Professional Engineers in Australia
As a professional mechanical engineer, I am championing a critical issue that extends far beyond largo and impacts all professional engineers across Australia.
It is my firm view that the Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019 (Vic) and similar state frameworks have fundamentally shifted legal and statutory liability away from corporations and directly onto individual professional engineers. While this has significantly heightened personal risk and compliance demands, professional engineering salaries have stagnated and failed to adjust to this new reality. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) wage data over the past decade confirms this trend, showing a brief COVID-related anomaly but absolutely no post-registration wage premium. This clearly indicates that employers are failing to compensate engineers for absorbing substantial personal liability.
Furthermore, while Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance is tightly mandated in the building industry, it is rarely discussed within other engineering disciplines outside of consultants and contractors. If an employment contract requires an engineer to act as an RPEV, RPEQ, or state equivalent, it must be standard industry practice that the employer provides comprehensive PI coverage. This protection must explicitly include personal legal defence costs and long-term run-off cover.
Securing insurance, albeit necessary, is however a passive risk strategy. The more critical, active requirement is for professional engineers to hold genuine authority in corporate commercial decision-making. Far too often, sales teams, project managers, and senior executives make technical compromises to serve short-term commercial outcomes. This directly compromises a professional engineer's ability to safely provide a project 'sign-off'. Because professional engineers currently lack a statutory 'Technical Veto' to override commercial pressures, they are frequently left carrying the legal risk while facing severe commercial reprisals and career penalties for standing their ground.
Until the profession achieves systemic changes across four pillars—fair remuneration, mandated employer professional indemnity insurance, inclusive corporate structures, and a legislated right to a Technical Veto—Australian professional engineers will continue to be unfairly exposed.