The Board cited this case to establish that engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess the necessary educational background and experience, or to retain specialists who do.
The Board cited this case to reinforce the principle that engineers must not misrepresent their qualifications to secure contracts, and to affirm the obligation to only seek work within their areas of competency.
The Board cited this case to illustrate that it is unethical for an engineer to perform work outside their area of competency, and that other engineers have a responsibility to question and report such incompetence.
By purchasing a CD-ROM as a substitute for genuine credentialing, Engineer A misrepresents the basis of qualification to prospective clients and to the public, and this misrepresentation matters because it is the direct cause of the CD-ROM delivery that enables the subsequent unauthorized service offering, meaning the dishonesty is not merely symbolic but structurally enables concrete public safety risk.
CausalLink_Promotional Material Acceptanc
Although accepting the solicitation does not itself fulfill or violate any obligation, it initiates the causal chain that leads directly to the competency shortcut purchase, making it normatively significant as the moment where professional judgment and public safety considerations first apply and where a more careful response could have interrupted all downstream harms.
CausalLink_Unauthorized Service Offering
Offering services without genuine competency violates multiple obligations simultaneously, and this convergence is causally critical because the action produces both an inadequate competency basis for any work performed and an ethical precedent that normalizes bypassing rigorous credentialing, compounding harm to public health and safety beyond any single engagement.
It was not ethical for Engineer A to offer facilities design and construction services under the facts presented.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer A's offer of facilities design and construction services was unethical, Engineer A's conduct reveals a compounded ethical failure: not merely practicing outside competence, but actively misrepresenting professional qualifications to the public by publicly offering services in a domain where no relevant education or experience existed. The solicitation itself did not confer competence, and Engineer A's failure to critically evaluate its claims before acting on them represents an independent violation of professional judgment. A competent engineer is expected to possess the self-awareness to distinguish between a commercially motivated marketing pitch and a legitimate pathway to professional qualification. By treating the CD-ROM as a credential-equivalent, Engineer A effectively engaged in a form of self-certification that the NSPE Code does not recognize and that directly undermines public trust in the engineering profession.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer A acted unethically should be understood as applying at multiple sequential points in the chain of conduct, not solely at the moment of offering services. While the most visible ethical breach occurs when Engineer A begins offering facilities design and construction services, an earlier failure of professional judgment occurs when Engineer A accepts the solicitation's premise — that unfamiliar engineering disciplines can be mastered through a commercial software tool — without critical evaluation. The obligation to practice only within areas of competence under Code Section II.2.a is not merely a constraint on service delivery; it imposes an affirmative duty of competence self-assessment that precedes any client engagement. Engineer A's failure to exercise that self-assessment at the solicitation-receipt and CD-ROM-ordering stages means the ethical violation is not a single discrete act but a sequence of progressively deepening departures from professional obligation. This temporal analysis is important because it clarifies that the Code's competence requirements are prospective and preventive, not merely reactive.
The Board's conclusion leaves unaddressed a potentially mitigating pathway that the NSPE Code itself contemplates: Code Section II.2.c permits an engineer to accept responsibility for coordinating an entire project — including disciplines outside their personal competence — provided that qualified specialists are retained for those technical components. Had Engineer A structured the facilities design engagement by retaining licensed specialists in structural, mechanical, electrical, and other relevant disciplines, and limited their own role to project coordination consistent with their chemical engineering background, the ethical analysis might have differed substantially. However, the facts as presented indicate that Engineer A offered facilities design and construction services relying solely on the CD-ROM tool, with no indication that qualified specialists were retained or that the scope of Engineer A's personal technical contribution was limited to areas of demonstrated competence. This distinction is critical: the Code does not prohibit multi-discipline project coordination by a generalist engineer, but it does prohibit an engineer from personally performing or certifying technical work in disciplines where they lack qualification, regardless of the tools employed. The CD-ROM cannot substitute for the specialist retention that Section II.2.c requires as the condition for accepting such engagements.
