Continuing education
[Alfred R. Pagan, P.E., P.L.S.’s] August column on maintenance of licensure ("Thoughts on licensure—Part 1," page 12) got my attention. Unfortunately, continuing education for engineers has become an industry unto itself, and I am flooded with promotional material offering credits every week.

As a registered professional engineer for 40 years—registered in 49 states and 27 foreign countries—my first hand experience with continuing education requirements [is that] about half of the states require it. In most states, it is perfunctory and subject to self-certification and random audit. I have been audited about a half dozen times and had to produce documentary evidence of my credits.

My major concern is that one can get the required continuing education credits without ever having a single credit in the field in which they practice. I have yet to see any evidence that there are any fewer lawsuits or complaints against engineers in states that have these requirements, nor have I seen any evaluation of whether it results in more or fewer disciplinary actions, such as suspension or revocation of licenses.

Some states are increasing their renewal fees or adding surcharges to cover their supposed costs of administering these programs. Some other states require expensive, time consuming, and burdensome procedures for getting the necessary credits. However, there is no rational justification for these added costs if the results show no improvement in the practice of the professions.

Unless or until there is responsible evidence that mandatory continuing education produces fewer lawsuits, complaints, and disciplinary actions, I personally oppose it for technical, professional, and financial reasons.
Larry Spielvogel, P.E.

See "Concerns about continuing education" for additional thoughts on the subject.

Offshore outsourcing
Good column ("Exploring a heated issue," August 2007, page 6) on offshore outsourcing. Any firm, I repeat, any firm, that’s not thinking about this and doing something, is going to regret it at some point. I’ve been involved in overseas work since the 1980s and now heavily involved in outsourcing (a small piece of globalization). It’s Darwinian, very similar to Natural Selection: What do you do in response to change to survive? If you do nothing, you die.

I’m consulting with a U.S. contractor now who has a 25-person staff in India doing schedules, budgets, 3-D modelling, etc. for 20 percent of U.S. costs, and they do it while we’re sleeping so we can have it in the [morning]. I also have clients in South Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Italy, and Spain. In all cases, work flows both ways, a win-win for all. In time, anything can and will be done where it’s cheapest to do it—period. We’re in business. With the Internet, there are no boundaries, just limits on our imagination!
Thom L. Neff, Ph.D.

I would like to make several points related to your article on offshore outsourcing ("Offshore Outsourcing: A problem or a solution?") in the August 2007 issue.

First, ACEC/CASE has consistently ranked structural work as the engineering discipline most likely to be involved in litigation; yet, according to the article, structural detailing (19 percent) and structural design (13 percent) were the services most likely to be outsourced. Couple those data with the fact that a majority (over 60 percent) of those firms that have outsourced note quality control as a drawback, and these firms have set a problematic course to say the least. I see a significant gap in the [editorial] coverage with the absence of any discussion on the ramifications for outsourcing firms defending themselves under the "standard of care" doctrine when the majority of firms don’t do so.

Two rationales that outsourcing firms are quoted as using are even more disconcerting: "freeing staff from tasks outside their core competencies" (27percent) and "gaining access to expertise/software/equipment not found in-house" (22 percent). Of the seven services identified as most outsourced, all but the last two (construction documentation and 3-D visualization) involve engineering design and/or detailing. Pardon me, but if engineering design and detailing are outside of the core competencies of in-house staff, just exactly how does such a firm see it clear to offer those services, or its engineers to seal that work product?

Those rationales (cost reduction, resource leveling, etc.) that do not compromise quality work meeting the standard of care are not the subject of my concern. In fact, my own firm routinely shares work across its U.S.-based offices for precisely these reasons, as well as to tap firm expertise. However, I can not see any argument, ethical or legal, that justifies outsourcing services that the in-house staff are not capable of exercising responsible charge of. I’ll be very interested to see how courts interpret the standard of care when a distinct minority of firms is engaged in this.

Also, I am disappointed that the data collection and reduction was conducted in concert with a firm, Satellier, LLC, specializing in offshore outsource partnering. Granted, you were up-front about it—disclosing this in the second paragraph—but, such partnering compromises CE News’ editorial neutrality and credibility. The whole sidebar, "Tips for successful offshore outsourcing," clearly endorses outsourcing, while hardly any column-inches were spent on the concerns of the majority (81 percent) of firms that do not outsource. This is not journalism.

Lastly, one gets the impression, especially reading the un-challenged predictions from India’s National Association of Software Services Companies, that offshore outsourcing is a trend that is here to stay, if not increase by an order of magnitude. Certainly, that would dove-tail with Satillier’s marketing. The relevance of comparing the software industry to AEC aside, I’d suggest that the reality of such an assertion is, at best, in flux. Recent articles in The Wall Street Journal, for example, have indicated that, at least on the software side, overseas salary escalation and a genuine reflection on the true costs of offshore outsourcing domestically are slowing and even reversing that trend.
Michael A. Russell, P.E., S.E., MLSE

Author’s response: Getting feedback from our readers is great, and I’m glad to see the study findings and the article sparked thought and warrants further discussion. The intent of the article was to shed light on some of the varied perspectives on the issue because it is such a hot topic. And as such a large topic, we unfortunately could not cover all the angles. As you reference, many specific issues, such as standard of care, licensing, and strategies for those not considering offshore outsourcing, certainly deserve more attention.

