Matthew, I certainly appreciate your position. I was working for [Big General Contractor] for a little over a year before leaving to join a design and consulting firm. Admittedly, I was in for a short enough time that I didn't have much chance to suffer from the Sunk Cost Fallacy, but while the company claims to support and encourage people to seek and attain their P.E. licenses, there was no discernible plan for that, just "we support that."
For me, counting that time toward my required 4 years' experience included really "talking up" the design *type* work I did. While I wasn't specifically designing anything, there were several instances where on the fly, a field engineering solution was required. We didn't have time to put it back to the architects or structural engineers in a formal (slow) way, so we drew something up, called the engineer(s), and had them tweak if necessary.
Sometimes the true engineering work was as simple as checking to make sure the engineering/architecture was sound. Just because a designer has a licenses doesn't mean they had their head screwed on straight the morning they drafted something for us. And a lot of the problem-solving was definitely engineering work.
As far as verification for applying to take the PE exam, my supervisor wasn't a licensed professional, but he was able to confirm/certify that I did work alongside the licensed engineers that we hired as the general contractor for the Design/Build project. I'm happy to send you my form for this particular job so you can see how I drafted this. For whatever it's worth, VA's Board accepted this experience.
And as far as transferring over to another company and getting into design and consulting, play UP the experience you have. More than once, I've heard a superintendent rightly state, "designers don't know how to build." Knowing how to build helps knowing how to design, and vice versa. When I first started designing stormwater practices, I'd be designing tight tolerances. Try to build something with 1" elevation variances using a 15-ton track hoe and 4-6" aggregate. {facepalm}
Oh, quick anecdote. I was in a coordination meeting with several engineers and architects, and my direct supervisor at the time (young, bull-headed, not the one who signed off on my experience), as we were looking through the BIM model for a tight space, identifying issues and potential conflicts. One particular type of structural support was required to have at least a 45-degree angle from vertical in order to provide appropriate lateral stability. I looked at one of the members, said "the horizontal distance is greater than the vertical distance on that one, so we're good." My supervisor turned toward me and snapped "
let the engineers do their jobs!" I didn't even have to use the super-heavy, super-engineery Pythagorean Theorem </s>, and still got snapped at for doing "the engineer's job." That was right around the time I decided I was absolutely going to leave.
Good luck!
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Ari Daniels, P.E., M.ASCE
Water Resources Engineer
Center for Watershed Protection, Inc.
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