Procurement Integrity in Public Engineering Implicated by Nominal Prime Structure

@prefix case161: <http://proethica.org/ontology/case/161#> . @prefix owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#> . @prefix proeth: <http://proethica.org/ontology/intermediate#> . @prefix prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> . @prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> . @prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> . case161:Procurement_Integrity_in_Public_Engineering_Implicated_by_Nominal_Prime_Structure a proeth:ProcurementIntegrityinPublicEngineering, owl:NamedIndividual ; rdfs:label "Procurement Integrity in Public Engineering Implicated by Nominal Prime Structure" ; proeth:appliedto "Government agency specialized engineering services procurement", "Public contract award process" ; proeth:balancingwith "Fairness in Professional Competition", "Free and Open Competition as Engineering Ethics Boundary Condition" ; proeth:conceptCategory "Principle" ; proeth:concreteexpression "The nominal prime structure proposed by Firms A and B — in which they would serve as prime contractors while contributing only nominal services and routing all substantive technical work to Engineer X — threatened the integrity of the public procurement process by interposing unnecessary intermediaries that would capture prime contract fees without making genuine technical contributions." ; proeth:confidence "0.89" ; proeth:discoveredincase "161" ; proeth:discoveredinpass "2" ; proeth:discoveredinsection "facts" ; proeth:firstdiscoveredat "2026-03-02T11:37:38.249789+00:00" ; proeth:firstdiscoveredincase "161" ; proeth:generatedattime "2026-03-02T11:37:38.249789+00:00" ; proeth:importance "high" ; proeth:interpretation "Public procurement integrity requires that prime contractors genuinely contribute to the work. The nominal prime structure proposed by Firms A and B would have resulted in a contract award to firms that could not make substantial contributions, undermining the qualification-based selection process and potentially wasting public resources on unnecessary intermediary fees." ; proeth:invokedby "Firm A Nominal Prime Contractor", "Firm B Nominal Prime Contractor", "Government Agency Specialized Technical Services Solicitor" ; proeth:principleclass "Procurement Integrity in Public Engineering" ; proeth:sourcetext "The government agency, concluding that Firms A and B would not make a substantial contribution to the work, then contacted Engineer X." ; proeth:tensionresolution "Procurement integrity requires that competitive responses be honest about the nature of the firm's contribution; the agency's independent determination that the firms would not make a substantial contribution and its direct engagement of Engineer X represents the appropriate corrective action." ; proeth:textreferences "The government agency, concluding that Firms A and B would not make a substantial contribution to the work, then contacted Engineer X, advising him that two firms had indicated their intention to use him as a special technical consultant if awarded the contract and asked him if he would be interested in taking the contract on his own firm's account.", "The work to be performed is entirely within Engineer X's field of expertise and does not require services from firms other than those of Engineer X." ; proeth:wasattributedto "Case 161 Extraction" ; prov:generatedAtTime "2026-03-02T11:58:20.072734"^^xsd:dateTime ; prov:wasGeneratedBy "ProEthica Case 161 Extraction" .