How can I deal with troublesome Professional Engineer?

Question

I currently manage a team of quite a few engineers in Canada. Things normally run smoothly, but we've had a serious problem with a senior engineer as of late.

This engineer is the sole engineer on our team with his Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) designation, and we depend on him to evaluate security and safety features after reviewing in-house tests of our own products. He has always been a dependable employee, but since being overlooked for a promotion to principal engineer (which would have been a large pay increase), he refuses to sign off on tests, citing them as "flawed" or "not rigorous enough". It's gotten to the point where products we would normally ship still can't go out the door, since our policy dictates a P.Eng. must sign off on the security and safety tests in order to meet client requirements.

Part of his job, though not written into his contract, is that he signs off on the work records of newer engineers, so they can complete the 4 years of supervision under a P.Eng. to become P.Eng.'s themselves. He seems to never have time to sign these lately, and it is all that prevents us from expediting the process so we can have more P.Eng.'s in our company.

I think that if he got the promotion, this wouldn't be an issue, and that he's just trying to be difficult. I understand he must be frustrated, given that the person who got the job is related to one of the members of the exec board, and is about 10 years younger than him; so my guess is that he suspects nepotism and is retaliating. I had little say in the promotion process, sadly.

Is there any way to force him to stop this game? He's not technically breaking any company rules, and he's all but admitting to being cagey and difficult. I've also overheard discussions between colleagues of his (though not including him at the time) about attempting to force us to fire him and pay out a couple years of severance.

Or if I can't get him to smarten up, are there any resources through his licensing body to contract out a P.Eng. to review our tests and sign off on them while we find a replacement, or validate our suspicions he's just playing with us? Maybe they can provide a second opinion and provide proof to HR he's just willfully wasting time out of spite? I'm tired of having to pay someone who's causing the entire team and division to suffer, and don't want to have to pay him two year's salary to just go away.

Answer 1

Key points:

He has always been a dependable employee

So, you started with a good man, now what happened.

but since being overlooked for a promotion to principal engineer.

Your company screwed him....

(which would have been a large pay increase)

AND you hit him in the paycheck

Let's stop here for a moment. Your company disrespected a key employee and cost him tens of thousands in future pay. He's mad as hell, and rightly so.

This is the part that really grabbed my attention.

Is there any way to force him to stop this game?

You STILL have the wrong attitude.

You screw a guy HARD and then instead of trying to smooth things over, you are looking for a way to FORCE him to act the way you want him to act.

he refuses to sign off on tests, citing them as "flawed" or "not rigorous enough".

We used to call that "booking". He is doing his job by the book and to the letter. The next part is why you can't touch him

This engineer is the sole engineer on our team with his Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) designation, and we depend on him to evaluate security and safety features after reviewing in-house tests of our own products.

Unless you have another P.Eng to say he's wrong, then for all intents and purposes, he is right, your tests are "flawed" or "not rigorous enough". He's got you, and there's not a thing you can do.

It's gotten to the point where products we would normally ship still can't go out the door, since our QA policy dictates a P.Eng. must sign off on the security and safety tests in order to meet client requirements.

See what happens when you screw a key employee?

Part of his job, though not written into his contract,

If it's not in his contract, it's not part of his job. Again, he's got you.

is that he signs off on the work records of Engineers In Training (EITs), so they can complete the 4 years of supervision under a P.Eng. to become P.Eng.'s themselves. He seems to never have time to sign these lately, and it is all that prevents us from expediting the process so we can have more P.Eng.'s in our company.

Again, he's got you, and he's playing defense on this one. If the EITs aren't P.Eng, you can't replace him with in-house staff.

I think that if he got the promotion, this wouldn't be an issue, and that he's just trying to be difficult. I understand he must be frustrated, given that the person who got the job is related to one of the members of the exec board, and is about 10 years younger than him; so my guess is that he suspects nepotism and is retaliating.

YA THINK!!!???

