge, a building, providing services where the safety of the public is directly concerned, the law says you need a license. If you're building equipment to be used in a factory, the liability is with the builder and/or the user. A manufacturer is responsible for the safety of their employees and the product it makes. Licensing in this area would shift the burden to individuals and would further relieve corporate responsibility. Again, who benefits? How would this make the public safer?

No - why should someone who is an expert in say Computer Science and has the requisite mechanical and electrical knowledge not be allowed to design "automation systems"?

The ONLY reason the government seeks to license is so they can collect the yearly renewal fees... This idea is sickening to me.

Apparently it's an unpopular idea amongst the practicioners. I once worked with an "Industrial Engineer" (basically a time-and-motion study kind of guy like Karl Popper) who got himself grandfathered in as a P.E. even though there was no test available to make the certification meaningful. However, he got a whole lot of mileage out of that piece of paper that said he "were a injineer". So there's multiple ways of looking at the value added...

Having a professional association that enforces training standards does add some restrictions and costs for the members but it has its advantages. Look at doctors and lawyers, their association makes sure that they are recognized as such and excludes everybody else from performing their line of work legally. This is why they earn more than most engineers in the USA.

In Quebec (Canada), the title "Engineer" is protected by law. Engineers usually earn more than other technicians. The order of engineers does ensure that the members are competent and follow a code of ethics. Does it solve all the problems and abuses? No, but it is much better than the free for all the we get when a one week training gets you the title of "Microsoft system engineer"... By the way, in Quebec they are "Microsoft certified technicians" unless they have a recognized university degree and passed the competence test and pay theirs dues to the Order of engineers. Nothing is free... Microsoft tried to fight it but they lost in court.

I think that the public is better serve because it is easy to differentiate between a fully trained engineer and any other contractor. Also, in case of problems, the public can file a complaint to the Order and usually get results (as opposed to other professions). Faulty engineers do get penalized and forced to get supplementary training.

Boo! Hiss...

Less regulation, more accountability. You build it, you better stand behind it. That'll separate those that can from those that like to pretend.

let's just say...

I pay my CAD guy $150 an hour

I pay my patent attorney $450 an hour

my CAD guy also seems to work about 70-300 times faster than my attorney for the same project.

...who thinks both guys are worth all of the money paid to them?

ok... let me rephrase...

...who's services will i gleefully seek to maintain, and who's services will likely one be replaced by persons of equal competence and more earthly rates?

I would gladly pay the rate continually if the value of the work done were commensurate

Don't you mean the atty extorts $450/hr???

As far as Electrical engineering, here in the States, there is the International Society of Certified Electronic Technicians (www.ISCET.org - 1-800-946-0201).

For Microsoft, before you can sit for an MCSE/MSCA in Server 2003 you "must have a minimum of 12 to 18 months of experience administering Windows technology in a network environment". Then you have to pass test #'s 70-290, 70-291, 70-293, and 70-294" (Quoted from "Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Server 2003 Environment, Second Edition", Dan Holme and Orin Thomas, Microsoft Press, from the Introduction, Prerequisites, page xxv). When you have finished all that, you get to do it all over again, from scratch, for Windows Server 2008 which is a completely different system. It is designed to take more advantage of the "new" Intel Core Duo chips, which is a 64-bit system as opposed to a Pentium, which is a 32-bit chip.

If a person needed formal certification for ANY computer system, anywhere, you wouldn't have time to properly read through the information needed to make these behomoths do something usefull or you could "play' with the operating system at home and try to get a following of people who work with you as an independant consultant. Each of these books is 400-500 pages and very little of it can be ignored. To add insult to injury, you can't even download this information without shelling out $200.00usd.

Now you could do all that but if you don't pass the exam you don't get your paper and you can't work for Corporate. You can work 'in the home environment', which means paying housecalls to sick five-system-home-networks, but you need to charge a price that the consumer can afford. On and on it goes, spinning faster and faster until the inevitable burn out. I've been burnt twice, thank you.

So, you see, we have the certification. It isn't well enforced outside of Corporate IP, but you can't work for any major company without the certification and the experience.

The reason why there are so few MCSEs working is because they are over-qualified, and they can't get the kind of salary that someone with Corporate credentials can get working Corporate instead of trying to sell a system to a Mom and Pop restaurant, small grocery store, etc. Another reason why there are so few MCSEs is because when the "dot.com" 'revolution' hit, all the MCSE jobs were outsourced to various other countries, world wide. India did very well, as did Japan, which is where most of our Engineering jobs have disappeared to.

/Ari (Orpheuse)