Local engineer, surveyor fined
A longtime engineer and land surveyor in Fayette County was fined $7,000 by the Pennsylvania Department of State for practicing engineering and surveyor work when his licenses had expired. Terry McMillen of Uniontown was assessed civil penalties of $3,000 for practicing engineering without a valid license and $4,000 for practicing surveyor work without a license. Both penalties are dated Jan. 24.
McMillen, who has worked in his field for decades and done work for various county agencies, confirmed Friday that he did work for a time after his licenses had lapsed but said he corrected the problem as soon as he became aware of it. According to the Department of State Web site, both of McMillen’s licenses are now valid through September.
McMillen said the saga began when he was moving his firm of McMillen Engineering Inc. from Hopwood, where it was located for more than 20 years, into a new building at the Fayette County Business Park on Route 40 in South Union Township a few years ago.
When the move occurred, McMillen said that was the time the state sent him a renewal for his licenses, which must be renewed every two years. McMillen said because Pennsylvania will not allow official mail to be forwarded, he didn’t get the renewal notification and didn’t think about it because of the move.
“Renewing my license never came to my brain,” McMillen said.
McMillen discovered he did not have a license months later when an employee at his firm seeking to take an engineering test asked McMillen to be a reference and he looked at his license and realized it had expired. After notifying the state and paying his fee, McMillen said he believed the issue was handled. Then, more than a year later, McMillen said he was notified of the fine.
“It was a year or more. To say it was a shock is an understatement,” McMillen said.
Ironically, McMillen said he has licenses in about 13 states, and all of the others were sent to him at his new address. While he acknowledged he did work with a lapsed license, McMillen said the state made a “federal case” out of the issue by making him pay fines of $7,000, especially when McMillen was the one to point it out to the state in the first place.
“When I got that fine much later, I was very surprised,” he said.
Although he objected to the fines, McMillen said he paid them, because the issue dealt with his livelihood. “Yes, there was a problem, but it’s done and gone, and I wasn’t happy about it, but they didn’t care,” he said.
According to the Department of State Web site, under the section of the State Board of Professional Engineering, Land Surveyors and Geologists, McMillen “violated the Act by six counts in that he was guilty of gross negligence, incompetence or misconduct in the practice of the profession through offering to provide professional engineering services, practicing professional engineering and held himself out as a professional engineer all while he held no current valid registration as a professional engineer in Pennsylvania.”
McMillen also “violated the Act by eight counts in that he was guilty of gross negligence, incompetence or misconduct in the practice of the profession through offering to provide professional land surveyor services, practicing professional land surveying, holding himself out as a professional land surveyor and using the seal of a professional land surveyor all while he held no current valid registration as a professional land surveyor in Pennsylvania,” according to the Department of State.