An engineering workforce underpins a nation’s infrastructure. A nationally consistent registration scheme would support standards, reduce regulatory barriers, improve workforce mobility and unlock productivity.
Peter Gow FIEAust CPEng(Ret) EngExec is former Western Australian Building Commissioner and Chair of Engineers Australia’s Professional Standards Committee.
Australia is facing a productivity challenge that is both urgent and structural. Across infrastructure delivery, energy transition, advanced manufacturing and housing construction, productivity growth has slowed, while project costs and complexity continue to rise.
Engineers sit at the centre of these national priorities. The profession underpins sectors responsible for a significant share of Australia’s economic output, technological advancement and resilience against global shocks. Good engineering saves lives, increases living standards and improves productivity. Poor engineering can have the opposite effect.
Yet despite the scale and importance of engineering work, Australia does not regulate the profession consistently across jurisdictions. In many cases, engineering work can be done by anyone. Government regulation of engineering work has increased in recent years, but engineers operate within a patchwork of state and territory registration schemes, each with different legislative frameworks, competency assessments and areas of practice.
The fragmented regulatory landscape is not only an administrative inconvenience, but a productivity barrier.
Identifying appropriately trained engineers and ensuring that only they can do engineering work is necessary to drive innovation and economic growth, while protecting the safety and wellbeing of those impacted by our work. A nationally consistent engineering registration framework that enables engineers to register once and practise anywhere supports this, and would remove unnecessary friction from the labour market, strengthen safety and professional standards, and support more efficient delivery of national infrastructure and innovation.
For a country seeking to boost competitiveness, this reform is both practical and overdue.
The productivity challenge
Engineers are central to Australia’s economic and technological capacity. More than 450,000 engineers work across the Australian economy, making engineering the largest component of the STEM workforce.¹
Engineering expertise underpins industries such as mining, construction, manufacturing, energy and telecommunications. Sectors that together generate more than half of Australia’s value-added economic output.²
At the same time, Australia is confronting mounting productivity pressures. Infrastructure projects are experiencing cost escalation and delays, and key sectors such as construction have seen productivity decline significantly over the past decade.¹
Improving productivity in this environment requires two things:
- Better utilisation of engineering expertise
- Reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers that constrain workforce mobility and project delivery
Nationally consistent engineering registration addresses both.
A patchwork of regulation
Unlike many other professions, including medicine, law and architecture, engineering registration in Australia is not nationally harmonised. Instead, engineers must navigate a complex system of state and territory schemes.
Some jurisdictions operate comprehensive professional engineering registration frameworks. Others regulate only engineering work related to buildings or specialist facilities.
The inconsistencies span multiple dimensions:
- Areas of engineering that require registration
- Legislative frameworks
- Competency assessment models
- Continuing professional development (CPD) requirements
- Sector scope (some schemes apply only to building work)
For engineers working across jurisdictions, navigating these differences is costly and inefficient.
The financial cost of fragmentation
Engineering firms frequently operate across state borders, particularly on national infrastructure, energy and defence projects. In these environments, inconsistent registration systems translate directly into higher costs and reduced efficiency.
Credentialling data from industry partnerships tells a compelling story:
- Engineering firms often pay multiple registration fees for staff working across jurisdictions
- Large engineering firms report credentialling costs between $100,000 and $500,000 annually³
- Industry-wide, fragmented registration, estimated to cost around $144 million per year in duplicate registrations and administrative overheads³
These costs are only part of the problem. Regulatory fragmentation also leads to:
- Delays in project mobilisation when engineers must secure additional registration
- Duplication of competency assessments and CPD record-keeping
- Reduced ability for firms to deploy the best talent where it is needed most
- Work drifting to the least regulated states and the least qualified engineers
In an era of national infrastructure pipelines and increasingly mobile engineering services, these barriers are counterproductive.
Workforce mobility
The engineering workforce is inherently mobile. Engineers frequently work on projects located in different states, often simultaneously. They may also contribute remotely to design and engineering analysis across jurisdictions.
