Not every engineer is a smart engineer. I've met some dumb-as-sticks people that I wonder how they managed to graduate college and we all just cringe and feel sorry for anyone working with them. But the vast majority are usually very good, especially those who stick strictly to their areas of expertise.
There's a good bit of overlap of knowledge between engineers and electricians, but each has their own speciality. I mean, an engineer's probably not going to know how to grease a cable, and an electrician's not likely to be able to spec out a K-factor transformer. As I'm fond of saying, engineers know what to do, electricians know how to do it. Makes for a very synergistic team when everyone is involved and leverage off all our strengths and weaknesses. The code is the middle ground, but there's a LOT of code and it's damned hard to know it all.
Besides, y'all are blowing one tiny little problem (like this GFCI thing) out of proportion! After all, it was only one minor mistake, and something like that would be easy for any of us to do
We learn every day.
