Transcript:

Christoph Lohr:

Welcome to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. When talking about the built environment, we would do well to remember: We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us. Therefore, on each episode, we’ll discuss the latest trends from IAPMO in plumbing and mechanical safety, sustainability and resiliency. Join me, your host, Christoph Lohr, and together we’ll explore the ways we can make our buildings shape us for the better. 

Christoph Lohr:

And welcome back to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. I’m your host, Christoph Lohr, and joining me — I’m so excited to have him — David Dexter, a professional engineer and retired, but now in his volunteer capacity working as the ASPE Professional Engineering Working Group chair. David, welcome to the podcast.

David Dexter:

Thank you for having me.

Christoph Lohr:

Well, super excited to have you here. And what I love to do for our listeners is, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself?

David Dexter:

Well, I’m a former master plumber, who, if you ask some of the members, I went to the dark side and became an engineer and picked up my professional registration along the way. I have more than 40 years of experience in the plumbing trade, both as a skilled trade and as a professional engineer, specializing in plumbing, fire protection and forensics.

Christoph Lohr:

And I think you retired, full time or part time? 

David Dexter:

I’m semi-retired. I still write articles, and I do a little consulting with various people I worked with over the years. And of course, I stay very active in ASPE Connect and NSPE’s open forum.

Christoph Lohr:

And so actually it’s through ASPE, that’s where I’ve had the absolute pleasure and privilege of meeting you, David. I think we met probably at this point now five years ago as part of the ASPE Professional Engineering Working Group. Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about that particular working group of ASPE?

David Dexter:

Well, ASPE for a number of years has sought to get a professional exam to recognize professional engineers that specialize in plumbing. And so they’ve tried it for a number of years. The working group formed, they were trying to go in one direction. I kept telling them it wasn’t going to work that way; you had to understand the players, and the players being the National Society of Professional Engineers, who view the process as being to become a professional engineer, you’re a professional engineer. It doesn’t matter about discipline. There’s no discipline specific. Some state boards will have the basic ones, but otherwise it’s your professional engineer. And then, of course, NCES is the one that controls the exams themselves. So over the course of the last, I guess, about eight years, we’ve gotten actively involved with NCES. We went through what they call the PAX process, and to do a study as to whether an exam would be appropriate.

David Dexter:

Christoph was there as part of that group and we managed to develop a specification for a plumbing piping engineering exam, which recently was reviewed and approved by the EPE —Examiners for Professional Engineers — which is a committee of NCES. So now we’re moving forward into the process of actual exam development.

Christoph Lohr:

Excellent. And for our listeners, ASPE, I think I may have failed to mention, is the American Society of Plumbing Engineers, a sister organization of IAPMO. We’re all in the plumbing space, kind of touching different parts of the people that are involved.

David, question for you: When it comes to a plumbing examination, and I think you kind of mentioned that — it’s a plumbing exam under the mechanical discipline. So it still would be for a professional engineer. Why should that matter to, let’s kind of go with different groups here. Why should that matter to like a policymaker, to other engineers, to installers? What’s the maybe to an AHJ and inspector, why should this exam be important to them? What’s the benefit or why should they be keeping an eye on this? 

David Dexter:

It is just another method of verifying that an individual is qualified and has expertise in the area in which they’re providing services.

As a professional engineer, we are obligated to hold the public health, safety and welfare above all other concerns, and you need to be able to verify that you have expertise in the area you’re working. That’s the whole purpose behind the exam to start with, and really to verify somebody’s expertise in any of the disciplines. It’s by their peers. If you produce a set of documents and your peers look at it and say, you know, I might have done this differently, but this person knows what they’re talking about, or if they look at it and say, No, this person really does not know what they’re doing. They have no business being in this arena or this area of expertise.

So by putting another exam available to the test takers, it offers them an opportunity to really verify their knowledge and skills. And that’s what the exam is about — it’s testing knowledge and skills; we call it the principles and practices, but that’s kind of a misnomer because your principles were actually tested in the fundamentals exam. If you don’t know the fundamentals, you’re not going to proceed.

Christoph Lohr:

So is it fair to say, then, David, that a plumbing exam under the mechanical discipline from the policymaker, the installer perspective, other engineers from the AHJ, that it should be, it would be something that would help kind of add another layer of safety, making sure that qualified individuals are signing and sealing these documents in terms of, but that’s not happening right now?

David Dexter:

It’s happening to some extent, but not to the extent it should. In my career I have had many professional engineers signing my documents before I had my P.E. that weren’t, in my view, fully qualified. They relied on me to do it, and very seldom could they ask questions meaningful in the plumbing world. If I was doing it wrong, they didn’t know it. And to me that is wrong because as a professional engineer, one of our obligations is to only work in our area of expertise. And if we aren’t, then we need to hire somebody that has that expertise. And this is just another step to be able to provide validity to a candidate’s level of knowledge and skill.

