In December 2022, the SFPE Board of Directors authorized issuance of Position Statement 2022-02: Engineering Technology Degree for Professional Engineering Licensure1. This statement makes clear that SFPE supports engineering technology degree holders in their pursuit of professional engineering licensure. Additionally, SFPE supports the educational background provided by an accredited fire protection engineering (FPE) or fire protection engineering technology (FPET) program as a foundation for the fire protection knowledge base as outlined in the Recommended Minimum Technical Core Competencies for the Practice of Fire Protection Engineering.2
What Goes into a PE?
The first step in understanding the support for both engineering and engineering technology education is to understand what the goal of the professional engineer (PE) license is. In general, the goal is to have competent professionals practicing engineering to benefit the health, safety, and welfare of the public. Most would agree that there are three (3) items that each professional needs to become licensed as a professional engineer. They are education, experience, and exams (or assessments).
The subject of this position statement is simply to support accredited formal education in an engineering or engineering technology program for a candidate in pursuit of their PE license. First, a disclaimer. The PE license is a U.S. credential. Other countries use different credentials (e.g., Chartered Engineer) and/or requirements to determine when a professional can practice engineering. This said, there is uniformity across these various jurisdictions with respect to the fundamental concepts that form the foundation of engineering practice in general and fire protection engineering or fire engineering, specifically.
Once a person achieves their PE license, the learning certainly does not stop. The technology of this industry, and many others, is continually evolving to coordinate with construction methods, materials, and anticipated hazards. How competent is any PE? This is tied to their foundation, experiences, and ability to know when they are not the correct engineer for a situation. Education continues over a person’s lifetime in a variety of forms. Pursuit of that knowledge can greatly influence someone’s continued competency.
Engineering v. Engineering Technology in Pursuit of PE Licensure
A basic difference between engineering and engineering technology programs is in the number and difficulty of higher-level mathematics and theoretical engineering courses required for a baccalaureate degree. Engineering technology programs are colloquially considered hands-on programs, as compared to the more theoretical engineering curricula. The engineering technology degree is preparing people for careers as technologists, to work as part of the fire protection team but commonly under the supervision of an engineer. In some organizations, the charted career paths diverge immediately, with roles of project engineer and senior project engineer limited exclusively to graduates of an engineering program. Yet other paths are very similar where field experience can teach the knowledge needed to practice as a professional engineer. But is this an appropriate dichotomy? Can a person not increase their knowledge during their career to be able to qualify to take the assessment for PE licensure?
Graduates of each of these programs will fare differently throughout their respective careers and whether one or the other is better prepared to achieve licensure as a professional engineer is a subjective matter with no clear answer. In some respects, which type of degree is of more value depends on the nature of the career path chosen and the interests of the individual. One’s formal education provides a foundation for competence but experience, mentoring, and intellectual curiosity all contribute to growth in engineering judgment that is the hallmark of the professional engineer.
According to the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) website, a professional engineer credential means different things, depending on one’s perspective. Specifically,
“To a client, it means you've got the credentials to earn their trust. To an employer, it signals your ability to take on a higher level of responsibility. Among your colleagues, it demands respect. To yourself, it's a symbol of pride and measure of your own hard-won achievement”.3
By these standards, one’s undergraduate degree perhaps should not be considered as the sole indicator or barrier of potential success as a practicing engineer. The fact remains that the initial college or university degree is only the beginning of one’s career journey in engineering. A BS degree in any field of study demonstrates that an individual is capable of learning and continued growth; this is especially true of engineers. The NSPE recognizes this fact and identifies the typical path to licensure:
“To become licensed, engineers must complete a four-year college degree, work under a Professional Engineer for at least four years, pass two intensive competency exams and earn a license from their state's licensure board. Then, to retain their licenses, PEs must continually maintain and improve their skills throughout their careers”.4
Some jurisdictions enforce a few more years of experience working under a professional engineer for those who hold an engineering technology degree in order to become eligible to take the PE exam. This policy is one way to capture that a bit more experience in their career path is needed. However, it also shows that the foundation is there and acknowledges that advanced learning in one’s area of practice is expected to continue over the course of an engineer’s career. SFPE endorses this approach, and has developed a variety of educational programs to support life-long learning.