Yes, a portion of our sample did indicate that structural detailing and design have been offshore outsourced or could be considered for offshore outsourcing. That is based on their individual experience and opinions that this would be an appropriate service. It is assumed that respondents have considered things such as potential for litigation when indicating if they believe a service is appropriate for offshore outsourcing or not. As for the 60 percent noting quality concerns as a drawback, that figure is based on the entire sample. A smaller group of those with experience (27 percent) name quality control as a drawback or challenge.

In regard to the rationale that some firms mention for using offshore outsourcing (for freeing staff from tasks outside core competencies) you’ll note that many of the services procured involve time-consuming, repetitive tasks. Certainly these are critical steps for developing engineers to be exposed to and master before they can progress in their career. In interviews with those with and without offshore outsourcing experience, feedback focused on taking away from the staff some of those time-consuming tasks that are no longer developmental once mastered, thus allowing them to focus on higher level skills such as project management. The percentage of total production work offshore outsourced is pretty low on average, so most firms are still heavily involved in those services/tasks.

You’re right—it will be interesting to see how standard of care is interpreted as we move forward. Offshore outsourcing is relatively new for most firms, so there hasn’t been a hard and fast answer, at least that I’m aware of. I’d imagine (and hope), however, that most firms that have offshore outsourced have consulted legal counsel and have been well advised and found arrangements that are lawful, ethical, and acceptable.

Satellier LLC was our partner in this study and a key player in helping the ZweigWhite team understand more about how offshore outsourcing works so we could create the most meaningful study possible as we gathered the data. As editorial quality is paramount at CE News, we certainly wanted to make sure that we were representing ourselves fully and maintaining our position as a highly credible source. That’s why we stated up front that Satellier was involved in the article, throughout the study to all participants, and by sharing the results widely with the industry. I firmly believe the quality of the data was not compromised by having Satellier as a partner.

As I referenced before, there are numerous other topics related to offshore outsourcing that could be explored in more detail. The tips for successful offshore outsourcing section, as you referenced, does speak more to those interested in offshore outsourcing. While this group is the minority of our study sample and the industry, our study and numerous other studies and articles suggest that offshore outsourcing will continue to become more common. A number of study participants without offshore outsourcing, for example, indicated they had not ruled it out for their firm. As the competitive environment shifts, many firms may begin to consider offshore outsourcing. We wanted to provide best practices and business strategies to this group in the sidebar. That information was pulled directly from the study results and recommendations of those who have offshore outsourced, and not from information Satellier provided to us.

While we didn’t address this in the summary of study results, ZweigWhite’s strategic consulting group offers many words of advice for firms not interested in offshore outsourcing from, specifically if they come up against a firm using it when competing for a project. For example, firms can focus on developing niche expertise, strengthening their value proposition internally and communicating it aggressively in the market place, leveraging a firm value proposition to command premium pricing, focusing on relationship development over individual project transactions, and looking elsewhere in their organization to cut costs.

As for the future of offshore outsourcing, only time will tell. Of course, the Booz Allen/NASSCOM study is just one study and many others exist presenting a range of predictions, ranging from conservative to more aggressive growth predictions. Your mention of a decreasing price differential is certainly correct. Many studies show that over time, rising salaries in developing nations will even out the playing field and that significant cost savings may no longer be achieved. However, as the results of our study suggest, as does the NASSCOM study, cost savings, while still a motivator, is only one of many drivers of offshore outsourcing and as other drivers (access to skilled labor, capacity constraints, etc) remain, this trend may be sustained.
Susan Dell Orto

As the owner of a civil engineering firm, I don’t see [conducting] engineering overseas as a major issue. I do see two problems for the firms doing it. One is the problem of managing the work at a distance. Some firms are pretty good at it because they have been using multiple branch offices scattered across the country to do projects. The second problem is that cost differential is not a static thing, and in the future it may be cheaper to do the work where the project is located.

Today we are transforming much what we called engineering design into a computerized operation that can be done any place by a handful of people. What the future may hold is that engineers will have to be on site to create the conceptual and preliminary designs to the local conditions. Then the final design will have to be checked against local conditions by engineers.

Therefore, I see a handful of engineers at the project location communicating with powerful computers doing the work. Net effect is that doing work overseas becomes a non issue because of computers. The issue for legions of design engineers is that they aren’t needed.
Michael Zunich, P.E.

Outsourcing by engineering companies is basically the same as computer program vendors, retailers, and others. The core ingredient is greed, which is disguised as competition or profit picture.
Bhaskar Kolhe, P.E.