Your whole question is basically "Hi, we did dirty by one of our employees and found out that we couldn't just step on him, so how do we do him dirty again."

Your wisest maneuver would be to either pay him to go away, or undo what you did to him and give him a new title with the commensurate pay increase he should have received to begin with.

I noticed you asked how to get him to "smarten up", he seems PLENTY smart to me and not nearly as dumb as you thought.

If you think he's causing problems now, just wait until you see what happens when you try to screw him again.

If I were in your position, I would apologize to him, give him a big promotion, tell him just HOW valued he is, and kiss his posterior from sunup to sundown, or pay him to go away, but one way or another, it's time to pay.

Your company did wrong by a key employee. Now you have to rectify it. From what I've seen in your comments, you don't want him there, he doesn't want to be there. The best resolution would be to find some way to pay him off to leave. It may leave a bad taste in your mouth, but while he's there, he's doing damage and will probably cost more to the company than paying him to go away.

I get the emotion on both sides, but this is not a hill you want to die on. Crunch the numbers and do what is best for the company.

Answer 2

I think you made your own bed, here.

You passed up the ONLY qualified candidate (so far as you have said) for a "Boss's Nephew." You (collective, as in the whole company) need to either go to him, hat-in-hand, and make this right, or pay whatever you need to in order to get a qualified replacement.

I know how hard those qualifications are to come by. I think you need him a lot more than he needs you, and he knows it.

The company is the one in the wrong, here. Not he. You need to be working this with the higher management, and not with this engineer.

Answer 3

He is sending a message. You already know why he's doing it and you seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.

Your job is to pass the message where it's addressed: up.

Explain to your boss how screwed the company is. Explain why. Ask him/her to pass the message up.

Eventually, it'll reach someone who can resolve the situation, that is someone capable of firing the kid and promoting your guy. Or firing your guy and accepting the consequences.

The worst thing you can do is trying to resolve it yourself. If the promotion is outside your competences, then the message is not meant for you. The only thing you can achieve is to delay it until someone well up the chain will notice the problem and will start fixing it without understanding what's going on (eg. blaming you). You're not a side in this conflict, you're merely intermediate or obstacle in communication. Don't be an obstacle.

Answer 4

The other posters have brought up excellent points. I can provide more insight into the P.Eng. related concerns and reporting this engineer to his certification agency. But first things first:

Things normally run smoothly...

This engineer is the sole engineer...

...we depend on him...

He has always been a dependable employee

Remove the filler, and we see you've provoked a technical professional. Why?

the person who got the job is related to one of the members of the exec board, and is about 10 years younger than him;

This was a colossal mistake. You could have promoted another engineer or this guy himself, and benefited both him and the company, and instead put in an unqualified kid in his place. At least if it was another engineer, you could have BS'ed the guy and placated him possibly with a pay raise. By taking this course of action, you tell him that the company is irrational and does not act in good faith. If this is a publicly traded company, the board may be required to discipline the exec if he had a hand in this "promotion" when the likely lawsuit arises.

Onto the P.Eng. stuff. @JohnRStrohm draws attention to the elephant in the room: You can't force a P.Eng. to sign off on stuff. That's the point! By trying to force his hand, you're opening yourself to massive liability, and your customers won't be happy you tried to falsify safety ratings by threatening an employee with his job.

With respect to dealing with his "cagey" behavior, you can contact his licensing board and file a complaint. This will be difficult though, as he has all the domain-specific knowledge on your products, so nobody really is more of an expert on it than him. There goes your idea to hire someone to come in and "prove" he's being irrational. You could always throw rule #7 of the APEG Code of Ethics:

act as faithful agents of their clients or employers, maintain confidentiality and avoid a conflict of interest but, where such conflict arises, fully disclose the circumstances without delay to the employer or client

But he can always just throw the most important rule back in your face:

hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public, the protection of the environment and promote health and safety within the workplace;

Also, no you can't just rent a P.Eng. to sign off on your products. You'd need to sign him/her on as a contractor or regular employee, train them in the use and design of your products, have them learn all the little details and intricacy of said products. It'd be at least a 16 month lead time. I sincerely hope you weren't asking to pay someone to just sign off on them. Professional Engineers need to pass a series of exams and law and ethics, and be "of good character". One screw up, and that license is gone for good.