As of 2018, twenty states in the U.S. accepted ABET Engineering Technology Accredited degrees for licensure eligibility and an additional twenty, plus the District of Columbia accepted ABET/ETAC- accredited degrees after additional education and experience.5 This is a clear indication that there is significant consensus beyond just the fire protection arena that ET degree holders are qualified to pursue licensure as professional engineers.
The SFPE Committee on Professional Qualifications (CPQ) is “charged with developing, disseminating, and maintaining an occupational competency standard for the fire protection engineering profession…”6 Members of this committee are involved with projects, education, and credentialing at a variety of levels to be sure that education and practice work together for the betterment of the industry and profession. This firsthand expertise allows SFPE to understand the measurements of professional competence and support for engineering and engineering technology foundations.
Challenges for the Future of FPE Licensure
Fire protection engineering largely began as an empirically based engineering discipline. Many early fire protection engineers came from other disciplines. Lack of formal coursework in subject areas considered the purview of fire protection engineers did not prevent these individuals from devoting their professional careers to the mitigation of the consequences of unwanted fire. The advances in our understanding of fire and mitigation methods over the past forty years have essentially clarified how important this niche is to public health, safety, and welfare. We are at a point in time where the fundamental knowledge base of our discipline has surpassed the ability of a single individual to be considered an expert in all subject areas. This simply means that the discipline of FPE has matured into a true scientifically based engineering specialty.
In his 1989 paper, Coming of Age, David Lucht provided an excellent summary of the evolution of the fire protection engineering discipline up to that time and identified many of the challenges for the future of the profession. 7 Among the many he identified, two are particularly relevant in the context of this article:
- “What impact will new published methods have on engineering registration?
- How will the profession effectively educate practicing engineers and entry level personnel in the emerging body of knowledge?”
Since the creation of engineering programs in fire protection, graduates have been in demand. In recent years the demand has been so high, that many undergraduates have jobs secured a year or more in advance of graduation. The career opportunities for FPE and FPET graduates are extremely varied. Early fire protection engineers were found largely in insurance underwriting, industrial settings, and the consulting field. Today, in addition to these, there are solicitations for fire protection engineers to work in architectural and engineering firms, fire and building departments, manufacturing, large corporations, hospitality organizations, healthcare organizations, research, academia, and others. Each of these organizations requires a different set of skills and competencies for the responsible fire protection engineers but the expectation is that the graduates hired for each role will have a common base of knowledge. The SFPE Core Competencies parallel the knowledge base for the PE examination in fire protection administered by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES). This alignment demonstrates the importance of this foundation of knowledge no matter the career path selected by the individual.
Conclusion
Practicing fire protection engineers grapple with the challenges of mitigating the risks of unwanted fire on a daily basis. The fire safety challenges change every day. Recent examples of real-world challenges being tackled by fire protection engineers include hazard classifications, fire safety challenges of Lithium-ion batteries, solar panel arrays, IBCs used for flammable liquid storage, environmental issues of firefighting foams, the evacuation challenges of ultra high-rise buildings, and the impacts of climate change and water availability, along with many others. Solutions to our collective challenges can be developed equally by professional engineers who completed an engineering technology program as those who completed an engineering curriculum.
There are as many paths to gather the knowledge required to qualify for licensure in FPE as there are licensed fire protection engineers. Each experience is unique and there is no single path that predicts future performance in engineering. This said, the most direct path to licensure is to obtain a bachelor’s degree in fire protection engineering or fire protection engineering technology from an accredited institution or equivalent. Provided that the specific requirements of the respective state engineering licensing board are met, including satisfaction of continuing education requirements and appropriate experience, SFPE supports engineering and engineering technology programs to provide the educational foundation for this direct path towards licensure.
- 1 SFPE Position Statement 2022-02: Engineering Technology Degree for Professional Engineering Licensure. https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/SFPE/93e7d31c-6432-4991-b440-97a413556197/UploadedImages/GovernanceDocuments/Position_Statements/SFPE_Pos_Stmt_2022-02.pdf
- Recommended Minimum Technical Core Competencies for the Practice of Fire Protection Engineering, Society of Fire Protection Engineers, December 19, 2018.
- www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe
- www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe
- https://www.nspe.org/resources/issues-and-advocacy/reports-state-pe-laws-and-rules
- https://www.sfpe.org/membership-communities/standingcommittees/cpqcommittee
- Coming of Age, David A. Lucht, PE, Journal of Fire Protection Engineering, Vol 1, No. 2, 1989.