DP9

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

DP9

Should Engineer A relinquish or restructure the Chief Engineer sealing role unless the firm redesigns its sealing architecture to make responsible charge achievable — for example through multi-engineer sealing or reduced project volume — or should he retain the role and discharge it through the managerial oversight activities he currently performs, treating those activities as constituting the responsible charge appropriate to a chief engineer's organizational position?

Engineer A faces a threshold decision about whether to accept and retain the Chief Engineer sealing role in an organization whose scale structurally prevents him from exercising responsible charge over all sealed documents. By analogy to BER Case 85-3 — which held that accepting a role one lacks the competence to fully discharge is itself an ethical violation — Engineer A's acceptance of a sealing authority role under conditions that make the discharge of that authority impossible may constitute an antecedent ethical breach that generates all downstream sealing violations. The question is whether Engineer A should have conditioned role acceptance on structural redesign of the firm's sealing architecture, or whether the managerial chief engineer role is itself a legitimate form of responsible charge that does not require the practical capacity for detailed review of every document.

Engineer A informs firm leadership that he will retain the chief engineer sealing role only if the firm restructures its sealing architecture to make responsible charge achievable — specifically by requiring registered engineer subordinates to affix their own seals to segments they prepare, reducing project volume, or distributing sealing authority among multiple registered engineers — and relinquishes the sealing role if the firm declines to restructure.

Engineer A retains the chief engineer sealing role and continues to discharge it through the managerial activities he currently performs — conceptual direction, design-requirement setting, and technical consultation — treating these contributions as constituting the form of responsible charge appropriate to a chief engineer's organizational position in a large firm, consistent with the view that the chief engineer role is a legitimate and recognized mode of professional oversight.

Engineer A retains the chief engineer role in a coordination capacity under Section II.2.c but immediately requires all registered engineer subordinates to affix their own seals to the technical segments they personally prepare, limiting Engineer A's seal to the project's integration and coordination function — for which his conceptual direction and design-requirement activities constitute genuine responsible charge — without waiting for firm-wide structural redesign.

Engineer