The Ordem dos Engenheiros is the regulatory and licensing body for the engineering profession in Portugal. It is headquartered in Lisbon, and has several regional branches in other Portuguese cities. The OE was established by law in 1936. It succeeded the Portuguese Association of Civil Engineers, founded nearly 70 years earlier. The OE is a member of many international engineering organizations, including general engineering ones and those for specific engineering disciplines. The OE's mission is to contribute to the progress of engineering by supporting the efforts of its members in scientific, professional and social areas, as well as to ensure compliance with professional regulations and ethics. It is illegal to provide engineering services or sign engineering projects in Portugal without being a member of the OE. However, many other professionals in engineering are allowed to work inthe field as long as they do not provide engineering services or sign engineering projects, and they cannot officially use the title "engineer". The OE is the entity responsible for the accreditation of engineering degrees and engineering courses in Portugal. Engineers graduating with an accredited degree are exempt from the licensing exams conducted by the Order. According to the chairman of the OE, only 30 to 50 percent of the candidates with an unaccredited degree pass the licensing exams, depending on the particular engineering field. Over three hundred engineering degrees are awarded in Portugal by public universities, public polytechnic schools, and private institutions. However, only about one hundred of these are accredited degrees.
Accreditation
A full chartered engineer in Portugal used to have a compulsory five-year course known as licenciatura which was granted exclusively by universities. Only engineers having the licenciatura diploma, graduated at the universities, were capacitated to develop any kind of project in engineering and were universally recognized by the Engineers Association of Portugal. The polytechnic institutions of engineering, born after 1974, used to award the professional title of Engenheiro Técnico, a title conferred after a three years course; the degree was known as bacharelato. Polytechnic institutions conferred 3-years bacharelato degrees in several technical engineering specializations, until the late 1990s. At this time new legal decrees were adopted by Portuguese State, and it started to award 3 + 2 licenciaturas bietápicas. In the mid-2000s those institutions adopted new more selective admission rules which were imposed to every Portuguese higher education institution by the State, excluding for the first time in their history the applicants with negative admission marks. However, in many cases, polytechnic courses from several institutions across the country, started to require admission entrance exams in fields not directly related with the course. This is the main reason many engineering courses awarded by several Portuguese polytechnic institutions and a few universities, are not currently accredited by Ordem dos Engenheiros. This is not exclusive of polytechnic engineerings since that in other polytechnic fields, like in polytechnic accountancy and management institutes or schools, history, geography, or even Portuguese language entrance exams are allowed instead of mathematics and economics, unlike what is allowed for the university courses in similar fields, although some departments of certain university institutions are using the same criteria to fight the increasing number of places left vacant every year. Today, after many reforms and changes in higher education occurred since 1998 to the 2000s, the formal differences between polytechnic and university licenciatura degrees in engineering are in general null, and due to the Bologna process both graduates should be recognized equally all across Europe. However, there are many engineering courses whose degrees are still not recognized by the Ordem dos Engenheiros, especially engineering courses conferred by several polytechnical institutes and many private institutions. Among the oldest recognized and most extensively accredited engineering courses in Portugal, are those engineering degrees awarded by the state-run universities. After the large 1998 - 2000s reforms and upgrades, some polytechnic engineering licenciatura degrees started to be offered by the largest state-run polytechnic institutes, have been accredited in the same way with official recognition by Ordem dos Engenheiros.
