DP3

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

DP3

Should Engineer A accept and retain the Chief Engineer sealing role while the firm's organizational scale makes detailed responsible charge review structurally impossible, or must he either restructure the firm's sealing architecture to make responsible charge achievable — for example by requiring subordinate registered engineers to seal their own segments — or relinquish the sealing authority he cannot properly discharge?

Engineer A accepted and continues to hold the Chief Engineer sealing role in an organization whose scale structurally prevents him from exercising responsible charge over the volume of plans he seals. The threshold ethical question — distinct from the downstream question of whether individual sealings were proper — is whether Engineer A was obligated to either restructure the firm's sealing architecture before accepting or continuing in the role, or to decline or relinquish the sealing authority if restructuring was not achievable. This implicates the BER Case 85-3 analogy (accepting a role one cannot discharge is itself an ethical violation) and the affirmative restructuring obligations that flow from the Supervisory Sealing Authority Structural Redesign Capability.

Engineer A proactively redesigns the firm's sealing authority structure by requiring registered subordinate engineers to affix their own professional seals to the technical segments they personally prepared, assuming the Section II.2.c coordinating engineer role for project integration and coherence, and declining to seal any document for which neither he nor a qualified subordinate has exercised genuine responsible charge — accepting that this may require reducing project volume or advocating for additional registered engineering staff.

Engineer A retains the Chief Engineer sealing role and addresses the scale problem through enhanced internal quality control protocols — such as structured peer review among subordinate engineers, standardized design checklists, and documented sign-off procedures — treating these controls as a reasonable organizational substitute for his own detailed review given the firm's size and the demonstrated competence of his subordinates.

Engineer A determines that the firm's leadership will not support the structural changes necessary to make responsible charge achievable at the current project volume, and therefore relinquishes the chief engineer sealing authority — formally notifying firm leadership that the sealing role cannot be ethically discharged under current organizational conditions and that sealing authority must be redistributed among multiple registered engineers each capable of exercising genuine responsible charge over their respective domains.

Engineer A Chief Engineer Sealing Supervisor