A Study on the Signing for the Design and Construction Supervision of Public Works

• Main Authors: Hsiao-San Pang, 龐孝珊
• Other Authors: 李建中
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/44754868901647881379

碩士 === 國立中央大學 === 營建管理研究所 === 95 === “Professional Engineer Signing Regulation for Public Works” and “The Improvement Act for Public Construction Supervision” in Taiwan were promulgated respectively in July, 2002 and January, 2003. The Signing of Professional Engineers is categorized into signing of Governmental Agency Engineers and signing of the Entrusted Professional Engineers. For the items need to be signed by professional engineers include both Design and Construction Supervision while the qualification of signer, scope of signing, content of work, and punishment are regulated. According to the regulations, the design and construction supervision must be signed by a licensed professional engineer regardless if the design or supervision are performed in-house by governmental engineers or entrusted to outside consulting firms. The governmental agency engineers, who personally are licensed engineer, are normally reluctant to sign as a professional engineer because of lack of incentive. In response to the requirement that all the design and supervision must be signed by professional engineers, the governmental agency can only entrust an outside professional engineer to sign the documents which were actually completed in-house, but are neither really completed nor monitored in the process by the signed engineer himself. Similar situation may also happen in a consulting engineering firm. The firm may be entrusted to completed a design or supervision contract for public works, but the working team may not have the professional engineers in every necessary discipline thus must use a professional engineer outside the team or outside the firm to do the signing. The above mentioned situations are all deviated from the original motive “to have professional engineers sign the design and/or supervision that are completed or monitored by the professional engineer.” It is observed that for some of the governmental agencies, which have been traditionally doing design and construction supervision in-house, the expertise and experience of the engineering personnel are strong enough to meet the need of public works. Having an external licensing system interfering into internal responsibility structure is confusing and also defeats the original purpose the Professional Engineer licensing mechanism. It is believed that allowing the engineer working within governmental agencies be responsible for the signing of engineering documents is a more appropriate. On the other hand, Professional Engineers of each discipline is eligible only to sign within the expertise of the single discipline. Thus, for any public work construction, when many disciplines are involved, the need to incorporate some professional engineers from outside becomes necessary. The outsider again may sign under limited knowledge about the work. This again defeats the purpose of Professional Engineer licensing mechanism. Therefore, when a consulting firm is entrusted to carry out the design and/or supervision, the team leader may need to have a discipline license covering a broader area to be responsible for the whole project. In this study, through literature review, questionnaire survey, expert interview, and comparative studies, etc., some in-depth analysis has been made and suggestions on the revision of the regulations formulated.