The Engineering Profession Act is now complete
This is not just the Professional Engineers Act, it applies to technicians, technologists and engineers. It’s been around for 25 years and can now finally be fully implemented.
The Act applies to you personally
You cannot defend yourself by saying that your employer made you do it. Doing unregistered engineering work could lead to serious consequences, like a fine of up to double the salary you earned during that time and a criminal record.
ECSA’s role is to protect the public
ECSA is only there to help you get your professional registration recognised worldwide.
• ECSA audits education institutions to ensure that the curricula are up to international standards.
• Your practical experience is peer-reviewed to ensure that you’ve gained deep, relevant expertise, and not just repeated the same work forty times over.
What counts as engineering work?
If your actions have an impact on a production process, the chances are that you are doing engineering work; but this also depends on the complexity of the problem being solved.
• Routine maintenance is the work of an artisan, sometimes erroneously called a technician. Artisans are the lifeblood of the industry, but they are not impacted by the Engineering Profession Act.
• Technicians work is described as Well Defined. Problems can be solved in standardised or well described ways.
• Technologists work is defined as Broadly Defined. Problems are ill-posed, are under- or over-specified, and require identification and interpretation in the technology area.
• Engineers work is defined as Complex. These problems normally fall outside the scope of usual standards and codes.
This list is not meant to be complete, but rather to help you understand at what level the act starts becoming applicable. Here are few examples to illustrate the above when a critical component in a process fails and the engineering practitioner goes to the stores to find a replacement.
The practitioner installs the replacement and saves the company millions of rands. This is work that an artisan is more than capable of doing. The artisan need not register, even though the company was saved from huge losses.
There is no replacement. The practitioner looks in a catalogue and does not see a replacement. If there was one, an artisan could have installed the replacement. It is now necessary to look at the process parameters and physical restraints, and find another product in the catalogue that can be used as a replacement. This is the work of a technician.
There is no replacement, even in the catalogue. The practitioner now looks at the process parameters and physical constraints and still cannot find a replacement. Due to his understanding of the process, the process parameters and the practical limitations, he finds a replacement that is not specified as an equivalent replacement, but the replacement falls within the margins of his calculations to be suitable for the job at hand. This is the work of a technologist.
No replacement can be found in the catalogue or by looking at the process parameters and physical constraints. The only way the problem can be solved is by replacing the faulty element with a unique design or system designed by the practitioner which has not been done before, or by getting input from various other disciplines or calculations. This is the work of an engineer.
Who does this affect?
This Act is not only applicable to suppliers, but also to maintenance practitioners and anyone who claims to do fine-tuning, maintenance, consulting, process optimisation, advising, etc. This is what you can do:
• Make sure you understand whether you are doing engineering work or not.
• Watch the calendar on the SAIMC website for workshops to guide you through the registration process, and attend them.
• Visit the SAIMC website for opportunities to gain knowledge and obtain CPD points.
Yours in automation,
Johan Maartens Pr. Eng.
| Tel: | +27 11 312 2445 |
| Email: | [email protected] |
| www: | www.saimc.co.za |
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