The Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019 (the Act) does not mention software. However, the Act does state:
4 What are areas of engineering?
(1) In this Act, area of engineering means any of the following—
(a) structural engineering;
(b) civil engineering;
(c) mechanical engineering;
(d) electrical engineering;
(e) fire safety engineering;
(f) any other prescribed area of engineering.
The Guidelines on areas of engineering states:
Two areas of engineering not listed in section 4 the Act are chemical or process engineering and software engineering. Therefore, registration and endorsement are not required to provide professional engineering services in these areas of engineering. However, the Act allows for additional areas of engineering to be identified for the purposes of registration over time. Any additional areas of engineering will be listed or prescribed in the regulations made under the Act.
And:
Electrical engineering is concerned with the design, application, manufacture and maintenance of equipment, devices, plant and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism.
These activities can apply to electricity generation, transmission, distribution, electrical installations in buildings and on industrial sites, electrical equipment manufacture, instrumentation and control system applications in industry, communications networks, electronic plan and equipment, and also the integration and control of computer systems.
Electrical engineering has many different areas of focus. As a guide, some of the main areas of focus are:
• power engineering
• control engineering
• electronics engineering, and
• telecommunications engineering (such as signal processing, signalling and communications and radiofrequency engineering).
From the above, it is clear that:
- Software engineering is not an area of engineering that requires registration
- Control systems engineering (as a part of electrical engineering) is an area of engineering that requires registration.
Therefore, if someone is engineering the software for, say, a business application, then this does not require registration.
However, what if someone is engineering the software for a control system?
There are other types of engineering that span two or more of the areas of engineering – e.g. environmental engineering, biomedical engineering and materials engineering.
In these cases, the professional engineer must be registered in any areas of engineering where they provide a professional engineering service. For instance, in the case of biomedical engineering, the Guidelines on areas of engineering states:
Registration requirements – A biomedical engineer must be registered:
• in the area of electrical engineering if the professional engineering services they provide are exclusive to that area of engineering, or
• in the area of mechanical engineering if the professional engineering services they provide are exclusive to that area of engineering, or
• in the areas of both electrical and mechanical engineering if the professional engineering services they provide span both of these areas of engineering.
Following this logic, if software engineering were (at a later date) to become a prescribed area of engineering, then someone engineering the software for a control system would need to registered as an electrical engineer and a software engineer.
However, as software engineering is not currently a prescribed area of engineering, then someone engineering the software for a control system would only need to registered as an electrical engineer.
However, the Guidelines on providing professional engineering services lists in its “Examples of activities that ARE NOT professional engineering services”:
Software development
In the case of software development for a control system, I believe that this guideline does not align with the Act.
Recommendation
I recommend that the Guidelines on providing professional engineering services should be updated to remove “Software development” from the “Examples of activities that ARE NOT professional engineering services”.