Indeed. You can browse through the disciplinary actions taken against engineers by professional associations and you will find all sorts of incompetence and malfeasance. I find the discipline tends to be on the lenient side—lots of fines, suspensions and reexaminations with only the occasional permanent loss of license.

Still, I'm glad professional licensure is required. That's what will prevent these folks from quietly rebranding and designing another disasterous bridge tomorrow.

Yes, and (disclaimer: this is part of my job) often structural engineers have a very "narrow" view which summed up with the (as well often "narrow" views) of the architects, of the plant engineers and of other technicians/designers that are involved in a project create the need of a coordinator/facilitator that helps in the communication among these people, checks the (sometimes not-so-obvious) possible conflicting parts of the various drawings and "translates" the design for the contractor.

Particularly lately I have seen an increase of (otherwise very good, smart and qualified) engineers and architects with no or very little on-site experience, that produce beautiful and valid drawings/designs that cannot be "as they are" realized in practice.