Certificates and Legislations in different countries

[b_force]

Pretty much a year ago I have been working in some repair and engineering jobs in New Zealand (New Plymouth, Taranaki for the insiders) for a couple of months.
Except for a complete different style/pace or working, something else blew me completely away.

Apparently in NZ every engineer/technician needs to pass a certain certificate to legally work and repair things like televisions, computers and that kind of stuff. My colleagues there told me that it's even mandatory for R&D engineers. 

Well, I have been working, repairing and developing as an engineer myself for quiet a while but as far as I know (and all colleagues I worked with), these certificates are not mandatory at all in the Netherlands (and therefore probably same in EU), except when you work on distribution boards/fuse boards/fuse boxes or other mains power/AC power/wall power applications (damn all these accents  )
And mostly only the supervisor/head of department is responsible, not every individual on himself.

I was wondering how this works in other countries and what kind of certificates are needed in this working field.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

In the US, you can work on just about anything that is *electronic* without any sort of legal issues at all. To do *electrical* stuff there are inspection and licensing issues.

Bob

[b_force]

Hi

In the US, you can work on just about anything that is *electronic* without any sort of legal issues at all. To do *electrical* stuff there are inspection and licensing issues.

Bob

That looks like it's pretty similar as what we have here in the EU.
Off course the question sometimes is, where does 'electronics' end and 'electrical stuff' begins.

[R005T3r]

Even in Italy: in order to work as a technician in the electrical field you have to attend two years of stage and then you have to pass a test(that's quite difficult). This rule does not apply to engineers. Electrical and electronics are considered different fields.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

There are strange exceptions to the "don't need certification" here in the US. When I started out, you needed an FCC license to do radio transmitters. Even that was a bit strange. The individual operator needed one, the individual designer did not. The design was "certified" by an un-involved individual. I'm sure there are other odd niche areas that are equally weird.

We do have profesional engineering certification and testing. I could go off and spend a bunch of effort getting one. In 50 years of doing this sort of thing, I have never run into the need for a PE cert. If I did electrical systems for buildings ... that might be different.

Bob

[rstofer]

Hi

There are strange exceptions to the "don't need certification" here in the US. When I started out, you needed an FCC license to do radio transmitters. Even that was a bit strange. The individual operator needed one, the individual designer did not. The design was "certified" by an un-involved individual. I'm sure there are other odd niche areas that are equally weird.

We do have profesional engineering certification and testing. I could go off and spend a bunch of effort getting one. In 50 years of doing this sort of thing, I have never run into the need for a PE cert. If I did electrical systems for buildings ... that might be different.

Bob

Yes, if you do Electrical Engineering (in the US) you do need professional registration.  The exam is in two parts:  Engineering Fundamentals (amazingly hard) and Electrical Engineering.  These exams are usually separated in time because there is a 4 years experience as a supervised engineer requirement before the final exam.  Pass the exam and get some letters of recommendation and you are good to go.

[jahonen]

I just completed my qualification to Finnish qualification to electrical work supervision 3 (SP3), so I'll try briefly explain how it works here in Finland. Note that this list of requirements is not complete, there are fine details there and here but I'll try anyway.

Here in Finland there must be an assigned person, "sähkötöiden johtaja" in Finnish which can be roughly translated as "supervisor of electrical work", who is responsible of safety and related standards compliance for any work involving electronics or electrical work above 120 VDC or 50 VAC. Basically this supervisor is who is responsible for all who work under him/her and gets all the blame if something goes wrong, like somebody dies due to non-compliant electrical installation or unsafe device after repair work

Notification of the electrical/electronics work must be given in writing to Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency (Tukes) and contact info of the supervisor is included.

However, electronics hobby and some simple stuff like putting together a single phase extension cord is exempt from above rule.

This supervisor must have a) suitable education and/or suitable & sufficient working experience under Tukes registered employer b) undergo an examination "Sähköturvallisuustutkinto" in Finnish which means "Examination of electrical safety", which consists of two parts, first one involves legislation and safety rules in electrical work and second part is about technical parts of electrical standards. There are three levels of examinations in increasing level of depth.

There are three levels of qualifications for electrical work supervisors. This level determines which kind of work is allowed under his/her supervision.

Level 3 (SP3) is the "entry level" and it basically allows working on any equipment or branch circuits in house below 1500 VDC or 1000 VAC, i.e. you can install something like extra outlet, electrical stove, heater or some other fixed device. This is the one to get if one wants to do e.g. equipment servicing or testing in-house designed mains powered stuff. This is the one I have personally.
Level 2 (SP2) is otherwise same but it allows for putting in a breaker panel or doing modifications to it in addition that it also allows one to be "käytönjohtaja" or "Supervisor of electrical system operations", at same voltage levels. This is typically for building electrical installers, but device design and servicing is also allowed.
Then the most generic level 1 (SP1) allows also high voltage stuff above 1 kV, like 20 kV metropolitan distribution or those things. Many larger buildings here have their own transformers from 20 kV to 400 volts (phase-to-phase, i.e. 230 VAC between phase and earth). In that case, owner of the house and therefore of the electrical equipment, there must be assigned supervisor of electrical system operations. Like at level 3 and 2, maintenance work is also allowed.

Note that those who do the actual work do not need to have this qualification but it is the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure that all workers know all relevant standards, working practices and know how to work safely.

Regards,
Janne

[T3sl4co1l]

AFAIK, in the US, there is no general legal requirement for P.E. (Professional Engineer), only for certain fields where it has become important.  I think civil engineers (buildings, infrastructure) are usually PEs.

