"Professional engineer"

Legal protection should be given to the title “professional engineer” and the designation “PE"

The engineering institutions should, through their members who are MPs, introduce into the Commons a private member's bill to give legal protection to the title “professional engineer” and the designation “PE”.

The title and designation should only be granted to the following:

• Those who are designated as chartered engineer (CEng), having been accepted into corporate membership by their institution.
  
• Those who in future will obtain CEng by following the academic route prescribed by the institutions and the Engineering Council.
• Those who present an acceptable report describing their experience, career and responsibility, and pass a satisfactory in-depth interview by not less than three persons of similar or greater experience, all designated PE and at least one of which obtained the designation by a non-academic route.

On the passing of the bill, this new designation would increase the status of members of the institutions, by distinguishing them from all the other “engineers”. It would permit PEs from overseas to be accorded in the UK the status the designation gives them in their home country.

And it would ease my deep misgivings at the forced demise of progression to CEng status up through the ranks.

Tony Marshallsay, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

• Do you think 'Engineer' should be a protected title? Sign the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills e-petition to make it so: epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/6271
  

Next letter: Falling standards