John also brings up another fantastic point:

but he will likely charge you an arm, a leg, and transplant rights on your left kidney for EACH signature, and he would be totally correct to do so, since he is legally responsible for that signature and the consequences of any screwups on your part. More to the point, the first question he will ask is "Why won't your in-house guy sign off on it?" and he may well refuse to touch the job at all.

Massive risk, little payout, unlimited liability. So what about replacing him?

Part of his job, though not written into his contract, is that he signs off on the work records of Engineers In Training (EITs), so they can complete the 4 years of supervision under a P.Eng. to become P.Eng.'s themselves. He seems to never have time to sign these lately, and it is all the prevents us from expediting the process so we can have more P.Eng.'s in our company.

He's realized he has got you by the balls, and is playing that card to its full potential. You could always try to report him for violation of #6 and #7 in the Code of Ethics:

(6) keep themselves informed in order to maintain their competence, strive to advance the body of knowledge within which they practice and provide opportunities for the professional development of their associates;

(7) conduct themselves with fairness, courtesy and good faith towards clients, colleagues and others, give credit where it is due and accept, as well as give, honest and fair professional comment;

However, as you noted, this isn't part of his contract, and he can't be forced to give positive reviews of his subordinates.

Sounds like your execs did severe harm to the company to do a favor for a family member of one of the board members. I'd document the hell out of this situation so there's proof you truly "had little say in the promotion process".

Now that you've covered your own butt, I'd say trying to have an honest discussion with the guy. If that gets you nowhere, you're probably going to have to terminate his employment and pay out the severance package. Firing someone for insubordination is a dangerous game when it comes to arguments over signing off on legal documents, and it's definitely not the sort of thing you want customers or the general public hearing about. It sounds like he's set you back at least 8-16 months in terms of shipping product updates, and up to 4 years for having an army of replacements trained.

Answer 5

My first instinct was to interpret our P.Eng's actions as rather unprofessional and in something of a grey area, but thinking on this further I think he is actually right on the mark.

The engineering hierarchy puts the most risk and the most responsibility on the most senior engineer. Given that he is not the Principal Engineer, it should be his responsibility to absolutely err on the side of caution - to design tests that are more rigorous than necessary, etc. If shortcuts or less stressful testing are deemed to be sufficient, it really should be the top Engineer who makes that call. Since that's not him the clear recourse here is to take this to the new Principal Engineer.

...but your new Principal Engineer is woefully unqualified, and therein lies the problem. You want your guy to act as Principal Engineer but you've made it clear that you don't want to pay him to be a Principal Engineer. This is a bit like hiring a Cardiac Surgeon and then paying him General Practitioner wages, subsequently getting upset when he gives you a referral instead of just doing the surgery. If you want a heart surgeon, you gotta pay him to be a heart surgeon. Same here. You want him to accept the responsibility of a more senior role than you are paying him for. You've put someone over his head who can't do the job required - checkmate.

You've just hired a brand new, shiny Principal Engineer whom, presumably, you are paying a massive wage to for exactly this purpose. If you need tests amended, make this new guy do his job. Whatever else are you paying him for? If you're looking for someone to fire for not doing the job you're paying them for, why on earth are you not looking squarely at this unqualified, overpaid PE who, apparently, can't even make a simple amendment to a test written by a subordinate under his management?

Answer 6

I think that if he got the promotion, this wouldn't be an issue, and that he's just trying to be difficult.

Prove it.

If you can't, you have to act as if he's doing it because of a sudden drop in quality compared to previous work, or because he's taking the job more seriously in the hopes of getting the promotion on the next pass, because clearly "being a positive team player" didn't get him there. Or that he wants to make a good impression on his new boss.

