This is an edited version of my original post on June 28. The final submission is now available from the links in this post. A big thank you to all the people who provided valuable feedback and suggestions for improvements.

This post releases my draft submission to the upcoming government productivity summit in Australia: it will be a written response to the call for public comment by the Productivity Commission.

In this submission I argue that the current system for registration of engineers in Australia is not fit for purpose. Instead of registering individual engineers we should register engineering firms instead because firms influence the performance of their engineers more that individual attributes like technical proficiency or competency.

I suspect this will be a novel idea for many and might be controversial. Any feedback will be welcome, especially counter-arguments.

Engineers are key actors influencing productivity in Australia. Engineers conceive, deliver, operate and sustain products, infrastructure and systems that enable ordinary Australians to be productive.

There are two significant engineering performance issues in Australia imposing significant avoidable costs on government, private firms and the community.

1. Large and small engineering projects are failing to meet investor expectations, causing large losses for Australian companies and governments amounting to at least AUD 50 billion dollars annually. These failures arise partly because they remain hidden by their owners so engineers cannot learn from past mistakes, partly because of collaboration weaknesses, and partly because most engineers have only a weak understanding on how their work contributes economic and social value. Apart from the financial impacts, these failures are also delaying our energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
2. Performances on routine engineering work such as maintenance show similarly large opportunities for improvement. UK and Scandinavian research has observed that even in large and well-organized companies, operating and maintenance mistakes contribute opportunity costs up to 50% of reported turnover. The core issues lie with the interactions between people, mediated by computer information systems.

Both issues have significant productivity impacts. The immense costs are potentially avoidable. Even a 10% reduction in losses would be a significant productivity boost.

Neither engineers nor engineering have been mentioned in Australian Productivity Commission reports since the mid-1990s. It seems that the significance of engineering as an influence on Australian productivity has been overlooked in the past few decades. Perhaps the magnitude of the issues I have raised will help to change that.

In the detailed submission, I explain why significantly improved workplace education would help engineers learn how to avoid these costs. Currently, there is no effective feedback of project and engineering practice failures and shortcomings, so it is not surprising that there is no performance improvement.

Policies that incentivise firms to invest more in workplace education for engineers could lift performance standards and might help avoid many of these costly failures.

In this submission, I argue that the most effective policy change would be to introduce a national engineering accreditation and registration agency (NEARA) for engineering firms. Firms would be reviewed and awarded ratings indicating their financial strength, discipline expertise, engineering capability development and training, strength of their systems, processes and procedures, and quality management. Initially it would likely be voluntary for all except firms involved in work posing large safety hazards such as apartment buildings over a certain height, major energy and chemical plants, nuclear installations, tunnelling, large underground or open cut mines, facilities with bio-hazards, etc. As the agency demonstrates its benefits, registration requirements might be widened. Alternatively, if the benefits are substantial, there might be no need to widen registration requirements because firms would seek accreditation as part of their business development.

Engineering professional societies would continue with certifications such as Chartered Engineer and EngExec because these qualifications would contribute towards accreditation ratings for engineering firms. However, the current state-based registration of individual engineers could be phased out over time.

A further policy suggestion is to require government agencies commissioning major engineering work costing more than $500 million to engage appropriately qualified consultants to review project plans before final investment decisions are authorised, and also to perform detailed evaluation studies on the projects and their outcomes 12 months or more after completion. The results of these evaluations should be made available to the federal agency responsible for registering and accrediting engineering firms so the knowledge gained can inform workplace education for engineers.

In this submission I explain why this national approach could be effective, and why the current state-based registration schemes are not fit for their intended purposes.

Illustration Credit: Adobe Photoshop generative AI produced this stereotypical image of engineers at work, supposedly in Art Deco 1930s style. Like all AI these days, AI propagates popular misconceptions about engineers. Engineers don’t wear hard hats in the office! And these safety helmets were not around in 1930! If it attracted you to read the post, then it did its job.