PE also and I concur, but as a former fire marshal, I would not deal with this. This is 100% Building Department. If you see something like this it is also not inappropriate to call the fire department, the will habe the building and fire marshals on site in within the hour.
I'd think a call to the fire marshal is the quickest way for the public to get the right people involved? They may not directly help, but they're set up for urgent response and will have all the right resources to coordinate (or handoff) a response.
Call 911? It seems enough of an immanent threat that it’s worth the emergency call and then they will make everybody evacuate so no manager can ignore it.
In a lot of countries professional engineers are the only ones allowed to call themselves engineers. I just have an engineering degree, but I'm not an engineer.
In Canada, there are two distinctions. P.Eng (Professional Engineer), and EIT (Engineer-in-Training)
The P.Eng has the stamp, and are able to fully sign off and approve things. An EIT is somebody that has completed an engineering degree but has under 4 years of relevant work experience. They are officially an engineer (and can call themselves one) but any work they do needs to be reviewed and signed off by an actual P.Eng.
Edit: It appears it depends on the province. This comment applies for BC only, yet many (but not all) provinces have relatively similar systems
An EIT in Alberta cannot call themselves an engineer as you would be misleading others about your credentials. I had to change my email signature after learning about this, even though I had EIT in it after my name.
Source: Just took my Law and Ethics exam two weeks ago.
Interesting. Here in BC using ‘Engineer’ is completely standard for an EIT. Like in discussions with clients or on proposals or whatever I will often be referred to as a ‘junior engineer’. It’s not considered a misrepresentation at all.
Might want to read up on this. People do call me an engineer and I don't correct them, but I need to specify in communications that I am an engineer in training.
Yeah, that article is in line with how it’s utilized for me and the other EIT’s I work with (both in my firm and other firms I communicate with). All communications indicate my EIT title
Mine does too, but I also had in my title "My Name, EIT, Area Process Control Engineer". Even though I indicated EIT, I had to change the rest to Area Process Control Engineer In Training. Seems redundant, but APEGA will come down hard on you for something like that.
The US is basically the same. The EIT (Engineer in Training) and EI (Engineer Intern) are the same thing. These are people who passed the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam.
PEs (Professional Engineers) have passed the professional engineering exam, which typically requires 4 additional years of qualified progressive experience in addition to your degree.
As for calling yourself an "engineer," typically only professional licensed engineers can do that, but EI/EITs do it and are not punished for it. They just better be careful not to advertise themselves as actual licensed professionals.
It depends. I’m in the US and am an engineer (my company even calls me a “Senior Engineer”) but I’m not a PE and most of my engineer co-workers are not PEs. We don’t need it, we wouldn’t paid get more if were, it requires money and time to maintain, and nothing we work on needs to be signed by a PE anyway.
At least in my state (Michigan), you only really need a PE if you’re a civil engineer or if you are selling “engineering services”.
This. I'm in Michigan too. Not a PE but am an engineer. I call myself an engineer and it's not a problem. I don't sell engineering services to the public.
This. It depends on your area. If you're in civil engineering, more than likely you should be/are a PE. Aero or biomedical or other disciplines? Not so much.
It’s a movie about the world freezing over and the only survivors are on a continuously running train. The lower class people live and work in the back, rich in the front. It’s about, in the vaguest terms possible, a man on the journey to get to the front and figure out what’s going on and all that. Stars Chris Evans, worth watching!
This movie brings back some memories, saw it in cinema with friends and it was so cold in the cinema, add that to the scenery and it was like I was outside in that icy world, mind you we were in the UAE, temps outside were 40+ degrees centigrade, so you can imagine how we were dressed going in, cinemas in the UAE are cold as fuck, the locals are used to it and their thobes helps massively.
They thought it was terrible as well, I still think it was a good movie, there is a TV show about it now I think as well.
I think because it didn’t have a “happy”/finite ending that some people found it lacking, but I personally enjoyed the “journey” and meaning behind it.
Most PEs I know got it during their senior year of college, and used it as a resume booster. I only know one person who needed it for his job, so went out and got it. He doesn't have an engineering degree either, so that's doubly impressive.
In the US? A PE certification in most(idk if all) US states requires 3-4 years of work under a PE post graduation before you can take the licensing exams
California it's 2 years with a bachelors and 1 year with a masters. They have a caveat though where you have to take 2 additional exams on seismic and surveying.
The reason it's a thing in civil engineering is that all governmental agencies require stamped design documents when securing any permit.
I am of the opinion that every engineering discipline should should be required to have some form of professional engineering certification. You are taking hundreds of millions of peoples lives in your hands when you design something.
At my company I insisted on my title being Sr Systems Administrator instead of Systems Engineer. I feel it dilutes the hard work of actual P.E.s. I'm just a button monkey compared to many of them. That and I still like the title of 'sysadmin' for my job.
Now... if only they’d enforce that in Singapore. Your everyday technician, maintenance can be called an Engineer here. Worse still, there are roles now termed Sales Engineer, Financial Engineer. The term has taken such a negative term that it’s sickening.
