Austin,
The response to your question is clearly state (jurisdiction) specific.
424. Experience Requirements – Professional Engineers.
.......
(c) Qualifying experience is that experience satisfactory to the Board which has been gained while performing engineering tasks under the responsible charge of a person legally qualified to practice in an applicant's branch of engineering.
source: https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/boardrules_unannotated.pdfNote that the text does NOT state under responsible charge of a PE as the reg. continues on noting "employee of the Federal Government". ... or "except for civil engineers" but the best basically means under a PE.
You are well advised to get in contact with someone who has been through this which I imagine has occurred many times before. Other responses to you indicate this is the case. In CA there are both practice act and also title act for the PE. Presumably you have interest in a PE civil engineer or Professional Civil Engineer. This flowchart is intended to help persons like you:
https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/applicants/flowchart_for_pe.pdfIt is my experience that a licensure board will not respond or will not respond in detail much due to not wanting to make any statement other than what the state law or board rules & regulations say. Indiana where I have my primary PE is like this. Indiana does not have a Professional Civil Engineer or PE Civil Engineer, just one PE for all of engineering, much different from California. A few boards do post interpretations and determinations from the past such as Ohio, where I also have a PE. In Indiana's case, it is not any board members or staff not wanting to be clear as much as they can not make statements or determinations outside of the board rules/regulations. I have been to several PE Board meetings in Indiana where questions have been asked in open, public meetings, no response was offered by board members or when board members attempted to respond a representative of the Attorney General's Office advised to not respond. Nevertheless, I have also talked in person, on the phone, through e-mail, and through the mail (snail mail I am that old) with people on both the IN PE Board and also the IN PS Board who could not respond to me in their capacity as a board member but were very happy & willing to speak with me and provide advice not as a board member, i.e. not in an official manner. You could search to find the PE Board members in CA through linked in or their regular employment and try to contact them there or even better if you could find someone who has retired from/rotated off the PE Board in CA who may be much more willing to speak. Again, ASCE may be a great way to find & connect with such folks as may be the case with other engineering or construction professional groups.
Side note and soap box: Engineering design under a PE makes sense but constructing such structures or facilities not under responsible charge of a PE has never made sense to me ... an issue the engineering profession bowed out of long before I was born and it seems when PE licensure began, about 100 years ago this year, defining what was professional engineering just did not include direction/supervision/responsible charge of construction. It is quite odd that we (engineers/PEs) celebrate many Master Engineers such as Roebling, Ellis, Eiffel, who not only conceived engineering (works of art!), did design and directed design, but are most noted for the construction of their art
Cheers,
dpd
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David Devine P.E.,L.S.,M.ASCE
Fort Wayne IN
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-03-2020 06:05 PM
From: Austin Trice
Subject: Obtaining a P.E. without working directly under one
I am in the process of obtaining my E.I.T. as well as graduating with a degree in Civil Engineering this summer. I currently have offers from two companies (one General Contractor and another engineering firm) and I am trying to make a decision on what company to work for based on my ability to obtain my P.E. after completing the necessary work experience.
I have questions regarding the capability of obtaining a P.E. without working directly under a licensed engineer, is this feasible? One company that is trying to recruit me is a general contractor who I have interned for and built relationships with the people there, I personally love the company, but I will feel unaccomplished if I can not get my P.E. They have said that it is possible to use construction experience for the 2 required years, make connections with an engineer on the projects I will be working on, and to use them as references to provide to the board. Has anyone seen this before? Or even better, been successful at receiving an approval from the board using this method? I have only heard of this from them and was under the impression you must obtain the work experience by working directly under a licensed engineer.
Can anyone provide me guidance on this? I have done a lot of research and even reached out to the California Board but have not heard back, and have gotten a lot of mixed responses from the searches I have done. I am running out of time to make my decision and this will be the deciding factor for me. I apologize for the long winded post but I figured more information was better than less. I would appreciate any help you can provide.
Thanks in advance.
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Austin
CA
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