Welcome to the Western Counties Branch

ENGINEERS AND STATUS – THE SOLUTION


WHAT IS STATUS?

It could be argued that Al Copone, Mother Theresa and W G Grace all had high status. It could be argued that great religious leaders, footballers, film stars, successful but impoverished faith healers and the hardware store around the corner that gives great service but is unprofitable also have status.

Status is the relative standing of a profession or individual in terms of the following five factors that determine status:

a) Competence and skill. The general perception of Doctors and Lawyers for example is that they are competent. Some bank robbers are competent at robbing, others are not. Unlike doctors and lawyers, robbers do not have to pass exams in robbing in order to become robbers. Consequently the public view is that a doctor or a lawyer is higher up the status ladder than a bank robber in the area of competence. Here we are talking about professions as a whole rather than individuals within a particular profession where there are always bound to be exceptions who have high status in the public view.

b) Usefulness to society. In this category both Doctors and Politicians would have higher status than bank robbers and telesales people.

c) Power / influence / fame. Judges, tv presenters and the clergy would score more highly than train drivers.

d) Integrity. Most of the professions would score high whereas criminals would score low.

e) Remuneration and wealth. Lawyers are remunerated in general better than chartered engineers so they would score higher in this category.

Some of these judgements are rather subjective, but setting that aside, the status profiles attached show a generalistic view of how status varies according to your career.

Structural engineers score high in competence (The Institution of Structural Engineers is particularly good at setting and judging the competence of its members), usefulness (structural engineers are essential to modern society) and integrity – for example being part of a Chartered Institution makes you one of the few people able to sign someone’s passport.

Power and influence is measured in relation to those with whom a profession principally interacts. In the case of chartered engineers that group would be the professional (design) team. Structural engineers score low in terms of power and influence. Chartered surveyors including quantity surveyors, solicitors and architects would all score higher than structural engineers in this category, generally because they are closer to the customer in the professional team.

In terms of remuneration, the building professions generally lag behind others and chartered structural engineers lag behind chartered surveyors and mechanical and electrical engineers.

Therefore when people talk about improving the status of engineers what they really mean is improving the power of the engineer, but also, the remuneration. In almost any occupation, status is closely related to remuneration.

Some people argue that the area of remuneration must be kept separate from the learned society function of the professional institutions. The learned society function of the Institution of Structural Engineers cannot be separated from the remuneration aspect, otherwise the profession will descend to become an ever decreasing small group of paupers with no resources to develop the science and art of structural engineering.