Should Chemical Engineers be allowed to conduct chemical engineering without the supervision of a civil engineer?
As you may have heard, Senate Bill 275 (SB275) was written to remove the arbitrary restrictions place on companies that hire engineers. If the law was followed, all users of engineering services would be forced to hire civil engineers to either learn how to conduct the work required (and be billed for all that labor) or hire a civil engineer to sub-consult the work out to another engineer with that required area of expertise, and mark-up the sub-consultant’s invoice for “overseeing the work”. Either way, the present law, if followed, would require users of engineering to pay more money to get the desired work completed. This is not a PE issue, if the engineering activity is defined to be the exclusive area of expertise of civil engineers, NO engineer can conduct that task, even if they have a PE. Unfortunately, since civil engineering involves fixed works and our chemical plants, refineries, bio facilities, environmental work, water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants are
