DP2

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

DP2

If ES Consulting fails to take meaningful action after receiving Engineer A's internal report of the adjacent safety hazard, should Engineer A treat the internal escalation as a complete discharge of the ethical obligation, or must Engineer A independently escalate further — by notifying Owner Y, the subcontractor, or a regulatory authority directly?

After Engineer A reports the observed adjacent safety hazard to ES Consulting, the question shifts to what ES Consulting is obligated to do with that information, and — critically — what Engineer A's obligations become if ES Consulting takes no meaningful action. This decision point addresses the graduated escalation sequence and the conditions under which supervisory inaction transforms Engineer A's permissible discretionary further action into a mandatory independent duty.

Regard the completed internal escalation to ES Consulting as a full and sufficient discharge of Engineer A's ethical obligation for a non-imminent hazard, consistent with the BER 82-5 personal conscience framework, and take no further independent action unless and until the hazard is reassessed as imminent.

Document the internal report and follow up with ES Consulting within a defined timeframe; if ES Consulting has taken no meaningful action and the hazard persists, independently notify Owner Y or the relevant regulatory authority in writing — on the grounds that supervisory inaction eliminates the ethical rationale for continued deference to the employer intermediary and that Engineer A's continued silence would constitute passive complicity in ongoing harm.

Notify both ES Consulting and Owner Y concurrently in writing at the time of initial reporting, on the grounds that the marginal cost of direct notification is low, Owner Y has no independent means of learning about the hazard, and routing exclusively through ES Consulting introduces delay whose cost is borne entirely by third-party workers with no knowledge of the risk.

Engineer