DP7

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

DP7

Should Engineer A continue sealing plans based on his managerial oversight and confidence in subordinates' competence, implement a mandatory checkpoint review system requiring detailed personal review of each project before sealing, or decline to seal any document he has not personally reviewed in sufficient detail?

Engineer A, serving as Chief Engineer of a large firm, must decide how to discharge his sealing obligation given that organizational scale prevents him from conducting detailed design reviews of every plan he seals. The core tension is between the managerial responsible charge standard — which recognizes conceptual direction, design-requirement setting, and consultative input as legitimate chief-engineer contributions — and the detailed review sufficiency standard, which requires granular, document-level verification before a seal may be affixed as a substantive certification of personal professional judgment.

Engineer A implements a structured checkpoint system requiring him to conduct a substantive, detailed review of each project's completed plans — examining design calculations, specifications, and drawings for conformity to design intent and applicable standards — before affixing his seal, even if this reduces firm output or requires hiring additional registered engineers to share the review burden.

Engineer A continues sealing plans based on his upstream contributions — setting design requirements, providing conceptual direction, and answering technical questions — treating these managerial activities as constituting responsible charge sufficient for the chief engineer role, and relying on demonstrated subordinate competence as a reasonable professional basis for the seal.

Engineer A declines to serve as the sole sealing engineer and instead restructures the firm's sealing architecture so that registered engineer subordinates affix their own seals to the technical segments they personally prepare, while Engineer A seals only in a coordinating capacity under Section II.2.c for elements over which he has exercised genuine responsible charge at the integration and coherence level.

Engineer