Experience Level: Any level of experience

In an earlier PE Institute session I examined what engineers owe the public. This is the operational sequel: what a leader does on Monday morning when a tool arrives that makes those obligations harder to discharge.

Engineering leaders are being pushed to move fast on AI and automation while their teams push back - and that pushback is often labeled resistance to change when it is something else. For a licensed professional engineer, adopting a tool that drafts, calculates, or designs is not a productivity question. It is a Responsible Charge question. The seal is personal, and "the software generated it" has never been a defense.

The session works through NSPE Board of Ethical Review Case 24-2, Use of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Practice, where an engineer's AI-assisted report was largely defensible and the AI-assisted design documents were not. The most instructive detail is a leadership detail: the engineer's mentor and quality-assurance reviewer had retired and had not been replaced. The tool did not remove the review layer. The organization did.

Attendees leave with a working method: how to tell four kinds of resistance apart, and five leadership moves covering the accountability line, surfacing tools already in use, tiering work by consequence, rebuilding the review layer, and talking honestly about job change - plus a 90-day sequence they can start Monday.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Tell professional-standards resistance apart from competence, identity, and change-fatigue resistance - and respond to each differently.

2. Apply the Responsible Charge standard (NSPE PS 10-1778) to AI-assisted work products.

3. Tier AI-assisted work by consequence using five factors, including licensure exposure.

4. Set verification and documentation proportional to that tier, including what was not checked.

5. Talk to a team about automation without promising what cannot be promised.

1 PDH

Pricing:

NSPE Members: FREE

Non-members: $75.00 (Join NSPE today and save on this purchase.)

To register, add this webinar to your shopping cart and check-out in the NSPE e-store.