Our industry requires us to have a licensed Professional Engineer on staff to sign off on our operations, but our current licensed engineer has a low GWC score for his leadership seat and is constantly causing bottlenecks. How do we handle this seat when we legally need his credential to operate?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You must separate the legal credential from the leadership seat on your Accountability Chart. A common mistake is putting a licensed specialist into a major department head seat simply because they hold the necessary license or degree. If your engineer does not pass the GWC check for leading and managing the department, you must take him out of that seat. However, you can still leverage his legal credential. Redesign your Accountability Chart so that the leadership and management of the engineering department is handled by someone who actually passes the GWC check for leadership. Create a separate, highly specialized individual contributor seat, such as Chief Technical Sign-Off or Senior Regulatory Engineer. The five roles for this new seat will focus purely on technical review, compliance, and signing off on designs, completely removing the responsibilities of managing people, budgets, or operational strategy. This allows your licensed engineer to do what he is actually good at and wants to do, while freeing up your operations to be run by a true manager. By separating legal compliance from leadership, you eliminate the operational bottleneck, satisfy regulatory requirements, and ensure that every seat on your leadership team is occupied by a person who fully gets, wants, and has the capacity to lead.