PE certs are handled by trade organizations, IIRC.  Which goes along with the lack of legal requirement -- it's not a gov't cert.  (Unless it is, in which case there you go. I haven't read up on this stuff, because it doesn't matter to EE.)

In the US, anyone is allowed to do their own electrical (i.e., household wiring) work, but it should be inspected by a licensed inspector.  Electricians are tradespeople licensed to perform this work.

AFAIK, in the EU for instance, only licensed tradespeople are allowed to do wiring?

(If that seems unsafe, oh and also our traditional NEMA-6P plugs and such... If we had 240V instead of 120, our standards would likely be more strict.  Remember the differences!)


Ed:
Speaking of EEs, I've *never* been asked to get a PE.  I know you can, but I don't think it gets you anything beyond letters-after-your-name.  So, if you're a pompous ass, go for it.   I've also never been asked about my degrees, beyond their presence in my Resume.  So...

Tim

[vodka]

Apparently in NZ every engineer/technician needs to pass a certain certificate to legally work and repair things like televisions, computers and that kind of stuff. My colleagues there told me that it's even mandatory for R&D engineers.

When the  diablo haven't nothing that do , he kills flies with the tail.  Spain isn't  only legislating useless thing.

Here we have the trade unions(electricist,plumber) and the official college(Engineers,Medics).

And the first group ,the authorization to work is conceived by the autonomic goverment(contemptuously taifa kingdom,are 17) by a installer license,after doing a course(FP) and sign on a civil responsibility  assured (The license only is valid where the taifa allow to work ,example Generalitat of Catalonia gives you  a license and only you can work its territory ).

On thread of official college for engineers , you have to register on the official college his province(province isn't  Taifa) always you are going to do technic project and you have to sign the project.
And you only sign projects on his province and if you want to sign project an other province you must ask for permission  to the college of other province(there are 50 province)  .


If the last is mess,now when i explain the attributions of the electrical  ,electronics and telecommunications will have more mess.

Here we have the engineers industrial (6 years) and technic engineer industrial (3 years) ,this have specialization as Electrical, Electronic etc.
At the theory we can sign almost all the project (the our specialist and other) but according that college  of other province may put problems.
Before only exists  the engineer technic specialist on Eletrical and Telecomunications after  the goverment created the specialist electronic and they gave that the colleges defined his attributions :

Some colleges interpreted an old law (for industrial proficient) that electronics only could  work on voltage lines 15 kV and the power less to 250 HP.

Others colleges interpreted that electronics haven't got any electrical attributions

Others colleges interpreted that electronics have the same attributions than the electricals

That's an authentic mess (http://www.soloingenieria.net/foros/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=4883&start=15)

[CatalinaWOW]

You can see from the variety of answers here that effectively there is no requirement to have a license to perform electrical or electronic engineering in the US.  The vast majority of practicing engineers do not have registration.  I passed the first phase, and never bothered with the second.  The details are more complex.

Registration is not a trade association thing.  It is handled by the government at the state level.  Many states offer reciprocal agreements recognizing registration from other states, but technically you have to register in each state you perform engineering in.  Another reason many don't bother.

The examinations for registration require knowledge of engineering theory and practice across a broad range of disciplines.  For electrical engineering when I was taking the test everything from electrical power transmission, to servo controls, to circuit design and radio communication was covered.  You didn't have to be horribly deep in any area, but significantly more breadth was required than for any job I have been exposed to.

Many contracts with government agencies require sign off by a professional engineer.  There was a case which made national news a few years ago where a self taught engineer was the only engineer on one companies staff.  They lost out on a contract, and the engineer lost his job as a result of this.  Large companies frequently have a few registered professional engineers on the staff who perform this function.  In many cases that I have observed they merely trust the work presented to them, but in others they do actually review the work they are signing off on.  AFAIK there is no significant financial reward for this responsibility.

The US is notoriously litiguous.  Lack of professional engineering certified supervision of engineering work has hurt companies being sued for allegedly defective or dangerous products.  (The flip side of this is that if a registered professional was involved, the engineer might be held personally responsible).

The comments above about "pompous asses" rings true.  Many registered engineers I have encountered have greater respect for the certificate than for engineering content, and had far higher opinions of their own skill than was warranted by their abilities.  Of course like everything else there are as many cases as their are people.  I have met registered engineers whose capabilities far outstripped anything indicated by their certification.

[b_force]

A lot of interesting replies

Although most of your examples are all about the (heavy) electrical stuff, which makes sense.
Fixing televisions is far from that in my opinion, so I am still bewildered about it.
I think the policy is different here. At the end it all comes down to the point when mayor problems happen.
In that case a company needs to prove that the work they delivered is according (safety) standards, which is much easier when having an official license.
(This is even true for CE and other (EMI etc) tests for products)

On the other hand, an interesting question is what happens when an 'unlicensed' worker can prove that all his work is done properly and according to all standards. I mean at the end it's about how the work is done, not who did it.
Or in other words, is the method leading or just someones license?

Also the fact that individuals can be in trouble being sued is completely new to me (they had that in NZ as well).
I don't think it's a good thing to be honest.
To my experience and knowledge it all comes down to responsibility of the supervisors and at the far end the company itself.
Unless it is very clear that someone deliberately f*cked it up, the company pays the bill.


 

 

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Keep in mind that in many countries pretty much anybody can sue anybody else for just about any reason. What varies greatly is the cost of defending yourself against a legal action and your ability to recover costs for defending against a bogus claim.

Bob