What is a professional engineering society
and why should I join?
February 16, 2020
By: Lisandro Vazquez, PE
More than a club:
A professional engineering society is more than just a “club.” These huge organizations form the bedrock of today’s professional, credentialed, and safe engineering industry. Their members are advocates, researchers, educators, designers and volunteers.
If you’re considering joining a professional engineering society—or if you’ve never even heard of one—this article will give you basics on what these organizations do, how they benefit YOU, and how they advance our modern world.
To find a listing of professional engineering societies, check out this page from Engineer Q &A or head over to the Resources page for other helpful links & tools.
Professional Development:
First and foremost, I want to highlight how these organizations will benefit YOU. The scope of these organizations is massive—as you’ll read later—with budgets in the tens of millions and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars; but, if you aren’t familiar with what they do, I want to start by showing you how membership will directly and positively impact your career.
A Benefit to YOU!
Educational Resources:
Professional engineering societies are OUTSTANDING resources for obtaining specific technical information and education related to engineering. Let’s do a quick comparison with college.
If you’re a mechanical engineering student, your fluid dynamics or heat transfer textbooks cover a wide range of topics; however, because the intent of these courses is to teach the foundational knowledge required for these fields the content tends to be quite broad.
Sure, you can take the heat transfer equations from your heat transfer textbook and calculate the heating and cooling loads for a building… but why on Earth would you do it that way??? You’ll end up conducting a very laborious and tedious calculation which will waste tons of your time. And worse… it’ll be wrong. How do you account for seasonal variations of temperature or the changing angle of the Sun and its effect on solar heat gain? Again, you could figure this out on your own; but that is likely not a worthwhile use of your time.
So, what do you do?
ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers) has got you covered. They have spent decades researching, testing, and fine tuning methods for performing heating and cooling load calculations; and these very specific methodologies are published in their own references (i.e. textbooks).
If you want to know how much energy it takes to heat an apple from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 60 degrees Fahrenheit… ASHRAE has you covered. If you want an algebraic way of calculating how much pressure loss results from a certain duct fitting at different airflows and velocities… again… refer to ASHRAE.
Undoubtedly, you could figure out how to perform all these calculations from your college textbooks, but you’d spend loads of time and you’d probably not be taking into consideration all sorts of non-standard factors which the ASHRAE researchers have already accounted for in their equations.
One more quick example and then we’ll move on. Let’s say you’re a new engineer and you’re designing a plumbing system for a building; but, you’ve actually never done any plumbing installations yourself. How do you know what fittings are actually available for contractors to buy? How do you know what pipe sizes are considered “standard” and which pipe sizes would require custom fabrication?
ASPE (American Society of Plumbing Engineers) has the book you need. While you could look up plumbing fittings online or pipe sizes at Home Depot or Lowe’s; ASPE’s design manuals will not only answer your questions but will give you explanations and handy equations to use. Additionally, most of these types of references will provide realistic design examples (SUPER HELPFUL!).
Besides having specific references/textbooks related to your field of engineering, professional engineering societies also host training seminars, webinars, symposiums, conferences, and online courses for the engineering tasks you perform each and every day. If you want to increase your level of knowledge in a specific aspect of design, let’s say “Domestic Water Systems,” you can go to the ASPE website and take an online course on that exact topic. Further, professional engineering societies typically provide higher-level educational courses which can be used as continuing education credits to keep your Professional Engineer’s license current.
I can tell you from personal experience that the educational courses, design manuals, and study guides from professional engineering societies are a great way to teach yourself the technical knowledge you need for your job. I’ve used them for years and wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone in the engineering field.
Certifications Programs:
In addition to providing excellent focused training related to your job, professional engineering societies may also develop and/or administer certifications programs which can help you advance your career. Certifications are also a sure way for you to differentiate yourself from your peers, or to formally prove your level of knowledge to a hopeful employer or a potential customer.
Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP)
Building Commissioning Professional (BCxP)
Healthcare Facility Design Professional (HFDP)
Certified in Plumbing Design (CPD)
Safety and Chemical Engineering Program Certificates (SAChE)
Certified Water-Based Systems Professional (CWBSP)
GDTP (Y14.5) – Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing Professional Certification
Green Plumbing Design Certificate (GPD)
Building Energy Modeling Professional (BEMP)
ACOPNE Certification
For example, if you’re a Civil Engineer and you’d like to do more coastal engineering design or work specifically on ports; ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) offers board certifications programs for those fields. Let’s say you’re a Mechanical Engineer and your company wants to work on more healthcare related jobs, having an engineer or a few engineers on staff who hold a HFDP (Healthcare Facility Design Professional) certification from ASHRAE is an excellent validation to demonstrate to a potential client that your staff has a certain level of professional expertise related to designing healthcare facilities.