However, fragmented registration requirements limit this mobility.
Consider a common scenario. An electrical engineer based in Victoria may design renewable energy infrastructure in the ACT through Automatic Mutual Recognition, and in any other state except Queensland because it doesn’t register that area of engineering. The same engineer will need to undertake a separate registration process in Queensland to do the work there. The result is uncertainty, duplication and inefficiency.
A nationally consistent system would enable engineers to move seamlessly between jurisdictions, and to work on projects in any jurisdiction, ensuring that expertise can be deployed quickly where national priorities demand it.
Safety, standards and public trust
Registration reform is not solely about productivity. It is also about protecting public safety and strengthening professional accountability.
Engineering failures, whether in buildings, infrastructure or energy systems, can have significant consequences for communities. Registration schemes provide mechanisms for regulators to investigate misconduct, enforce standards and remove unsafe practitioners from the profession.
However, the current system creates regulatory gaps. In some jurisdictions, registration applies only to specific engineering work, meaning an engineer deregistered in one context may still operate in others.
Nationally consistent registration would ensure:
- Uniform competency standards
- Consistent CPD requirements
- Stronger oversight and accountability across all engineering practice
This approach aligns with international practice. Many comparable economies, including the United States, Canada, Japan and several European countries, require professional engineers to be registered before undertaking work that affects public safety.
Leveraging international standards
Engineering is uniquely positioned to support national regulatory harmonisation because the profession already operates within well-established international competency frameworks.
Australia is a founding signatory to the Washington, Dublin and Sydney Accords, which recognise equivalent engineering qualifications across multiple countries.
Through the International Engineering Alliance, competency standards for professional engineers are globally aligned, supporting both international mobility and consistent professional practice.
This international alignment means that developing a nationally consistent registration scheme does not require reinventing professional standards. Instead, it involves aligning existing state frameworks with globally recognised benchmarks.
It’s clear that engineering is one of the most feasible professions for achieving national licensing harmonisation.
READ: The history of the Washington Accord – and the Australians who made it happen
A pathway to reform
Fortunately, governments are listening. Late last year, treasurers identified harmonising engineer registration as a prime opportunity to boost national productivity. States and territories will be incentivised to align through the $900 million National Productivity Fund.
There are a few models that treasurers could consider for implementation. While a new federal regulator is one approach, states and territories could each retain their regulatory responsibilities while enacting “model legislation” or by using applied law from another jurisdiction. The National Competition Council has also been tasked with reviewing how mutual recognition arrangements are working (or not) in practice.
As governments weigh up their options, Engineers Australia continues to advocate for a straight-forward register once, practise anywhere approach, similar to a driver’s licence. This reflects feedback from practising engineers that existing mutual recognition arrangements are simply not working because state registration schemes are too dissimilar.
No-brainer next step
Engineering is one of Australia’s largest and most strategically important professional workforces. Any regulatory barrier affecting engineers ultimately affects national productivity.
A nationally consistent engineering registration scheme would deliver measurable benefits including improved workforce mobility, reduced compliance costs, stronger professional standards, improved safety and public confidence, and greater global competitiveness, aligning Australia with international best practice.
In short, it would allow the engineering workforce to operate as a truly national profession.
Australia has already recognised the productivity gains of harmonising licensing for other professions. Extending the same principle to engineering is a logical next step.
Because when engineers can bring their expertise to projects without artificial barriers, the entire economy benefits.
This essay was originally published in the May 2026 edition of create with the headline ‘Register once, practise anywhere’.
Learn about Engineers Australia’s role to publicly advocate on issues that affect the profession.
References
¹ Engineers Australia, Productivity in Australia – Senate Select Committee Submission, 2026.
² Engineers Australia, Productivity Commission Inquiry – Occupational Licensing and International Standards Submission, 2025.
³ Engineers Australia, Productivity Commission Submission – Building a Skilled and Adaptable Workforce, 2025.
⁴ Engineers Australia, Submission to Treasury – National Licensing for Electrical Occupations, 2025.
