The strange gaze of the Navel Engineer

Qing Quentin Huang, undated picture from internet

Well, no steel cut yet, but sure is an entertaining spectacles to see the NSPS develop. The latest headlines on the project are not good, and its not just the Auditor General report.

From the middle east to New Zealand, and points in between, a NSPS story out of Hamilton, Ontario, is grabbing some international headlines. The national federal police force in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has laid two charges of "trying to pass secret information to a foreign entity" against Qing Quentin Huang, a naturalized Canadian citizen.

Qing Quentin Huang was one of 20 Marine Engineers working at the Lloyd's Register North America office, in nearby Burlington. The head of LR's Canadian operations, Mr. Bud Streeter, stated that Mr. Huang "was structural design appraisal engineer and he was tasked with assessing ship designs for compliance with industry standards". Mr. Streeter is further quoted as saying that...

" Huang did not have the security clearance required to access classified documents relating to warships, and his duties were limited to assessing commercial vessels such as tugboats, passenger vessels and yachts. He would have knowledge of commercially confidential designs..."

He added that Mr. Huang has been suspended without pay. The story is developing; apparently starting on Thursday and culminating on Saturday, involving numerous law enforcement agencies. Quentin Huang is listed on LinkedIn, the very brief profile, with two connections, list experiences as a "Navel Engineer" working for Lloyd's Register NA.

Lloyd's Register NA is the dominant classification society operating in Canada, and is heavily entrenched in  local ship operations, commercial and governmental, clear across the country. Classification society's bread and butter is made by the fact they can be trusted. Ahh! to be a fly on the wall at the London home office.

Obviously, this has deep implication on many factors of life for us, as Marine Engineers. With the shortage of home grown talent, for reasons, well discussed on other areas of this site, a growing trend for classification society has been to relocate surveyors as a matter of routine, across the globe. Perhaps this is another example of how the shortage of Marine Engineers in Canada is impacting our economy and welfare.

Mr. Huang faced life in prison, if convicted. Here are stories from AlJezera, CBC, another  CBC, The Spec, TVNZ, from hometown TV CHCH, you can follow Google News' real time coverage here.