BEM UPDATE
INGENIEUR
BEM UPDATE
INGENIEUR
ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS IN MALAYSIA
Following legal amendments , there are now seven categories of engineering professionals who can be registered with the Board of Engineers Malaysia .
By Prof . Ir . Dr K S Kannan
The growth of engineering in Malaysia dates back to the establishment of the Public Works Department in 1872 , which created a great demand for technical staff to implement Government projects . Many early engineers were not trained engineers . Instead they were mainly technicians who rose up to the ranks to assume positions of responsibility to implement major public works projects such as the construction of public buildings and the infrastructure for water and power supplies , drainage and irrigation , and roads and railways .
Nevertheless , a start was made to provide engineering education at sub-professional level to locals with the establishment of a technical class in Kuala Lumpur in 1904 . The technical class was upgraded to a technical school and later to a college – the Technical College – and moved to its new premises in 1955 . The College marked the beginning of the early days of the Malaysian engineer , a rare breed until then . The Technical College was the starting point of a tertiary engineering education . Many of its graduates went on to continue their studies in universities in the United Kingdom or sat for UK professional institution examinations to qualify as engineers . Then , the ultimate achievement of engineering education in Malaysia was the setting up of the Engineering Faculty at the newly established University of Malaysia in Pantai Valley , Kuala Lumpur .
Post-independence nation-building resulted in the implementation of large scale national engineering projects at an ever faster pace . Indeed , Malaysia has been on this continual spiral of economic development as it rose from an agricultural- to an industrial- to the current ICTknowledge based economy – and at each phase , the country has embarked on the development of appropriate infrastructural and technological projects that have led to the increasing specialisation of engineering disciplines .
Not surprisingly , engineers continue to be in great demand till this day . There are now close to 100,000 registered qualified engineers in the country , many of whom have graduated from local institutions of higher learning . As at July 2016 , there are 15 public universities and 29 private universities offering engineering education at professional levels . There are also a large number of private colleges offering engineering twinning programmes between local and foreign universities .
The Registration of Engineers Act , 1967
Prior to 1972 , engineers could only practice engineering as ‘ authorised persons ’ under the Architects Ordinance ( 1952 ), which restricted qualified engineers to the submission of reinforced concrete plans for buildings up to two storeys high and floor areas not exceeding 3,000 square feet . The Architects Ordinance was obviously unsuitable with the advent of high rise buildings . As a result , the Institution of Engineers Malaysia formed a Committee in 1959 to work on the Engineers Bill to be tabled in Parliament through the Ministry of Works , which was in charge of the Architects Ordinance . After numerous meetings between engineers , architects and surveyors , it was finally agreed that three similar but separate Bills be prepared – one for each profession – and tabled in Parliament . The Bills were passed in August 1967 . That for engineers was the Registration of Engineers Act ( REA ), implemented five years later in 1972 . The latest amendment to the Act was in 2015
The main function of the Board of Engineers ( BEM ) is to keep and maintain the Register which contains the following : Names , addresses and other particulars of : Part A – Professional Engineers Part B – Graduate Engineers Part D – Engineering Consultancy Practices
50 VOL 68 OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2016