Can Volunteer Design Work be placed on A PE Application?

I am currently a civil engineer at a medium-sized Civil Engineering company. As a member of the company I have worked in the design department on structural calculations and roadway design as well as construction management. I have been with the company for almost 4 years and I am hoping to increase my design experience for the Experience portion of the PE application. My job though requires me to be flexible as their demand for certain tasks change. I may be seeing a lot more construction management over the next few months and therefore I would not be gaining design experience.

I enjoy doing volunteer work for my local community as a firefighter and through habitat for humanity. I feel like doing volunteer work in my field would be a bonus. Recently I have found out about Bridges to Prosperity and Engineering Ministries International, both of which give the opportunity for engineers to do design work for their projects. I have already spoken to one of my bosses (who is a PE) and he has offered to look over any design work that I would do for these organizations. Can I put the hours that I work on these projects towards my PE experience as long as my boss is overseeing my work? I am looking to get my PE in New York.

What you are doing is very noble. To answer your question, can you use your volunteer work for your PE application, my answer is: I don't think you need to. You listed 4 years of commendable work experience that, in my opinion, will fulfil the application requirements just fine. Also, I think work experience on the application has to be full time and under the supervision of a PE (to count toward your minimum required work experience). It sounds like your volunteer work won't meet these requirements. My suggestion, if you want to still list the volunteer work on your app, is to include it but don't claim any of it toward your required experience time, list it in addition to.

Not to get off topic .... or maybe it isn't but ..

Isn't doing volunteer engineering work against the Code of Ethics ..... unfair competition?

I don't know specifically about NY, but I don't believe experience has to be full-time. I counted my part-time employment (20-30hrs/week) during grad school, and just pro-rated that accordingly. Granted, one data point does not make it true.

John -- I've seen that question before, and never with a conclusive answer. Although, from one perspective, in the developing world where these projects are located, it's tough to find who the "competition" is.

I'm not sure what B2P's policy is, but for EMI, if the locale has regulations requiring engineering services for a given project, the EMI-produced documents are strictly not for construction, and are turned over as a well-defined conceptual set to a local engineer.

ptatohed said:

What you are doing is very noble. To answer your question, can you use your volunteer work for your PE application, my answer is: I don't think you need to. You listed 4 years of commendable work experience that, in my opinion, will fulfil the application requirements just fine. Also, I think work experience on the application has to be full time and under the supervision of a PE (to count toward your minimum required work experience). It sounds like your volunteer work won't meet these requirements. My suggestion, if you want to still list the volunteer work on your app, is to include it but don't claim any of it toward your required experience time, list it in addition to.

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For the record, in NYS, your experience does not need to be under the supervision of a PE. Having completed the NYS application, I think the only problem with the OP's plan is that your experience cannot exceed the calendar time, so even if you work more than full-time by factoring in your volunteer work, you can't get to 4 years any faster. I would definitely list it if it's relevant though.

You should also look into Engineers Without Borders - many of their projects would work nicely with a civil engineer's skill set.