DP3

DecisionPoint
http://proethica.org/ontology/cases#DecisionPoint

DP3

When the municipality seeks the municipal engineer's advice on retaining a consulting firm for capital project design work, and the municipal engineer's own firm is a candidate, must the engineer recuse entirely from the advisory process?

The municipality asks its designated municipal engineer — whose consulting firm is one of the candidates — to advise on which engineering firm should be retained for a capital improvement project. This is the central structural conflict of the dual-role arrangement: the engineer's advisory duty to the municipality requires objective evaluation of competing firms, but the engineer's financial interest in the firm's selection creates an irreconcilable self-review situation. The engineer must decide whether to participate in the advisory process, recuse entirely, or attempt a partial participation with disclosure.

Withdraw entirely from any advisory, evaluative, or recommendatory role regarding the retention decision, formally notify the municipality of the recusal and its basis, and actively facilitate the municipality's access to independent evaluation resources — such as recommending that the governing body seek a second opinion from a disinterested engineer or rely on its own comparative assessment of qualifications and fees — so that the retention decision is made without any participation by the conflicted municipal engineer.

Disclose the financial conflict of interest to the municipality in writing, but continue to provide technical advisory input on the project scope, required qualifications, and fee reasonableness — while explicitly abstaining from any comparative ranking or recommendation among competing firms — on the theory that the municipality benefits from the municipal engineer's technical knowledge even in a conflicted posture, provided the conflict is transparent.

Advise the municipality on consultant retention without recusal, relying on the engineer's professional obligation of objectivity and the municipality's general awareness of the dual-role arrangement as sufficient safeguards against divided loyalty — thereby preserving the practical efficiency of the advisory relationship but violating the structural self-review prohibition that the Board identified as a non-waivable constraint.

Consulting Firm Principal (Designated Municipal Engineer)