Professional certifications can be even more helpful for those who are not yet licensed engineers or for technical designers who do not possess a college degree. A technical certification from a professional society on your resume could be the difference between you getting hired or somebody else.
Networking:
When you become a member of ASCE, or IEEE, or ANS or another similar professional engineering society you are provided with an opportunity to participate in recurring local chapter meetings. These may include lunch & learns, fundraisers, or even purely social events.
I think the biggest benefit for attending these local chapter meetings is that you get to meet professionals in your industry outside of your own office. The people you connect with may be engineers, vendors, designers, or even those on the sales side of engineering. If you consistently attend these meetings, you may be surprised when you start recognizing the same people during the conduct of your work from your own office.
While the engineering industry is huge, it’s likely that your specific field of engineering is actually relatively small in comparison to the whole of the industry. Because of that, you can quickly develop a network of professional and personal contacts across multiple companies, cities, and even states such that you start running into people from these meetings at job-sites or even the grocery store.
This is an easy way to advance your career. Knowing people in other companies who are doing the same work as you allows you to find out if what you’re doing and/or experiencing is “typical” for your job. It also presents opportunities to call people outside of your own company for advice or even just to run an idea by them.
Further, let’s say you decide you want to move to a different company, or you want to do a slightly different job within your field; having this established group of contacts means you may have a considerable advantage to others who may be applying to the same job. You can call your contacts to let them know you are applying, or to ask what the job really entails. Sometimes your contacts may even be able to vouch for you and get you set up with a phone call or even an interview ahead of other applicants.
Sometimes people may call you about a job opening BEFORE it’s posted to the public! Trust me… this is real. Join a professional engineering society. Go to the meetings. Talk to people when you’re there. You’ll see… it’s a pretty good deal.
Beyond career advancement, local chapter meetings and regional/national conferences & symposiums serve as a forum for you as a designer, engineer, or consultant to see products and services for your field of work. You may learn of new products or equipment that are perfect for a project you’re working on which perhaps you wouldn’t have known of otherwise.
Events such as these also get you hooked up with sales representatives, technical representatives, and contractors & developers within your region.
Advancement and Promotion of the Industry:
While initially many engineering societies formed as a means to ensure that their respective industries were protected from unqualified practitioners, unsafe practices, or unfair wages their scope has expanded drastically to encompass a more holistic approach to advocacy for engineering.1 Development of formal professional certifications, licenses, and educational requirements are well known outputs of these organizations which address the concerns mentioned above, but did you know that they also influence local/regional/national law, environmental policy, building codes, and product testing requirements among other things?
Yes, many of the laws which protect you and your family relating to electricity, sanitation, and transportation were directly written by nonprofit engineering societies. Essentially, engineers themselves write many—if not most—of the standards and laws they follow. While at first this may seem like having the fox guard the chicken coop, what better way is there to ensure that engineering is performed by qualified engineers? In such a technical field as nuclear engineering, or electrical engineering, who best understands what is SAFE—the engineer or the politician? Who is best equipped to evaluate engineering methodologies, best practices, efficiency and reliability? This is a bit oversimplified, but there is merit to the point.
While the engineer is best suited to the technical tasks related to standards & testing procedure writing, engineering societies generally support broad-based consensus type standards development which includes public feedback and allow for participation of experts outside the engineering fields. This collaborative style of working provides many opportunities for fine-tuning procedures & processes and encourages a transparent system for establishing laws and regulations relevant to engineering disciplines (see the example below from the NFPA).
One quick example: the energy code used by many jurisdictions in the United States (International Energy Code… another consensus based output) is to a large extent identical to ASHRAE 90.1, which is an energy efficiency standard developed by ASHRAE. Think about it… voluntary committees set up by ASHRAE (a nonprofit organization of members of the public) develop a set of rules which they think will provide for an acceptable balance of efficiency and economy. These voluntary committees conduct their own research, debate their findings, solicit commentary from the public, and then vote on implementation. The Standard that these volunteers develop is then adopted by jurisdictions AS LAW. Pretty cool.
