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BUSINESS NEWS FLUOR NAMED TO FORTUNE MAGAZINE’S MOST ADMIRED COMPANIES FOR FIFTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR Fluor Corporation announced that the company was named by FORTUNE magazine as the top-ranked engineering and construc- tion company in its 2016 World’s Most Ad- mired Companies list. For the fifth year in a row, Fluor earned the top designation among its peers in the engineering and construction market sector.

“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized as one of the world’s most admired companies by such a prestigious magazine as FORTUNE ,” said David Seaton, Fluor’s chairman and CEO. “We strive to be the best in the market. To be the top engineering and construction firm for a fifth straight year is a testament to our 44,000 employees around the globe who work to deliver large-scale projects that have a positive impact on our clients’ business and

the communities they serve around the world.” FORTUNE collaborates with the Hay Group to identify and rank the world’s most admired companies based on business practices, innovative spirit, and social responsibility. The rankings are compiledby querying thousands of executives, directors, and analysts to measure corporate reputation and performance against nine key performance areas – from investment value to social responsibility.

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still taken with pencil and paper, to a computer-based mod- el. But that’s a few years down the road. For now, decoupling is the big issue in the licensing world, and Texas is not the only state to approve the change. Oregon, Nevada, NewMexico, Kentucky, Louisiana, Illinois, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Wyoming, have already de- coupled. In California, the PE exam and licensure is allowed at two years. According to research conducted by the Texas board, 11 states considered decoupling but declined. Decou- pling legislation is pending in Oklahoma, and North Caro- lina. For Carter, there is no substitute for being a PE, and if de- coupling means more will obtain that designation, all the better. “It distinguishes you,” he says. “There has to be inherent val- ue in going through a rigorous process.” also last year, a Texas engineer surrendered his license after failing to pay a $15,000 fine and after failing to take a Level 3 ethics course at Murdough. Ethics is taught across the board at universities these days, but that wasn’t necessarily the case 15 years ago, when many of today’s engineers were students. “It’s a relatively recent thing,” Marcy says, referencing ethics education. “It’s an area where many engineers never think it will happen to them.” An engineering ethics case that made international news occurred in 2010, when an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 people and sent millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Robert Kaluza, a BP engineer, emerged as a prime target for prosecutors, but the case eventually fizzled. He was recently acquitted on one count of violating the Clean Water Act, a misdemeanor. Currently ongoing is the fallout from the General Motors recall tied to a faulty ignition switch linked to over 100 deaths and hundreds of injuries. A key person in the recall is former GM engineer Ray DeGiorgio. Though high-profile cases like BP and General Motors are rare, local cases, in which an engineer practices without a license, or signs plans he shouldn’t, aren’t. And if there’s at least one thing an engineer can learn through the ethics curriculum, Marcy hopes it’s this: “Don’t do it just because your boss tells you to do it.” — Richard Massey

“If we can get them to the exam sooner, we can keep more people in the pipeline.” While those with engineering degrees can be employed by firms, they cannot offer services directly to the public, Cart- er says. Only PEs can do that. The NCEES estimates that there are about 500,000 PEs in the U.S. The NCEES voted in 2013 in favor of decoupling, setting the stage for states like Texas, which has about 61,000 PEs. Next on the Texas to-do list? Transfer the PE exam, which is “We lose a number of candidates who never take the exam. If we can get them to the exam sooner, we can keep more people in the pipeline.” A QUESTION OF ETHICS The Murdough Center for Engineering Professionalism at Texas Tech University has reached maturity. What began as a tiny startup in 1987 now serves as a source of ethics remediation for engineers across the country, and to date, has served as many as 1,300 engineers in all 50 states. While the Murdough Center does not track the exact reasons why engineers enroll in the ethics courses – conducted through distance learning – the center does say that a high percentage of them are probably required to enroll due to some form of censure from their state board. Practicing without a license, failure to disclose criminal activity, and practicing with an expired license, are all reasons to draw the ire of a licensing board, and at least in some of those cases, the engineer is referred to Murdough. Course levels are Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced, and account for 30 hours, 60 hours, or 90 hours of Professional Development, respectively. Most of the referrals come from the Texas Board of Professional Engineers, but over the years, word has spread, and by 2015, referrals were as likely to come from Ohio or New Mexico as they were from the Lone Star State. “A lot of the engineers are not happy when they are referred to our ethics course,” says William Marcy, Murdough’s director. “Interestingly, many end up being very happy with having had the course and wish they had had an ethics course in college. We do our best to stay out of the enforcement aspects and just try to help the engineers get back on track.” Last year, a Florida engineer, in addition to $6,361 in costs and fines, a reprimand, and a two-year probation, was ordered to take a Murdough course for signing off on deficient documents, according to records with the Florida Board of Professional Engineers. And

THE ZWEIG LETTER March 28, 2016, ISSUE 1145

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