Licensing and certification of Engineering

In most Western countries, certain engineering tasks, such as the design of bridges, electric power plants, and chemical plants, must be approved by a licensed Professional Engineer or a Chartered Engineer or an Incorporated Engineer.

Engineering licensure in the United States remains largely optional for the vast majority of practicing engineers not directly working on projects deemed to implicate "public health and safety" (this typically covers civil engineers and government contractors). This is known as the "industry exemption." And even for such public-safety projects, it is often sufficient for only the supervising engineer to have a license.
Consequently, a relatively small minority of engineers in the United States are actually licensed; this is of growing concern to some engineering organizations who believe licensure is important for maintaining the status of engineering as an elite and learned profession like medicine and law. However, becoming a "Registered Professional Engineer" or "P.E." is still often pursued as a professional credential for prestige, even when not actually required for particular employment.

Licensure in most states is generally attainable through combination of education, pre-examination (Fundamentals of Engineering Exam), examination (Professional Engineering Exam), and engineering experience (typically in the area of 5+ years). In the United States, each state tests and licenses Professional Engineers. Currently most states do not license by specific engineering discipline, but rather provide generalized licensure, and trust engineers to use professional judgment regarding their individual competencies; this is the favored approach of the professional societies. Despite this, however, at least one of the examinations required by most states is actually focused on a particular discipline; candidates for licensure typically choose the category of examination which comes closest to their respective expertise.
In much of Europe and the Commonwealth professional accreditation is provided by Engineering Institutions, such as the Institution of Civil Engineers from the UK. The engineering institutions of the UK are some of the oldest in the world, and provide accreditation to many engineers around the world.

In Canada the profession in each province is governed by its own engineering association. For instance, in the Province of British Columbia an engineering graduate with 4 or more years of experience in an engineering-related field will need to be registered by the Association for Professional Engineers and Geoscientists (APEGBC) in order to become a Professional Engineer and be granted the professional designation of P.Eng.
The federal US government, however, supervises aviation through the Federal Aviation Regulations administrated by the Dept. of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration. Designated Engineering Representatives approve data for aircraft design and repairs on behalf of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Even with strict testing and licensure, engineering disasters still occur. Therefore, the Professional Engineer, Chartered Engineer, or Incorporated Engineer adheres to a strict code of ethics. Each engineering discipline and professional society maintains a code of ethics, which the members pledge to uphold.
Refer also to the Washington accord for international accreditation details of professional engineering degrees