The most important document on this platform. It sets out what our verification badges mean, what they do not mean, and where professional responsibility actually sits.
Engineering is different from most work sold through a marketplace, because engineering decisions affect safety, compliance, cost and physical assets that people occupy and depend on. A badge on a profile cannot carry that weight, and we do not pretend it can.
This document states plainly what our verification confirms, what it does not confirm, and who is responsible for what. Read it before you engage anyone for work that will be built, submitted, certified or relied upon.
When this platform marks a profile as verified, it means one specific thing: that a document was checked. Identity verification means a government identity document was checked. Education verification means a qualification was confirmed with the issuing institution or a verification provider. Licence verification means a registration was confirmed as current with the issuing authority on the date it was checked.
None of these grant any authority to practise engineering. The platform is not a licensing body, is not a professional institution, and has no power to authorise anyone to do anything. Authority to practise engineering comes only from the relevant regulator or registration body in the jurisdiction where the work is performed or used.
A verified badge on this platform must never be presented to a client, an authority, an insurer or a court as evidence of a right to practise.
This platform treats the following as distinct scopes of work, and they are priced, contracted and delivered separately:
Design assistance — producing analysis, sizing, detailing, modelling or documentation that another party takes responsibility for. Drafting — producing drawings from another party's design intent. Analysis — calculating a result against stated assumptions and inputs. Review — checking another party's work against a nominated standard and reporting findings. Professional sign-off — a registered professional taking legal responsibility for a design by certifying it.
An engineer performing the first four is not, by doing so, performing the fifth. Confusing them is the most common and most serious mistake made on marketplaces of this kind, and the contract structure here is designed to keep them apart.
We operate a marketplace. We do not practise engineering, do not employ the engineers listed here as practitioners on your behalf, do not review the technical content of their work, and do not form a professional opinion about any design, calculation, drawing or report exchanged through the platform.
We are not a party to the engineering contract between a client and an engineer. We provide the structure in which that contract is formed, funded and recorded. The engineering relationship, and the professional duty that comes with it, exists between the client and the engineer.
If you engage an engineer through this platform, you are responsible for satisfying yourself that the person or firm you engage holds the authorisations your project requires. That means confirming their registration directly with the relevant authority where the law requires registration, and confirming that their registration covers the jurisdiction, the discipline and the class of work in question.
You are also responsible for specifying your jurisdiction and the applicable standards in your brief, for providing accurate input information, and for arranging any independent checking, peer review or statutory approval your project or your insurer requires. Our verification is a starting point for your own due diligence, not a substitute for it.
Engineers offering services here are responsible for practising only within their competence, their qualifications and their registration. You must not accept work that requires a registration you do not hold, and you must not describe platform verification as a licence, an authorisation or a professional endorsement.
You are responsible for stating your assumptions, recording your design basis, identifying the standards you have worked to, and being explicit about the limits of what you have and have not checked. Where work requires certification you cannot provide, you must say so before accepting the engagement rather than after delivering.
You are responsible for your own professional indemnity arrangements. The platform does not insure your work.
Community answers, discussion threads, case studies, guides, taxonomy descriptions and any other editorial content on this platform are general information and professional discussion. They are not engineering advice, nobody writing them has reviewed your design, and they must not be relied upon for any decision that affects safety, compliance or expenditure.
Use them to understand a problem and narrow your options. Then engage an engineer properly, under a contract, with your actual inputs in front of them.
Certain categories of work carry consequences severe enough that we apply additional requirements: structural safety, pressure systems, electrical protection, medical devices, nuclear, flight-critical systems, life-safety systems, hazardous process systems and public infrastructure.
Projects in these categories may require verified professional registration before proposals can be submitted, and the platform will surface the responsibility boundary explicitly. We do not block legitimate projects in these areas. We do insist that the question of who carries professional responsibility is answered before work begins rather than after something goes wrong.
Verification is a point-in-time check. A registration confirmed as current in January may have lapsed by December. A qualification confirmed with an institution is only as reliable as that institution's records. Documents can be forged, and while we take reasonable steps to detect that, we cannot guarantee we always will.
We re-check credentials periodically and on expiry where an expiry date is known, and we remove verification when a credential is found to have lapsed or to have been misrepresented. We do not warrant that any verification is accurate at the moment you read it, and you should confirm anything material to your decision directly with the issuing body.
If you believe someone on this platform has misrepresented a credential, claimed an authorisation they do not hold, or offered to certify work they are not registered to certify, report it through the contact form. Misrepresentation of licence and unauthorised sign-off claims are treated as serious breaches and are grounds for removal.
If you are unsure whether your project requires a registered professional, the safest course is to ask the relevant authority in your jurisdiction before you commission the work — not after you have received it.
