ron2
Posted : 1/17/2008 8:20:26 PM
FourIsCompany
If you're really good at something and you're satisfied in your life and making a valuable contribution to society and fulfilled and content, I'm not sure you should keep pushing for better and better professional goals. That's a personal choice.
I agree to that. And in the case of say, a dog trainer or even a behaviorist, I'm still going to seek the one with credentials or a degree. Not because it makes them the greatest but because it is another assurance to me.
That being said, I also agree with the comment about engineers. In a number of cases, I have seem some crappy stuff that passes for the electrical engineering of a new building. Case in point is the project I am working on, now. I figured out why when I was looking through the project manual, which contains the specifications and materials we must use. On the first page are the stamps of the engineers and designers involved in this project. 4 professional engineers and a landscape designer. Of the four PEs, one is the architect, another is a mechanical engineer and one is a structural engineer, and the other is a civil engineer. Not one of them is a EE. Which explains why on a print, a 3 phase device is shown as being on a single phase circuit, which required my supervisor to basically re-engineer the whole project from his office trailer with the plywood print table. These days, engineers do not have to fulfill a field work requirement to get their certificate, like they used to do. I think this was dropped because not enough people could physical handle one day of a job like ours. Carry a 100 ft bundle of one inch pipe over rocky terain and numerous obstacles while it is 20 degrees outside and you need to go to the bathroom and duct hangers are pounding away with an awful, crashing din. Or go cry to momma. Well, the lack of hands on experience sometimes shows. Many is a time things won't fit within the structure of a building. The plumber boss has such a problem, now. There's an elevated drain line he has to run. Gravity drain requires that the pipe slope downward ("fall";) 1/4 inch per foot. By the time he gets it to the point it needs to be, it will be below ceiling level by a few feet. Because none of the designers can apparantly conference or realize what they have just drawn, never having had to actually build anything. On top of that, they've had some screwy specs that showed they didn't actually think about it, they just pulled it from something else because none of them is an electrical engineer, let alone understanding it. My supervisor asked me to go through project manual and find the exceptions we need to do our switchgear the way we know is right. And I found it within 30 minutes. When he relayed to them in a meeting, it was news to them, and this is their spec book. So, yeah, being a PE or even an EE doesn't mean you are the most effective, though I would like to think after a couple of projects where you are constantly getting RFIs (request for information) it might sink in what you need to know the next time, But don't bet on it. Many is the time an architect or engineer got snooty. How could you possibly know anything? You don't have a degree and he does. So, what you do, is build it the way they designed and when it turns out to be a great big mistake, they get to pay for fixing it. The plumbing boss did that one time, with a similar drain problem. And he had kept his documentation from the architect saying this is the way it is to be done.