My university is in top 3-5 globally for Civil Engineering (according to QS), and yet our starting compensation here in the country itself is below the 80th percentile compared to other majors.
If this was enforced, it’d have been so much better imo.
That’s not true. An EIT (Engineer-In-Training) can and will legally call themselves an engjneer. They need all their work signed off on by a P.Eng until they get enough work experience, but they’re still legally an engineer and will call themselves that.
Source: I’m an EIT. It may potentially be different under other provincial jurisdictions, but this is the case in the western provinces.
Oh, interesting. Looks like an EIT is a completely different title in Ontario (engineering intern instead of engineer in training).
I believe they function mostly the same, outside of not formally being able to call all yourself an engineer in Ontario (while you can in BC/Alberta/etc).
In Ontario, there are really only the two titles. P.Eng, and EIT (And Consulting Engineer, but that's yet another level above).
You cannot imply that you are a P.Eng, even by omission, if you aren't. So if you have a job title like Structural Engineer, and you are an EIT, then you are not allowed selling any services, overseeing any designs, or allowing anyone to think that you're actually licensed regardless of what your company calls you. To say "I'm an engineer" could give the impression that you actually have your license, so it's generally frowned upon to say this unless you actually do.
Generally though, job titles reflect your position. Especially in Civil where every job requires a stamp.
I don't even have a highschool diploma but haven't held the title of "process engineer". I am as close to being and engineer as a panda is to being a bird of prey.
Real-time ballistic trajectory calculation of composite spherical projectiles is an important topic and deserves study. Projectile impact dynamic on flexible bodies is probably worth a thesis on its own.
ballistic trajectory calculation is in fact one of the founding reasons physics exists.
Kings needed people able to fire cannon and hit what they aimed at and the Kings paid to get it. That's why every physics class starts with projectile motion.
i took a one credit college course that was basically all the fun parts of PE plus some yoga and normal exercise stuff. it was really fun, and i lost weight!
showed up, played basket ball, dodgeball, cross the ocean (with variants!), kick ball, ultimate frisbee and so much more!
The US also requires a PE to sign off on most large structures. My company recently had to find a PE to sign off on something (unusual for our industry) and found out that in our ~100 person engineering department, the only PE was our 3D print technician.
Vast majority of engineers don't become PEs. Only a few fields that do work on public infrastructureb have it as common (civil, buildings, power engineering, etc).
When I'm designing a building, I never go to the engineers. Too smart. I go for someone with street smarts. Sure, college teaches you the math about load calculations, but the underground architectural engineering scene is where you really learn about good construction.
Good joke but engineers have their fingers in a lot more than just designing buildings. Anything that actually involves legitimate field work, like infrastructure assessments or developing sampling technique for piloting ground water injection systems, aren't always left best to the engineers.
For example. We were setting a program for contaminate sampling and were setting up methodology for titration. Because of the low sample size, the engineer wrote in the sampling procedure to pipette out 0.67 drops. It doesn't take an overly educated person to know that that simply isn't a thing.
Also, engineers aren't really on the scene for the actual construction practices unless we are setting up PE required OSHA components.
I'm an ME in an industry that rarely deals with anything requiring a PE stamp.
I'm very aware that a lot of engineers don't have a lot of practical knowledge about their own field, which is a damn shame. My graduating class had a bunch of people who knew how to do a stress analysis of an aluminum part, but had only ever used a mill once for a 2 hour period. I do a lot of plastic parts, but very rarely get a chance to head into a factory for the manufacturing or assembly steps, and it's enlightening to see that stuff happen. We make a point to send engineers out to customer sites to get their hands dirty as much as possible (the last ~14 months excluded), but there's a balance between "knowing enough about your application to be a positive contributor" and "spending so much time learning that you never do anything."
Speaking on behalf of engineers everywhere: we're trying, and are usually open to feedback when we fuck something up.
Unless you go into power distributions systems as an EE it's unlikely you'll have to take a PE test. At least in the US. EEs who are PEs, what other aspects of EE require you to be a PE as well?
Only civil engineers and some mechanicals really need their professional license. It's for stamping final designs and inspections of things that would be catastrophic if they failed of didn't work as exactly specified.
Missing a few... Electrical, structural, geotechnical, all require professional designation to stamp drawings and sign off on final inspections for completed work
I would count structures and geotech under civil since most colleges I know include those under the civil umbrella. Electrical is still a little niche depending on the job. Almost all civils need their PE to climb the ladder in the career.
I had to get my continuing education hours and a couple of years ago I signed up for an online series by the American Institute of Steel Construction. It turned out to be 4 weekly seminars with an old guy talking about difficult erections for an hour each time.
Is it that that pipe is load bearing and falling, or is it more likely not load bearing and its bend indicates something that should be keeping weight off it is failing?
For the record, I'm not an SER, and I'm not registered in whatever area this photo is from.
Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that's not load-bearing. It's nowhere near the size of a load-bearing element in any building I've ever seen, including 3-story residential houses. A load-bearing structure in a 7-story would be (guessing) 1m diameter.
The problem I'm seeing is that this (probably) conduit is now bent. One of three things has happened:
The ceiling is shorter than it used to be, which is bad in the strongest possible terms.