If you can, assemble the evidence, and get him to talk to HR about his responsibilities.

At the end of the day, while projecting can help you guess why an employee is struggling, unless they're willing to tell you, you can't truly know, and any actions you take based on your guess could make the problem more serious.

Answer 7

Ethically, the engineer and the company are both in grey areas. The OP says the engineer isn't doing anything strictly against the rules, and there are no legal restrictions on a company promoting somebody who is less competent. So he and the company are at an impasse. The company has a few options: Terminate his employment (rules vary by location), ignore him, or try to make him happy again. All of these will cost the company money. You can't force him to sign off on things, because that would destroy the whole point of having a P. Eng.

My first suggestion would be to offer him an apology and a substantial raise. The apology should come from the people who actually passed him over, but you apologizing is better than nothing. Find out whether he has grievances beyond the promotion. See what you can do to address those. If it were me, that would be the only way I'd consider staying. Plus this is probably the company's cheapest option at this point.

The company can fire the engineer, pay severance, miss contracts, and be unable to get out updates, or they can continue as is until the engineer leaves (same consequences, but uncertain timeline and no severance), or they can pay the engineer a higher salary until he leaves. And make sure that in the future, they've got at least 2 Professional Engineers on staff so they don't end up in the same boat again later. The company screwed up, and there only choice now is how they handle it.

I'd also be very, very cautious about putting this guy in a position of power ever again, and once I had another couple of engineers who could do his job, I'd look into letting him go with a decent severance package to avoid future antagonism. Right now, the company put themselves into a bad place, and it's going to take a lot more time and effort to get out of it than it took to get into it.

Answer 8

I don't think this situation is easily salvageable in the short term. My read is not necessarily that he is being malicious, just that he has checked out. When he was passed over for a promotion -- not due to the merits of his colleague, but due to a family connection, he probably felt betrayed and stopped caring about your company. He realized: none of it matters. The years of dedicated service and can-do attitude? "I've put in years at this company, and they don't care. Why should I try anymore? It's just making middle-management look good, and the execs know or care what I do."

So, he's stopped trying. He doesn't care if you meet deadlines anymore. Safety testing not perfect? Too bad. He's not going to exercise seasoned judgement anymore and read between the lines. He's just going to send it back and collect a paycheck. Thats all the job is anymore -- an (unfairly diminished) paycheck.

If possible, you can argue to upper management that he deserves a promotion. However, it sounds like you guys have already broken trust, and he is poisoning that well anyway, so who knows if that would do any good.

You could manufacture an opportunity for him, "if we meet sales figures this year, we will be opening up a new position that you would be ideally suited to and I would like to recommend you for." This allows him to save face, and may turn his attitude around. But if you promise, you better deliver.

Ultimately (and regrettably) in may be best just to let things run their course until either A) you can replace him, or B) his anger subsides.

Good luck!

Answer 9

Your best bet is to recommend to the senior management that they agree to let your P.Eng go, with 6 months notice and a full severance package. At the same time, you should offer your P.Eng an extra (supplementary) contract that stipulates that he will sign off on the remaining experience your existing trainees need, during his notice period, for (say) an extra 100k. He's within his rights to turn this down - but if you treat him with respect and ensure that it will be worth his while, it's likely he will accept.

It will also allow you to limit the damage done: It is clear you can't keep your P.Eng on in the long term.

You need to tread carefully, because you are being watched by the trainees. One whiff of foul play will encourage them to flee the very moment they are fully accredited (please do not even THINK of doing anything stupid, like planting false evidence to engineer a miscarriage of justice, as someone here has implied! That will only convince them to leave, regardless of how they viewed their former supervisor.)

With any luck, all parties can put this behind them in 6 months.

Answer 10

This is probably going to come across as blunt and perhaps mean-spirited, but the bottom line is this: your company is not beholden to "make things right" with this guy, your company is beholden to fix the problem. That's it. End of story. If fixing the problem means giving this guy the promotion he wanted then do what you can to make that happen. If it means finding a qualified replacement, then you need to go that route.

