What's Competent Got to Do With It?
Rationalizing Qualifications

By BRANDON L. WARD

Years before the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, the American Engineering Alliance (AEA) had voiced its concern to the then-city Transportation Commissioner, Wilbur Chapman, about the agency's unorthodox managerial arrangement of having a non-engineer as the managerial head of its Bridge Repair and Maintenance program. Surprisingly, the response of the agency's Chief Engineer to this concern was, in effect, mind your business. In a letter to the AEA, the chief put his argument thusly: "the executive management of this agency [DOT] and this division [Bridges] has the responsibility for determining what organizational structure is preferred at any given time and which personnel appointments are appropriate."

Brandon L. Ward is president of the New York City Municipal Chapter of Blacks in Government, an employee advocacy group. He is a Mechanical Engineer with the Department of Transportation. He can be reached at brandonward@nycbig.com .

Qualifications Relative

I have conveniently referred to this rationalization in previous articles to, in effect, provide a snapshot of the mindset of the DOT's engineering leadership. Needless to say, no matter how much some of us rant and rave about the double standards we see in what constitutes "appropriate" qualifications for mission-critical positions in our respective agencies, the reality is, the fine line between qualified and qualification is getting thinner. So much so that some would encourage us to believe that like the Geico commercial, management of the city's bridges is so easy, "even a caveman can do it."

For instance, before the summer of 1999, here's some of what you would find on the curriculum vitae of the person in charge of the city's Bridge Repair and Maintenance operations: a bachelor of science and master of science degrees in Civil Engineering; a Professional Engineering (PE) license, and considerable years of industry experience in bridge design and construction. However, after the summer of 1999, here are a few things you will not find on the curriculum vitae of the Executive Director of Bridge Repair and Maintenance: a BS degree in Engineering or an MBA.

As an inside observer, I must confess that the BS factor is often high when it comes to agencies providing a precise meaning of the word qualified; clearly it tends to depend on the situation. For instance, rationalizing her appointment of an unqualified individual to a senior-level position in the agency, a former DOT Commissioner stated that "qualifications are guidelines only, and it is common for hires not to meet all such requirements provided they excel in other areas." Huh! Mind you, this commissioner (Iris Weinshall) was, in a prior career incarnation, the number two person in the Department of Citywide Administrative Services - the agency responsible for enforcing the city's civil service laws and EEO policy.

Addition by Color

Not surprisingly then, there is a real belief among many non-white employees that at the root of the whose qualified or unqualified sentiment of some deciders-in-charge is race and ethnicity. After all, for whites one-plus-one is eleven while for others, one-plus-one is two.

It is sad but also funny how the shamelessness factor of some decider tends to rise when it comes down to de-emphasizing the meaning of job qualifications. In one breath, for example, a contractor with no movable bridge design or construction experience would be deemed unqualified by the agency for lacking the requisite experience. Meanwhile, in another breath we are encouraged to believe that a non-engineer can supervise engineers provided he/she does not venture from administrative decision-making into engineering decision-making. Essentially, we are encouraged to believe that administrative decisions, like evaluating the engineering intuit of your engineers and deciding which one is best-qualified for a given assignment, does not require an engineering judgment - it is uniquely administrative.

Frankly, I am not wholly convinced that technical and administrative decisions are mutually exclusive in the decision-making process. Between you and me, everyone gets tempted to wax technical about the structural integrity of our city's bridges. That is why Christianity regards temptation as such a treat that we don't even bother asking God for help to resist it. Instead we pray, "Lead us not into temptation."

Standards Needed

If anything, we should have learned something from the Bush administration's management of the war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After all, even with an MBA - from Harvard Business School, no less - President Bush has failed to master the "administration" of these debacles. Yet, in DOT, we are encouraged to believe that informed engineering decisions about the city's bridge repair and maintenance can be channeled through a non-engineer. Hopefully nothing gets lost in translation.

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times titled, "Catch Me, I'm Falling," Samuel I. Schwartz, a former DOT Chief Engineer, offered this insight: "Every state must set minimum maintenance standards and make it illegal for a jurisdiction to not meet them. A federal infrastructure inspector general should have to certify each state's program with his or her professional engineer's stamp."

Translation: qualified professional engineers must be in responsible charge of overseeing and approving, technically and administratively, our city's infrastructure management.