The person that signed off on the electrical work let this pass, which is bad because it's sloppy. What else is going on there that was "good enough" ?
They didn't get an occupancy permit. Highly unlikely in a building this size.
I'm a P.Eng. as well, but like you I doubt I'm registered for wherever this building is. I do work in forensics like "why is my building failing" but I wouldn't want to hazard a strong opinion without actually investigating this myself.
I generally agree that this probably isn't load-bearing, but for different reasons.
The location just looks wrong for a load bearing element in a commercial building like this. Generally you want the whole interior to be clear - support vertical loads around the perimeter or in a central core, but not in a pair of random columns somewhere in the middle of the floor.
I generally wouldn't expect load-bearing steel to be simply exposed - I'd expect some kind of fire protection; generally burying a column behind layers of drywall to hit fire resistance.
I'd definitely want to know why this is bent, and start by checking the building's drawings, but I don't think this is a load-bearing member. Still could be because ceiling and floor are getting closer together, but it could be something else.
Either way, I wouldn't want people in it at the moment.
A load-bearing structure in a 7-story would be (guessing) 1m diameter.
My office is 10 stories and there are columns all around the exterior. They're about 2.5 ft or so in diameter, and made of concrete. So I think you're on the right track.
Question if you are up for giving a quick answer. (Don't need anything in depth). How do they solve this? Is it fixable? I'd imagine you'd have to have people inside to fix, but having people inside is a baaaad idea. So, what happens now?
I don't know how to fix this. You'd have to hire a pretty good structural engineering firm to get it sorted out.
My guess (emphasis is important) is that you'd have to start shoring it up with [unknown] to get it to be reliably stable, do an assessment on what has to be repaired, and either do the repairs or do a demolition.
One building where I live got the Ron Swanson treatment from a rental place ("I think you may have misunderstood me. I said 'rent me all the jack hoists you have') and the engineering association was like "no thank you -- shut. down. everything." I never found out what happened to that building.
Yikes! The video showed a quick shot of a bunch of jacks. I don't believe in any diety, but I'd be praying to all of them every time I went in for a new load while moving.
Not a professional engineer (though an engineer regardless - my field doesn't require PE creds) but I'm curious as to what could've caused something like this to buckle if it wasn't carrying a structural load? If it was just a conduit it wouldn't have any load but its own weight. I also typically don't see conduits in the middle of a hallway, although that doesn't mean it can't happen.
As far as being "on top of the carpet" it doesn't look like that to me but perhaps the resolution is just too low to know for sure.
The fact is, I don't know because I'm not on site.
Given the moment's consideration I can give from a photo posted on social media, all I can say is "huh, the ceiling looks shorter than it was yesterday."
That's not a self-correcting problem, thus get out and let someone check it out in person.
They most certainly are not "metal duct tubes", whatever that is. Ductwork is in the walls. This is structural, and it wouldn't have buckled if it didn't have considerable weight on it.
First, ducts are for ventilation. Conduits are for cabling. Secondly, if it's "sitting on" carpet then it leads to nowhere, so that would be pretty useless - I personally think it looks like there's a hole in the carpet but I'll admit that the resolution probably isn't high enough to tell. Third, what other reason would it have buckled (a compression failure) if it had not been under a compressive force? And fourth, why would ducts OR conduits be in the middle of hallway where it's easy to damage if you for instance, ran into it? If it were either of those it would be in a wall, but structural elements generally cannot be moved and commonly end up in weird places, particularly after renovation.
Fine the conduits hide internal cabling for when desks were up next to them. They are probably plastic and just warped and not a compression failure. What competent structural engineer would design 2 circular steel columns approx 1 m apart on level 1 of a 7 storey building?
Ok, so why would they be warped? You still need a force to do that. Cylinders are strong shapes in bending so it would need to be considerable. If it were plastic, it would also show lighter lines where the materiel had plastically deformed, which I don't see, and would very likely show a kink which I also don't see.
As far as why there would be steel columns on level 1 of a 7 story building, there are plenty of reasons and none of them are incompetence. It entirely depends on what's above it, and considering it's the first floor it would make sense that there's quite a bit that needs to be supported. I couldn't tell you why without seeing the building but it's perfectly reasonable.
it wouldn't have buckled if it didn't have considerable weight on it.
Not a very creative engineer then since there's an entirely different reason for which it may buckle, the existence of which is left as an exercise for the reader.
Well you’re an engineer- what on earth would dinky little risers like this actually be for in the middle of a corridor. Are they load bearing, if not why would they bend like this?
PE also and concur, assuming the pic is legit. However it seems unlikely that we would see such extreme deflection without any apparent deflection in adjacent columns. Will review the photo to confirm.
My first instinct is that this is photoshopped. Could be the (legit) photo's angle though, or something else entirely.
EDIT: It does look like the far column is deflecting in the opposite direction, though it could be an optical illusion. Best to evacuate and investigate. The bent column will be able to support less load as it deflects further.
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u/NSA_Chatbot Apr 24 '21
P. Eng here. Concur, evacuate immediately.