While I agree that the company kind of screwed this guy over and on one level I can really empathize with him in that situation, I would nevertheless be very wary about keeping a person who behaves like this on the payroll. First and foremost, this is a tactic that he did not have to use but did, and going forward, you have to take into account the idea that he will pull something like this again the next time he feels wronged about something. Second, I am sure that this incident will have left a bad taste in his mouth regarding your company and that may be something he never gets rid of for as long as he is employed with you. As the saying goes, contented cows make good milk. He may never be a "contented cow" for you again.

I think what you need to do can be summed up by the following:

1. Divorce your personal feelings from the situation and look at it from the cold eyes of a business professional. From the tone of the OP I believe that you are sympathetic towards him, but I think you've got to put that away. It's going to be a very tough decision to make, and down the line you don't want to look back and think that you've made it for the wrong reasons (either way).

2. Try to turn this into a comparison of numbers. How much is his intransigence costing you on a weekly or monthly or yearly basis? How much will it cost to find and hire a replacement? You really need to set this down both for yourself and for the sake of your company if you do decide that letting him go is the best option. It sounds like his actions are impacting the bottom line; get an honest appraisal of how much they are.

3. Consider changing your overall approval strategy here. I mean, I can understand that from a legal or at least semi-legal perspective you need a trained professional to sign off on certain things, and it may be too expensive to employ more than one at a time... but what are you going to do if this guy's replacement gets hit by a bus on the way to work? It would behoove you to seek out alternatives to having a bottleneck of one person at any point in the process, and that applies even if this guy somehow shapes up or gets the raise he was hoping to negotiate and behaves exactly the way he did before this whole thing began.

4. Hope for the best, assume the worst. You can confront this guy, sure, but if he's already told people he's basically waiting for you to fire him, it's probably not going to do much good. At the same time, this is an issue that's probably not going to go away by itself. It's likely to be very messy, but it's only going to get messier if you don't act on it quickly.

Sorry, wish I had better things to tell you...

Answer 11

Sorry, OP, but your post reads like you are being a petulant child, and if that is how you act around this PEng, I can understand why he is taking this course of action:

he's just trying to be difficult.

Is this what you would state in a court of law when the judge finds out you forced this PEng to rubber-stamp a safety review on threat of losing his job and a consumer of your product dies as a result? Is that what you're going to tell the friends and family of that consumer? Is that what you will tell the Globe and Mail or Business Insider or Forbes?

Is there any way to force him to stop this game?

Once again, is "game" the word you would use to describe the situation when you force him to rubber-stamp a safety review and someone dies? Is a proper safety review just a "game" to you and your company? Are you properly qualified to determine whether this is just a "game", or whether product safety has actually decreased? You very much do not want to be on the wrong side of answering that question, it could be very expensive for you and your company.

As with many upper-management types who come to Workplace SE, you are looking at this business problem as a people problem. The problem is, you are not qualified (and neither am I) to determine whether or not the safety tests are sufficiently rigorous; that's what the PEng is there for. It is your job, as upper management, to trust your PEng, and to not let things out the door if he doesn't give the OK, no matter what reason you think he has for doing so, and if it means your product is late to market, then so be it. So irrespective of whether the PEng is being petty, you have a responsibility to trust his judgment.

Now that that's out of the way, I have a solution to your problem of how to make the PEng stop doing these things: In theory, your PE is supposed to have at least as much experience as the PEng. I don't know about your company, but in the experiences I've had, in general, a promotion ladder works in the way that each higher rung on the ladder encompasses the competencies of the previous rung; an intermediate engineer should be at least as good as a junior, a senior at least as good as an intermediate, a principal at least as good as a senior, a CTO at least as good as a principal, so that different levels can cross-mentor and have meaningful discussions with their equivalent or lower levels. So therefore, your PE has the same qualifications (or ought to) as your PEng. Therefore, your solution is to just sideline your problematic PEng and have the PE do the safety reviews since he has the required expertise. Is there a particular reason you can't do this? If the PE is not competent to do the job of the PEng, then perhaps you should reconsider your choice of PE.

