Comments on: Why do we need professional mining engineers?

By: Moravec

Moravec — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:48:52 +0000

Mining engineers are in an industry that is under intense environmental and safety scrutiny.

As far as ground control goes, a mining engineer might be the best stamp for underground support, pit highwalls, and haul road profiles (all safety features). A Geotechnical engineer’s stamp would be great for the tailings impoundments and structural foundation components of a mine.

The purpose of the stamp may be as a liability sink for mining consultants who work for mines doing number crunching for ground control, etc. However, since mining engineers do not work for the public often, I’m not sure if that use would be within the objectives of the P.E. institution.

By the way, there is no Mining P.E. in California. Only a metallurgy one. I will be going after the geotechnical P.E. in a year, if I can pull the proper reccomendations.

By: Darren Maine

Darren Maine — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:11:11 +0000

Hi Jack! Guilds and all other “good ol’ boy” networks aside I guess I would make the registrars and legislators howl in offense if they were ever to really digest the amount of engineering work that I have been responsible for as *I blush in shame* but a lowly Certified Technician. And under whose authority did I do so? Well, none other than that of a P.Eng. here in good ol’ Canada. If you cut all the bull the only things I didn’t do on many transportation and site development projects involving millions of dollars and dangers to the public was stamp drawings or reports. This was left usually to a harried department or project manager to do usually while the ink was drying on the mylars so that they could be whooshed off to the printers and issued for construction the next day. I won’t say I didn’t loose alot of sleep because I knew what the review would entail before stamping. IF I were lucky, they’d actually look at the drawings long enough to see if their name was spelled right before signing their lives away. Then dutifully upon assignment, I surveyed, I talked and dealt with clients and public and government to keep things on track, did my quantities, signed off inspections, and certificates, and then, Lord have mercy, when it was all said and done, did my asbuilts and the throning masses happily and ignorant to the fact that this road, runway, railroad, bridge, parking lot, and many other etceteras was not only designed and built by and large without a P.Eng. at the helm that it was probably as good as it was going to get because despite having the P. absent following my name, I understood the importance of what that P. really meant and lived up to it’s requirements because I knew that the one with it after their names didn’t. So, where am I going with this? Not the old baloney of equality and professional recognition of technologists to be engineers. Hey, if I had wanted to be an engineer I would have done so a very long time ago. What I believe is really behind the P.Eng, or P.E. as the case may be is little more than the archaic guilds of the middle ages, and they might as well be CUPE or CUPW workers who jealously protect their domains with walkouts and threats and labour actions when their autonomy is threatened with extinction and that the masses circle to protect what is theirs….the P after their name. Meanwhile, I will keep building, and they will live their fantasies, and I guess we ultimately all will get what we want in the end….oh, by the way, I don’t work for people with the P’s ater their names much anymore….wonder why?

By: ex-pat in Canada

ex-pat in Canada — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:00:23 +0000

I am a mining engineer, but not in Canada it seems.

I agree wholeheartedly with the comments alluding to medieval guilds. It is certainly striking how many in the mining industry, especially contracting, do not note the irony with which they refuse to support the workers’ unions, but as you note, effectively belong to one themselves. You need an engineer? Just get yourself down to the union hall, I mean chapter…

It is a form of protectionism, one that has been conceived to protect standards and lives, definitely, but it has devolved into a clique. For many it is just another rite of passage on their way to higher salaries and prestige and I would guess many stamps are hardly used, which really defeats the purpose. Your article notes that qualifications do not necessarily make one qualified and comment 2 addresses how non-registered work may be reviewed and then stamped.

I firmly believe that to make sense it should be an all or nothing affair and CIM / SME should demand registration as PE or PEng as a requirement, but PEO for example, should allow non-project based temporary registration and registration for non-naturalised residents if they truly wish to raise and maintain standards.