113 Architecture questions - How is the Chamber of Civil Engineers organised?
How is the Chamber of Civil Engineers organised?
The Chambers of Civil Engineers are the statutory professional organisations of state-authorised and sworn civil engineers, which include architects and engineering consultants. They are corporations under public law and their legal basis is the Civil Engineers Act, currently the ZTG 2019.
In addition to the Federal Chamber, which is based in Vienna, there are four regional chambers:
- Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland, based in Vienna
- Styria and Carinthia, based in Graz
- Upper Austria and Salzburg, based in Linz
- Tyrol and Vorarlberg, based in Innsbruck
All four provincial chambers are members of the Federal Chamber, whose sphere of activity covers the whole of Austria. It deals with matters that affect the common interests of the members of two or more provincial chambers. These include, for example, health care facilities for chamber members, the issuing of professional codes of conduct or service profiles and the management of a document archive.
The regional chambers are each divided into two sections. On the one hand, there is the section of architects and on the other, the section of engineering consultants. Within their local sphere of activity, they are called upon to represent and promote the professional, social and economic interests of civil engineers. Arbitration, professional training in the form of seminars, preparing prospective civil engineers for entering the profession and maintaining the register of civil engineers are just some of the services they provide. In addition to the representation of interests, they also ensure that the reputation of the profession is maintained and that professional obligations are fulfilled.
The representation is carried out by elected, honorary professional representatives.
Both the federal and provincial chambers are not only committed to the important support measures described above, but also to preserving the independence of civil engineers, which was recently jeopardised by a ruling of the European Court of Justice, which would have resulted in a weakening of professional ethics. This commitment is crucial to maintaining the high quality that civil engineers' work stands for.