Answer 12

You are in a sticky situation. If you feel he is flagging things in retaliation or not in line with existing standards for those reviews, then raise this up the management chain.

If he is however, pointing out flaws in your code, then you need to keep fixing them and resubmitting, possibly asking to get a full list of what it will take to clear the app for release so that you can get everything fixed to his satisfaction.

Lastly if you are his manager, you need to sit him down, and set him straight. If he doesn't shape up then you will terminate him.

I think his professional certification is not the point here. If there are defined deficiencies then he should be listing all of them so you can have them resolved and then at that point he should be approving your builds. If he persists in not signing off, then proceed with your other options of putting him on probation or moving the issue up the chain.

Answer 13

Consider it as a reliability problem. Success means that everything passes through a single inspection point of failure. If the test, tester or test machine was working reliably, most of the product would pass. Now the fail rate is unacceptable and worse than before. So add a parallel test/tester. (Hire a new PE). Now rejects at gate 1 can be resubmitted at gate 2. IE an independent test exists.

BUT if the second, new tester (hired after a search process, and some time delay) agrees with Gate 1 tester that quality sucks - something has changed - has visible nepotism soured the whole team - "no point in trying, I'm not related to the boss" - and created a bad atmosphere and bad quality?

This assumes that you can hire a new PE (since people talk, the new guy - if he's any good - will realise he is entering a war zone - and may pass).

Since all these issues of poor output/quality are arriving at your desk (and are visible from above) - how long before the favoured nephew comes calling looking for your head?

Maybe you need a plan B and a lifeboat for yourself? You've already more or less admitted that internal politics prevail over sound commercial and technical judgement.

I'd start by talking with your existing PE (lots of fish in the sea, more opportunities for promotion, etc, etc) - depending on whether he trusts you or not that may bear fruit, or at least give more info about what is needed to fix the matter.

Most seasoned professionals are used to "Doing the impossible, for the ungrateful, frequently" but it hurts to have your nose rubbed in it. Maybe a technical conference trip or a course at the company's expense could sweeten the situation.

Finally - if the PE has access to a computer and this website - unless the details are well concealed, you'll have open warfare in a few days.....

Answer 14

This is exactly what you're paid to do, sit him down and talk to him. Find out what his grievance is, don't surmise it and if need be hand out an ultimatum or whatever disciplinary measure you can and move forwards from there.

Until you have had that conversation you have not started doing your job on this issue. Whatever reason he didn't get the promotion is not really your concern if you cannot do anything about it. Your concern is to protect the company and ensure workflow is smooth. I would be sympathetic but firm.

I would also take each on of his issues found with the products seriously, keep a track on them and if necessary after talking to him, get a second opinion from someone with the required qualification. In other words do it properly, don't make any assumptions based on third party hearsay.

If I found that it is just sour grapes on his part and I can't get him back to work, I would then take the problem up the line and make whatever recommendation I thought appropriate and move forwards from there.

Answer 15

Promoting the P.End reinforces the message to the entire staff that dedicated service gets you nowhere - instead employees need to either sabotage the company to get pay raises/promotions, or have special connections to the board.

Sending such a message can be incredibly expensive because it usually increases employee turnover and decreases productivity at the same time. If the company is willing to get the employee back without sending the wrong message (because the employee is beyond excellent, or a replacement is harder to find than you assumed when you created the situation in the first place), then you'll need a fall guy from higher up. This allows people to blame a person - who's gone - for the entire mess, instead of blaming the company. The board member whose nephew got promoted would work, good luck convincing him to step down.

I can see various more realistic solutions, but all of them require you to hire another P.Eng, either to take away some of the current P.Eng's power, or to replace him.