www.www.buonovino.com

[skjain.iitk]

Dear Colleagues:

Excellent discussions are taking place on the need for licensing and what
is the ideal way to go about it. However, we must realise that India is
a very big country, which has a huge engineering manpower. The range
of our technical skills varies widely: both job sector wise, and
地理位置。对许可的其他教授essionals (say
Chartered Accountants) which started long time back, licensing of
engineers is to take place in the 21st Century when huge developments
have already taken place. All this makes the implementation
extremely difficult and challenging. And, licensing is worthless
(possibly counter-productive) if it is not done right.

In this scenario, I prefer we break the implementation into smaller
tasks which can be executed by us with currently available resources.
WE cannot work assuming that an entirely new set of organisations,
systems, people, values which are non-existent today, will somehow
appear from somewhere.

For instance, after the Gujarat earthquake of 2001, we could have
started licensing of structural engineers in Gujarat and by now
we would have had two years of experience on the same. Depending
on how it went, it could then be extended to other states or
nationally. Further, it could slowly have been extended to other
branches of engineering.

Let us face it: a mechanical engineer working on design of an
automobile has enough checks and balances in his professional
work and licensing of such engineers is less urgent than that
of structural engineers. Strucutral Engineers are dealing with
huge projects, unique projects, time bound projects, very expensive
projects: our mistakes are too expensive and at times cannot be
detected, and when detected cannot be corrected (or corrected at
a huge cost).

I am therefore in favour of starting licensing of structural
engineers first. AFter some experience, we may extend it other
specialisations. Similarly, it will be ideal if we can quickly
start it in one state and not wait for AICTE or ECI to develop
the national plans.

Sudhir Jain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudhir K. Jain
Professor and Head
Department of Civil Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur 208 016, India

Phone: 91-512-2597867 (off), 2597582 (Head's office), 2598367/ 2590583(home)
Fax: 91-512-2597866 (preferred), 2597395
email:skjain@iitk.ac.in
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted via Email