Ordem dos Engenheiros

Ordem dos Engenheiros
Abbreviation OE
Website OE

The Ordem dos Engenheiros (OE, English: Order of Engineers) is the regulatory and licensing body for the engineer profession in Portugal. It is headquartered in Lisbon, and has several regional branches in other Portuguese cities.

It is illegal to provide engineering services or sign engineering projects in Portugal without being a member of the Order. However, many professionals in engineering (such as technical engineers, short-cycle degree engineers or engineers with unaccredited courses) are allowed to work in the field since that they do not provide engineering services or sign engineering projects, and officially, they can not use the title "engineer". The Ordem dos Engenheiros is the entity responsible for the accreditation of engineers and engineering courses in Portugal. The accreditation process for engineering courses exemptes candidates, possessing an accredited course degree, of such examination. According to the highest responsible of OE (who has the title of bastonário), candidate examination from unaccredited courses has a success rate ranging from 50% to 30%, depending on the engineering field. Over three hundred engineering degrees are awarded in Portugal by public university, public polytechnic, and private institutions, however, accredited courses are about one hundred.

Accreditation

Seat of the Ordem dos Engenheiros, Lisbon.

A full chartered engineer (Engenheiro) in Portugal used to have a compulsory five-year course known as licenciatura (licentiate) which was granted exclusively by universities. Only engineers having the licenciatura diploma, graduated at the universities, were capacitated to develop any kind of project in engineering and were universally recognized by the Engineers Association of Portugal (Ordem dos Engenheiros). The polytechnic institutions of engineering, born after 1974, used to award the professional title of Engenheiro Técnico (Technical Engineer), a title conferred after a three years course; the degree was known as bacharelato. Polytechnic institutions conferred 3-years bacharelato degrees in several technical engineering specializations, until the late 1990s. At this time new legal decrees were adopted by Portuguese State (Administrative Rule 413A/98 of 17 July 1998), and it started to award 3 + 2 licenciaturas bietápicas (bacharelato plus one or two extra years, conferring the licenciatura degree - a degree that had been awarded exclusively by the universities). In the mid-2000s those institutions adopted new more selective admission rules which were imposed to every Portuguese higher education institution by the State, excluding for the first time in their history the applicants with negative (less than 95/200) admission marks (in Portugal admission marks to higher education institutions are based on a combination of high school marks, and results of the entrance exams, and competition is based in a numerus clausus system). However, in many cases, polytechnic courses from several institutions across the country, started to require admission entrance exams in fields not directly related with the course (for instance, an electrical engineering or computer engineering course allows a biology entrance exam instead of mathematics and/or physics, unlike what is seen in most universities for the same engineering fields). This is the main reason many engineering courses awarded by several Portuguese polytechnic institutions and a few universities, are not currently accredited by Ordem dos Engenheiros. This is not exclusive of polytechnic engineerings since that in other polytechnic fields, like in polytechnic accountancy and management institutes or schools, history, geography, or even Portuguese language entrance exams are allowed instead of mathematics and economics, unlike what is allowed for the university courses in similar fields, although some departments of certain university institutions are using the same criteria to fight the increasing number of places left vacant every year.

Today, after many reforms and changes in higher education occurred since 1998 to the 2000s, the formal differences between polytechnic and university licenciatura degrees in engineering are in general null, and due to the Bologna process both graduates should be recognized equally all across Europe. However, there are many engineering courses whose degrees are still not recognized by the Ordem dos Engenheiros (the highest Portuguese authority in accreditation of professional engineers), especially engineering courses conferred by several polytechnical institutes and many private institutions. Among the oldest recognized and most extensively accredited engineering courses in Portugal, are those engineering degrees awarded by the state-run universities. After the large 1998 - 2000s reforms and upgrades, some polytechnic engineering licenciatura degrees started to be offered by the largest state-run polytechnic institutes, have been accredited in the same way with official recognition by Ordem dos Engenheiros.

After the implementation of the Bologna process, the engineering courses should be accredited only after the student is awarded with the second study cycle diploma which confers the master's degree (mestrado), and the engineering first cycle which confers the licenciatura is not sufficient to be an accredited full chartered engineer in Portugal or in Europe.

List of accredited courses

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ordem dos Engenheiros: A Licenciatura em Engenharia e a Qualificação Profissional - Lista de Cursos Acreditados, accessed December 2006
  2. ↑ ACCREDITATION OF ENGINEERING COURSES IN PORTUGAL, FEANI - European Federation of National Engineering Associations, accessed December 2006

External links

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