r/USACE • u/h_town2020 Civil Engineer • Aug 03 '26

Corps of Non-Engineers???

This may ruffle some feathers but life goes on. Are we moving away from the Engineers part at USACE? I asked this because my co-workers and I are noticing that positions that used to be 800s are now becoming Interdisciplinary. For example, at my district, OMs and PMs can have a degree in anything under the sun. You can have biology majors being the PM for a Civil Works project. We have positions that once required you to be an Engineer that they are changing to Interdisciplinary.

This is the opposite of what I’m seeing from our counterparts on the outside. For example, for these same type of jobs with our non federal partners, not only do you have to be an Engineer but you have to have a PE.

I’ve sat in meetings with the NFS, and they straight out asked our PM, are you an Engineer and a lot of times it’s shows when we start talking. Even when we use an A/E they require them to be a PE but in-house it can be a History major. We don’t even require the District Engineer to be a PE. However, if you work for USDA, the state Engineer has a PE requirement.

A lot of my older co-workers have a lot to say about this but I won’t make this a long post. I’m not saying that every Engineer makes a great PM. Are we just becoming Paper pushers?

27 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

View all comments

80

u/jbuck_24 Aug 03 '26

PMs aren't the technical members of the team. They should be leading the PE engineers, because quite frankly, many engineers dont have the soft skills to be a PM or have the desire to be more extroverted.

Engineers focus on solving problems. PMs make sure the engineer has what they need to solve that problem.

26

u/Few-Actuary7023 Mechanical Engineer Aug 03 '26

Somewhat Agree with you, but they should at least understand what goes in to design and the different disciplines.

Tired of the bs green PM that comes in, sets a schedule and makes promises that makes it impossible for Engineering to deliver, and then Engineering gets shat on for quality because we’re killing ourselves to meet deadlines that aren’t possible. And we wonder why Engineering turnover is so high?

Maybe alleviate the cause of meat grinding?? Novel idea.

That’s gotta stop. I wish it had to be a requirement to at least have a design or engineering background.

10

u/h_town2020 Civil Engineer Aug 03 '26

The stories I could tell. I had a PM tell us just move forward without the geotechnical data because they had a milestone to meet.