Christoph Lohr:

I really appreciate that, David, that explanation. And I think that our listeners likely are learning here from you. Now, we have some listeners that are also design professionals or engineers that they want to get their license. I know I get asked this question a lot. When do we roughly anticipate this exam will be available? This is early 2024 that we’re recording, so what are we thinking in terms of a potential timeline or a pathway?

David Dexter:

Well, bear in mind that NCES is the driving force of this wagon at the moment; this is all in their bailiwick. And based on discussions with them, I would anticipate two to three years in exam development. Right now, the NCES is forming a committee of candidates that have knowledge in the plumbing area to form together and start writing questions.

The first step they’ll go through is learning the process. And NCES uses Pearson VUE as the conduit to develop exams. They are a psychometric-type organization, so they understand why people do things and how they do them; it’s kind of an interesting process. So once these people that NCES selects, and ASPE and other organizations have been sending names in for them to volunteer, once they select the committee they will then begin the process of developing questions. They’ll need probably 1,000 questions before they’re ready, because as most people know, everything is done on computer now. There’s no written exams in the mechanical world — it's all computer based — and the computer will pick out the questions that a candidate will answer. So just like you and I, we could be sitting side by side and taking the very same exam but the questions will not be in the same order and they may not even be the same questions; the computer selects it. And then they grade that and that determines what they call the minimally competent candidate, the MCC. And what the test is designed to test a candidate that’s four or five years out of school, the things that they’re first learning and doing plumbing engineering, and as engineers we graduate from college. Yeah, we have a degree in engineering; that does not make us a professional engineer. We need experience. It’s much like in the skilled trades where you go through an apprentice program; as a professional engineer you do that with your four years working under the responsible charge of another P.E. Once you obtain that and you’ve taken your exam, then you can call yourself a professional engineer. And in most cases, it’s not a professional engineer HVAC or professional engineer electrical or professional engineer plumbing; it is just professional engineer. You are obligated by the law under which you accepted that registration to work in your area of expertise. Now they are a few states that do it by discipline, but the disciplines are basically electrical, mechanical, civil, metallurgical, mining, so as a mechanical engineer you will have some states that would not allow me to sign electrical documents. Now I’m not going to sign them anyway because electrical is not my career field, but I do know people that have a mechanical engineering degree that have actually taken their P.E. in electrical; that was the area they chose to work in. Because as engineers in college, regardless of what path you’re taking, the basic engineering is the same; it’s just how you apply it.

Christoph Lohr:

That makes sense. Definitely, David. Well, one last question. What has been your level of support? Obviously, ASPE has been involved in support of this effort. They’re the ones that really kickstarted the whole thing. But what about other sister organizations or individuals? What level of support has the ASPE PE Working Group gotten up to this point?

David Dexter:

Well, the working group has consisted of a number of people who have come and gone over the years. You were part of the group, and initially we had to get at least 10 state boards to agree that this was an idea worth exploring. And thanks to your efforts and the efforts of other members on the PE Working Group, we managed to get the adequate number to move it forward. ASPE has gotten much more involved in the last few years with NCES and the POLC, which is the Participating Organizations Liaison Council.

It's a lot of the engineering organizations that contribute to NCES. In fact, I’m currently down in Alexandria, Virginia, for their annual meeting representing ASPE. So we’ve advanced it quite a ways. We’ve gotten the milestone of getting the EPE to approve it, so the PE working group has done about as much as it can do at this point; it’s all in NCES’ ballpark. We will continue to work with ASPE, and the PE Working Group will continue to work with NCES to advance this and see that it finally comes out.

Christoph Lohr:

Has there been any other organizations like NSPE or others that have voiced or brought up support for ASPE in this endeavor?

David Dexter:

NSPE has been favorable of it. At one time I was unfortunate enough or fortunate enough — I don’t know which way you’d look at it — to have sat on NSPE’s board of directors as a Central Region chair. But that helped in this process because I understood what NSPE anticipated.

They do not support the idea of discipline-specific exams, and if we had approached it that way, they would have been the first one to be out there objecting. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve continued to work this as a mechanical exam, but it’s just one of the exams underneath the overall heading of mechanical engineering. 

Christoph Lohr:

Excellent. Well, David, if you were going to summarize our whole conversation here into one word and kind of wrap things up here, what would that one word be to summarize what we talked about today?

David Dexter:

Elevating the profession.

Christoph Lohr:

Elevating. I love it. Well, David, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical and IAPMO, I just want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule over at the POLC meeting, and thank you and look forward to continuing the effort here.

David Dexter:

Look forward to seeing it move forward.

Christoph Lohr:

Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. Love this episode of the podcast? Head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and leave a review. Please follow us on Twitter @AuthorityPM, on Instagram @theauthoritypodcast or email us at iapmo@iapmo.org. Join us next time for another episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical.

In the meantime, let’s work together to make our buildings more resilient and shape us for the better.