A nuance the Board did not explicitly address is the ironic ethical significance of Engineer A's own prior conduct as a competence reporter. In the same case, Engineer A demonstrated sound professional judgment by raising concerns about Engineer B's out-of-competence footing design work — correctly recognizing that a chemical engineer performing structural footing design without relevant training violated competence norms. Yet Engineer A simultaneously violated those same norms by offering facilities design services based on a commercial CD-ROM. This selective application of competence awareness — rigorous when evaluating a colleague's conduct, absent when evaluating one's own — represents a more serious ethical failure than simple ignorance would. An engineer who understands the competence principle well enough to apply it critically to others, but fails to apply it with equal rigor to their own practice, cannot claim good faith reliance on the CD-ROM's marketing claims as a mitigating factor. The capacity for competence self-assessment was demonstrably present; its non-application to Engineer A's own conduct therefore reflects a failure of professional integrity rather than a mere knowledge gap.
From a public welfare perspective, the Board's conclusion is further reinforced by the categorical nature of the risk that Engineer A's conduct created. The NSPE Code's competence requirements are not calibrated to the sophistication of available tools; they are grounded in the recognition that engineering decisions affecting public safety require a foundation of education and experience that enables the practitioner to identify when a tool's output is erroneous, incomplete, or inapplicable to site-specific conditions. A CD-ROM design tool, however feature-rich, cannot supply the judgment needed to recognize its own limitations. An engineer without facilities design experience cannot evaluate whether the tool's outputs are appropriate for a given project, cannot identify when standard design parameters do not apply, and cannot exercise the professional skepticism that competent practice demands. No degree of commercial validation or tool sophistication can bridge this gap, because the gap is not informational but experiential and judgmental. This analysis also forecloses the theoretical argument that a sufficiently robust tool might reduce public welfare risk enough to justify its use by an unqualified engineer: the public welfare principle operates categorically in this context because the very ability to assess tool adequacy is itself a competence-dependent skill.
The commercial solicitation bears no direct ethical responsibility under the NSPE Code, but Engineer A bears an affirmative obligation to critically evaluate any marketing claim before acting on it. The solicitation's explicit language — 'no matter your design experience' — should itself have served as a warning signal rather than an inducement, because it openly advertised the circumvention of the very competence standards the Code imposes. A professionally competent engineer exercising sound judgment would recognize that no commercial product can confer the education and experience required by Code Section II.2.a. Engineer A's failure to critically evaluate the solicitation is therefore itself an ethical lapse, not merely a precursor to one. The obligation of competence self-assessment is continuous and is not suspended by the persuasiveness of a vendor's marketing.
There is a meaningful moral distinction between an engineer genuinely deceived by a sophisticated tool's marketing claims and one who knowingly offers out-of-competence services, but under the NSPE Code that distinction does not eliminate culpability — it only modulates its character. Code Section II.2.a imposes an objective standard: qualification by education or experience in the specific technical field. That standard is not satisfied by subjective good faith. Engineer A, as a chemical engineer with no facilities design experience, possessed sufficient professional background to recognize that a CD-ROM cannot substitute for years of discipline-specific education and practice. The solicitation's own language made the substitution explicit. Accordingly, any claim of genuine deception is weakened by Engineer A's professional capacity to evaluate the claim critically. The Code treats the resulting competence gap as an objective violation regardless of Engineer A's subjective intent, though intent remains relevant to the severity of professional censure.
Examining the sequence of events, Engineer A's conduct first becomes ethically questionable at the moment of ordering the CD-ROM with the intent to expand service offerings, because that act reflects a decision to treat a commercial product as a competence substitute. However, the conduct becomes definitively ethically impermissible when Engineer A begins to offer facilities design and construction services to the public, because it is at that point that Code Section II.2.a is directly violated through the public representation of qualification in a domain where none exists. The mere receipt of the solicitation imposes no Code violation but does trigger the affirmative obligation of critical evaluation under the broader duty of professional judgment. The ordering of the CD-ROM is an intermediate act that, while not itself a Code violation, evidences a failure of professional judgment that foreshadows the subsequent violation. The Code's obligations thus operate at each stage, but with escalating force: evaluative obligation at receipt, judgment obligation at purchase, and hard competence obligation at the point of service offering.
