Professional Engineering Continuing Education
Some engineering licensing boards require all or part of a Professional Engineer’s continuing education to concern the health, safety, and welfare of the public. This page explains what HSW means, how qualifying subjects are commonly evaluated, and how engineers can select appropriate courses.
HSW stands for health, safety, and welfare. In professional engineering, these terms concern the engineer’s responsibility to protect the public from unreasonable risks associated with infrastructure, buildings, equipment, industrial processes, environmental conditions, transportation systems, utilities, and other engineered works.
Health
Health-related subjects address conditions that can cause illness, injury, exposure, contamination, or long-term adverse effects. Examples include drinking-water quality, wastewater treatment, ventilation, indoor air quality, hazardous materials, industrial hygiene, sanitation, and environmental exposure control.
Safety
Safety-related subjects concern the prevention of accidents, structural failures, equipment hazards, fires, electrical incidents, transportation crashes, flooding, and other events that may injure people or damage property.
Welfare
Welfare generally concerns the reliable, accessible, resilient, and responsible operation of systems serving the public. It may include accessibility, sustainability, infrastructure reliability, environmental protection, community resilience, and the continued availability of essential public services.
A course is more likely to qualify as HSW when its principal educational purpose is to improve an engineer’s ability to protect the public. The course title alone is not necessarily sufficient. The learning objectives, technical content, application to engineering practice, and relationship to public consequences should also be considered.
The following categories commonly have a direct relationship to public health, safety, or welfare when presented as substantive engineering instruction. Qualification still depends on the actual course content and the applicable licensing-board rule.
A course does not necessarily qualify as HSW merely because it is useful to an engineering business or is attended by engineers.
Less Likely to Qualify
May Qualify With the Proper Focus
Context matters. For example, a general spreadsheet course may not qualify, while advanced instruction on using engineering software to analyze structural stability, electrical faults, flood hazards, or process safety may have a direct HSW application.
Some licensing requirements connect acceptable HSW education to the licensee’s area of professional practice. This helps ensure that continuing education maintains or improves competence in subjects the engineer may actually apply.
A course on protective-relay coordination may have a clear public-safety connection for an electrical engineer working with power systems. The same course may have little relationship to the practice of a civil engineer whose work is limited to land development.
Conversely, a stormwater-management course may be directly relevant to a civil or environmental engineer but less relevant to an engineer whose practice is limited to electronic-device design. Engineers should select subjects that reasonably support their current practice, an anticipated area of practice, or professional responsibilities they are qualified to undertake.
There is no single nationwide HSW rule controlling every Professional Engineer. State and territorial licensing boards establish their own continuing-education requirements.
A board may require a specific number of HSW hours, require technical courses that safeguard the public, limit nontechnical professional-development hours, or require the subject to relate directly to the engineer’s area of practice.
For example, North Dakota presently requires at least 20 of its 30 biennial professional-development hours to be in technical subjects that directly safeguard public health, safety, and welfare. The rule identifies technical engineering or land-surveying software and technical professional-management subjects as possible qualifying areas, while limiting nontechnical professional-management education.
Other boards may use terms such as technical subjects, professional competency, acceptable subject matter, area of practice, or subjects contributing to public protection without specifically labeling the hours as HSW.
Because terminology and interpretations can change, licensees should review their board’s current statutes, administrative rules, renewal instructions, and published guidance before relying on a course for a mandatory HSW requirement.
Find your state’s PE continuing-education requirementsDuring a continuing-education audit, the course title may not provide enough information for a licensing board to determine whether the subject qualifies. Supporting documentation can help establish the connection.
Online-PDH retains course-completion records and may provide supporting course information under its recordkeeping and audit-assistance policies. The licensee remains responsible for selecting appropriate courses and retaining the documentation required by each licensing board.
Before enrolling, compare the course description and learning objectives with your professional practice and the wording of your board’s requirement.
Determine whether the board requires HSW hours, technical hours, area-of-practice education, ethics, laws and rules, or another specified subject.
Look beyond the title. Review the description, objectives, technical depth, and intended engineering applications.
Determine how the instruction could support public health, reduce safety risks, improve reliability, protect property, or advance public welfare.
Preserve the certificate, description, learning objectives, receipt, and any additional documentation required by the licensing board.
Not necessarily. A technical course is more likely to qualify when its content has a meaningful relationship to protecting public health, safety, property, infrastructure, environmental quality, or public welfare.
Generally, a course does not need to address health, safety, and welfare equally. A substantial relationship to one or more of these public-protection objectives may be sufficient, depending on the applicable board rule.
It may qualify when the course substantively addresses an engineer’s obligation to protect the public, manage technical risk, disclose unsafe conditions, maintain competence, or exercise responsible charge. A general ethics course without an engineering or public-protection connection may not qualify.
Technical project-management instruction may qualify when it addresses design control, quality assurance, risk management, code compliance, construction safety, system reliability, or another public-protection responsibility. General personnel or business-administration training is less likely to qualify.
The licensing board has final authority to interpret its continuing-education requirements and decide whether a particular course or activity is acceptable.
Continue Your Professional Development
Browse technical continuing-education courses covering engineering design, infrastructure, environmental protection, system reliability, risk reduction, professional responsibility, and public safety.