Engineering licensing and professional practice

We review the requirements for licensing of engineers in several countries and jurisdictions, observing a wide range of practices, approaches and philosophies. We touch upon the relationship between licensing and accreditation of academic programs and the concept of the First Professional Degree in Engineering. We also examine several agreements for mutual recognition of licenses and accreditation decisions. Among our observations: (1) most licensing bodies rely on accredited degrees, not technical exams, to verify that candidates for licensure possess the necessary educational pre-requisites; in this respect, the system used in the United States is an outlier; (2) increasingly, licensing bodies require that candidates prepare detailed portfolios on their professional experience and undergo personal interviews before they are licensed; (3) in most jurisdictions there are continuing education obligations as a condition for license renewal; (4) mutual recognition agreements for engineering licenses are uncommon; the expectation that NAFTA would ensconce such recognition agreements did not materialize; (5) in most countries whose accrediting bodies are represented in the Washington Accord, graduates of programs accredited by Accord signatories enjoy no privileges in the licensing process (compared to candidates from countries that are not represented in the Accord.)