Engineer A's conduct could potentially become ethically permissible if the CD-ROM were used only as a supplementary computational or reference tool while qualified specialist engineers retained overall design responsibility for each discipline involved. Code Section II.2.c explicitly permits an engineer to accept responsibility for coordination of an entire project and sign and seal the engineering documents for the entire project, provided that each technical segment is signed and sealed by the qualified engineers who prepared it. Under this framework, Engineer A's role would be limited to project coordination — a function within the scope of general engineering competence — while facilities design specialists would bear technical responsibility for their respective segments. The CD-ROM in this scenario would function analogously to any reference library, not as a competence substitute. However, Engineer A's actual conduct — offering facilities design and construction services without any indication of specialist retention — does not satisfy this framework, and the CD-ROM was plainly being used as a competence substitute rather than a supplementary tool.
The tension between Engineer A's competence boundary overreach and the specialist retention obligation under Code Section II.2.c reveals a genuine pathway to ethical compliance that Engineer A failed to pursue. An engineer may ethically accept a multi-discipline project as overall coordinator without personally possessing expertise in every sub-discipline, provided that qualified specialists are retained and their work is properly sealed. This means Engineer A's ethical failure was not simply that the project was too broad — it was that Engineer A offered to perform the technical design work personally, relying on a CD-ROM, rather than structuring the engagement as a coordination role with specialist delegation. The two principles are therefore not in irreconcilable conflict; rather, the specialist retention pathway under II.2.c represents the ethically compliant alternative that Engineer A bypassed in favor of a commercially motivated shortcut.
From a public welfare perspective, no degree of CD-ROM sophistication or vendor validation can categorically substitute for foundational engineering competence in a way that satisfies the NSPE Code's public welfare mandate. The Code's competence requirements exist precisely because the consequences of engineering failure — structural collapse, hazardous facility conditions, public injury — are not recoverable through after-the-fact correction. A consequentialist analysis confirms this: the probability and magnitude of harm from facilities designed by an engineer with no relevant experience, relying on an unvalidated commercial tool, vastly outweighs any economic benefit to Engineer A's firm. Even if a hypothetical CD-ROM were developed and validated by a recognized professional engineering body, it would reduce but not eliminate the competence gap, because the ability to evaluate tool outputs, recognize edge cases, and exercise professional judgment in novel situations requires experiential knowledge that no software can confer. The public welfare principle therefore operates as a near-categorical constraint on technology substitution for foundational competence.
Engineer A's primary ethical failure is best characterized as a compound violation in which the professional honesty omission and the commercial inducement resistance failure are both present and mutually reinforcing, but the Code treats the competence boundary violation as the foundational wrong from which the others derive. The dishonesty toward clients and the public — offering services without disclosing the absence of relevant experience — is a serious violation of Code Section II.2.a and the broader duty of honest representation. However, the commercial inducement resistance failure is the causal antecedent: Engineer A's susceptibility to a commercially motivated shortcut is what produced the competence gap that was then misrepresented. The Code does not explicitly rank these violations hierarchically, but the structure of Section II.2 places competence as the threshold requirement, suggesting that the honesty violation is derivative of and secondary to the competence violation. Both are serious, but remediation of the honesty violation alone — through disclosure — would not cure the underlying competence deficiency.
