Responsibilities and exceptions under Queensland Engineers Act

The Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland (BPEQ) recently issued a reminder of the responsibilities of a Corporation under the Queensland Professional Engineers (PE) Act 2002.

As mentioned in the BPEQ March newsletter,

It is an offence under section 115 of the PE Act for a person to carry out ‘professional engineering services’ if the person is not a registered professional engineer of Queensland (RPEQ) nor directly supervised by a RPEQ (unless the professional engineering service is carried out only in accordance with a ‘prescriptive standard’).

At law, a ‘person’ includes a corporation. This means that a corporation can also be found guilty of this offence where a court finds the corporation criminally responsible for the unregistered person/s carrying out professional engineering services.

In the context of HVIA members, there is an instance where registration as a RPEQ is not required to carry out professional duties.

Namely, if you are an Approved Person under the TMR vehicle certification scheme (that is a VSB6 certifier).

The reason for this is that an Approved Person must demonstrate and be assessed by QLD TMR to be a competent person under that scheme.

However, this only applies if the work being carried out is directly related to the issue of vehicle certification and not a design related VSB6 code.

Issuing a certification under a VBS6 code that requires the Approved Person to be degree qualified will likely also require that person to be a registered RPEQ (or be supervised by one).

Professional services work not directly related to duties under the Approved Person Scheme requires work to be carried out by an RPEQ registered engineer or under the direct supervision of one. For example, engineering design work related to a mining vehicle (i.e. off road).

Corporations and managers who require staff to carry our professional engineering services must ensure that their management structure contains sufficient RPEQ’s to supervise unregistered staff.

If you would like guidance on this matter, please contact our Chief Technical Officer, Paul Caus  p.caus@hvai.asn.au , or the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland directly,  admin@bpeq.qld.gov.au  or 07  3210 3100