So, you as an engineer or designer can ACTUALLY IMPACT REGULATIONS & LAWS related to climate change, electrical safety, efficiency, and best practices by VOLUNTEERING to serve on committees in your respective professional engineering society. Again… that’s pretty cool.
If you’re interested in seeing just a couple of examples of what types of Codes and Standards are developed by professional engineering societies, check out the examples below:
- ANS (American Nuclear Society), Standards: https://www.techstreet.com/ans
- ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), Standards Development Process: https://www.asce.org/codes-and-standards/codes-and-standards/
- NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), NEC enforcement (National Electrical Code): https://www.nfpa.org/NEC/NEC-adoption-and-use/NEC-adoption-maps?icid=W050
Research Initiatives:
Of course, in order to better advance the engineering industry and ensure that codes & standards are continuously improved, a big focus of professional engineering societies is to support research. As alluded to at the beginning of the article these are not like your high school math clubs. These organizations can be huge, with correspondingly healthy budgets to match. They are run by full-time professionals, and their ranks are filled with highly skilled technical people.
To illustrate the type of impact these societies can have on research or codes & standards, consider the following: In 2019, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) reported a total operating income of $118,000,000, ~$42M of which was devoted to codes and standards development. Want more? The IEEE reported total operating revenue of almost half a billion dollars in 2017. So, when an organization such as ASHRAE reports that 8% of its application of funds is allocated to research, you can see that this is a significant amount of capital.
Without getting too much into the weeds on this topic, just know that these professional societies are the reason for many of the safety features and conveniences we take for granted each and every day.
To see a few interesting examples of research reports which may be applicable to your own home or apartment, check out the link below to a page on NFPA’s site regarding “The US fire problem.” There will you find reports on common causes of fires, fires cause by home grilles, electrical fires, and damage/deaths caused by children playing with fire. You’ll see from this single example how important the research conducted by professional societies is.
https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Research/Data-research-and-tools/US-Fire-Problem
Scholarships and Community Service:
The last two topics we’ll discuss are scholarships and community service. Being a former recipient of an American Nuclear Society (ANS) scholarship, I can personally attest to the positive impacts professional engineering societies have on students. As a student, joining an engineering society can not only get you plugged into your local engineering community (i.e. networking to get a job), but you can get immersed in your industry early and be able to take advantage of low cost (or free) training & tools as well as access to scholarships.
Scholarships
Community Service
Training
There are all sorts of scholarships available for virtually all levels of education, to include subsidies for attending technical seminars & symposiums hosted by the societies themselves. I encourage anyone seeking to further their engineering technical knowledge to explore their respective professional society’s websites for applicable scholarships & grants.
Finally, these organizations provide ample opportunities for volunteerism. At first thought, the word “volunteer” conjures up images of community service, food drives, beach cleanups etc., but there is a much greater scope to volunteerism. Of course, professional engineering societies are involved with the activities just mentioned, but the societies themselves are largely run by volunteers. Engineers, designers, and technical/sales representatives volunteer their time to serve on standing committees, to mentor colleagues or students, to serve on research committees, to go to public hearings to advocate for issues pertinent to their field of work, or to serve on local chapter boards. All these functions are vitally important to the health of the societies and to the future of the engineering profession as a whole.
Go Join a Professional Engineering Society TODAY!
After reading this article you can consider yourself formally introduced to the world of professional engineering societies; and, hopefully you can see the important role they play for both your own career and the industry in general. Through your society you can influence public policy, develop standards, further your education & career, and be a part of something greater than yourself.
Thank you for reading!
Check out Engineer Q&A’s article “Professional Engineering Societies: A Comprehensive Listing – National-Level” to find the right group for you!
Sources:
- https://www.nspe.org/membership/about-nspe
- https://www.aspe.org/education-credentialing/
- https://www.asme.org/?asmepromo=f19coreppc&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-Mr0BRDyARIsAKEFbefMLc2AasshQAaSFK-lqz5kDMk5sEiC7IA40OyyxPMTh39WQvWLpeMaAk7OEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
- https://www.nfpa.org/Training-and-Events
- https://www.asce.org/professional_certifications/
- https://www.aiche.org/academy/search?f%5B0%5D=im_field_global_content_source%3A74366
- https://www.ashrae.org/professional-development/ashrae-certification