DP4

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

DP4

Does the city manager's administrative assistant bear independent procedural responsibility for the manner in which Firm B's misdirected envelope was handled, and does the assistant's four-hour retention of the envelope constitute city-side facilitation of a procurement irregularity that complicates the clean assignment of fault solely to Firm B?

The city manager's administrative assistant's independent procedural and quasi-ethical responsibility for accepting, retaining for over four hours, and forwarding a misdirected procurement submittal to Engineer A rather than immediately notifying Firm B of the delivery error, returning the envelope, or contacting the city clerk's office — and whether that city-side conduct materially alters the ethical analysis of Firm B's non-compliance.

Upon receiving the procurement envelope, immediately contact the city clerk's office to report the misdirected delivery, notify Firm B's representative that the envelope was delivered to the wrong location and cannot be accepted at the city manager's office, and decline to retain or forward the envelope

Route the envelope to Engineer A as the named recipient on the envelope, treating the delivery as internal city mail routing and deferring any procurement compliance determination to Engineer A as the designated QBS point of contact with authority over submittal handling

Physically transport the envelope to the city clerk's office immediately upon receipt, treating the delivery as a misdirected submittal that can be corrected by internal city transfer, on the grounds that delivery within the same governmental entity on the same day satisfies the spirit of the submission requirement

City Manager Administrative Assistant