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The California Professional Engineering Registration is controlled by BORPELS, The California Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors. This government board regulates civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers. This regulation is done for safety reasons; to ensure, for example, that a person hiring someone to wire their house knows what he or she is doing and won't electrocute him- or herself or cause any other kind of damage. For many years, there have been exceptions, but electrical engineering was not one of them. Finally, some engineering consultants lobbied to have electrical engineering made an exception. The reasoning is that an electrical engineer designs hardware for companies to sell. This is unlike an electrician which deals directly with the public. The companies that hire a consultant are responsible to make certain that the products are safe and reliable. The consultant should have no more responsibility than an employee, and employees were specifically exempted from requiring registration. This argument finally won out, and the following paragraph, SB-828, was added to the act that controlled PE registration, effective January 1, 1998:
However,
it also stipulates that if you do not have a PE, you cannot call yourself
a "consulting engineer." This cannot be on your letterhead,
business card, or advertisements, and cannot accidentally slip out of
your mouth. You are allowed to call yourself an "engineering consultant,"
however. Luckily in all the years of the PE registration, even when
electrical engineer consultants were required to have a PE, it was never
once enforced.
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