Advice from The Ethics Office at Texas Instruments Corporation

Signing Off on Engineering Documents

This pages contains a selection of advice from The Ethics Office at Texas Instruments Corporation.

The advice is that of either TI Ethics Director Carl Skooglund or Glenn Coleman, Manager of Ethics Communication and Education. The articles were distributed among TI employees via TNEWS.

What's in a name?
What's in a name... correction and clarification

Article Number 166: What's in a name?

When a document requires the signature of an engineer, only a registered professional engineer may sign. A TIer recently asked about the legal and ethical ramifications of using the title "engineer." Are we required to be a registered professional engineer to sign off documents on lines titled engineer, lead engineer, CM engineer or the like?

All fifty U.S. states and many other countries have laws establishing requirements and processes for the official registration of those who practice the "engineering" profession. While details of such laws may vary between states or political units, there is a great amount of similarity. For example, most U.S. states use nationally standardized tests in their licensing process.

Many of these laws and regulations restrict both individuals and firms from publicly representing, advertising or designating themselves as "engineer," from providing engineering services, or even from providing engineered products unless registered professional engineers (RPE's) are directly involved in the work in question.

While the law must be studied to determine all local requirements for compliance, in general, public use of words such as engineer, engineering and engineered is generally restricted to RPE's and firms employing them directly. Improper or prohibited use may result in fines and/or invalidated contracts.

We have a well-defined legal and ethical responsibility to ensure that those TIers who represent themselves professionally as TI engineers are registered professional engineers. And only TI registered professional engineers can sign off those documents requiring an engineer's signature.

Article Number 167: What's in a name... correction and clarification

There are many exceptions to the requirement for the signature of a Registered Professional Engineer on engineering documents. In the last article, we discussed the requirement for the signature of a registered professional engineer on engineering documents. The response to this article from TIers worldwide identified many significant exceptions to this restriction. In reality, most of our TI business falls within these exceptions.

In the U.S. these laws are state statutes. When the customer is the U.S. government, state engineering registration statutes do not apply and it is not required to have Registered Professional Engineers sign off on documents relating to engineering services provided for the U.S. government customer unless the contract requires use of RPE's. No current DSEG contracts with the U.S. government customers require the use of RPE's. Should TI receive any requirements of this sort, appropriate engineers will be properly informed.
In most instances, it is not required to have Registered Professional Engineers sign off on documents relating to engineering services for any TI internal activity, including all TI R&D as well as the engineering development or support of any TI produced products.
In general, when there is a specific RPE requirement for a DSEG contract to be performed for a domestic or international customer, the DSEG program office will be notified of that requirement by the Contracts Office.

Each circumstance must be evaluated on its own, meeting customer and contractual requirements. Contact your Contracts Office or TI Legal if you have concerns regarding your program requirements.

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