The juxtaposition of Engineer A's ethically sound reporting of Engineer B's out-of-competence footing design with Engineer A's own simultaneous violation of the same competence norms constitutes a more serious ethical failure than simple ignorance would. When an engineer demonstrates awareness of competence boundaries sufficient to identify and report a peer's violation, that engineer cannot credibly claim ignorance of the same norms when they apply to their own conduct. Engineer A's selective competence awareness — recognizing the norm when applied to Engineer B but disregarding it when commercial incentives applied to themselves — suggests either willful disregard or a troubling compartmentalization of professional ethics. This pattern is more culpable than the conduct of an engineer who violated competence norms without ever having demonstrated awareness of them, because it reveals that the violation was not born of ignorance but of motivated reasoning in the face of financial opportunity.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer A failed the categorical duty to practice only within areas of competence. The duty imposed by Code Section II.2.a is not contingent on outcomes, client consent, or the sophistication of available tools — it is an absolute obligation grounded in the nature of professional engineering practice. A CD-ROM, however comprehensive, cannot satisfy this duty because the duty is defined in terms of the engineer's own education and experience, not the capabilities of external instruments. Kant's categorical imperative further illuminates this: if every engineer were permitted to offer services in unfamiliar disciplines upon acquiring a commercial software tool, the institution of professional engineering competence would be rendered meaningless and public trust in the profession would collapse. Engineer A's conduct therefore fails the universalizability test and constitutes a categorical deontological violation independent of any consequentialist assessment of actual harm.
From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer A failed to demonstrate the intellectual humility, professional integrity, and critical judgment that define the character of a competent engineer. A virtuous engineer, upon receiving a solicitation explicitly promising competence without experience, would recognize the claim as implausible and potentially dangerous rather than as a business opportunity. The willingness to accept a commercial vendor's self-serving marketing as sufficient justification to enter an entirely unfamiliar discipline reflects a disposition toward financial opportunism over professional responsibility. Intellectual humility — the recognition of the limits of one's own knowledge — is a foundational engineering virtue precisely because engineering failures have irreversible public consequences. Engineer A's conduct represents not merely a rule violation but a character failure: the substitution of commercial enthusiasm for the careful self-assessment that professional engineering demands.
Engineer A's offer of facilities design and construction services would have been ethically permissible under the facts presented only if qualified specialist engineers had been retained for each technical discipline involved and their work properly sealed under Code Section II.2.c. In that scenario, Engineer A's role as project coordinator would fall within the scope of general engineering competence, and the CD-ROM might serve as a legitimate reference tool rather than a competence substitute. However, this counterfactual requires not merely the retention of specialists but a genuine restructuring of Engineer A's role: Engineer A could not personally perform or seal the technical design work. The ethical permissibility of the coordination role is therefore conditional on Engineer A relinquishing the very service offering — personal facilities design — that the CD-ROM was intended to enable. The counterfactual thus confirms that the ethical path was available but required Engineer A to abandon the commercially motivated expansion of personal technical services.
Even if Engineer A had fully disclosed the absence of facilities design experience to prospective clients and obtained their informed consent, this disclosure would not have resolved the ethical violation under the NSPE Code. The competence requirement of Code Section II.2.a operates as an objective professional standard that exists independently of client consent, because the Code's primary obligation runs to public welfare — not merely to the immediate client. A client's consent to receive services from an unqualified engineer does not eliminate the risk to third parties, the public, or the integrity of the profession. Furthermore, Code Section II.2.b prohibits affixing signatures to plans dealing with subject matter in which the engineer lacks competence, regardless of client awareness. Disclosure and consent are ethically relevant factors that may reduce the dishonesty dimension of the violation, but they cannot satisfy the foundational competence requirement that the Code imposes as a non-waivable professional obligation.
The tension between Engineer A Competence Boundary Overreach and Specialist Retention Obligation Multi-Discipline Project was resolved decisively in favor of the competence boundary principle, but not by categorically prohibiting Engineer A from coordinating a multi-discipline project. Rather, the Code's structure under Section II.2.c permits an engineer to accept overall coordination responsibility for a project outside their personal expertise, provided qualified specialists are retained for each technical discipline. Engineer A's ethical failure was not that they sought to expand their firm's service offerings per se, but that they substituted a commercial CD-ROM for the specialist retention that Section II.2.c requires. Had Engineer A used the CD-ROM as an administrative aid while engaging licensed facilities design specialists, the competence boundary principle and the specialist retention obligation could have been reconciled. The case therefore teaches that the competence boundary principle does not operate as an absolute bar to project acceptance, but it does operate as an absolute bar to personal technical execution without qualification — and no commercial tool can bridge that gap.
The tension between Public Welfare Paramountcy Engineering Competence and Engineer A Technology Substitution CD-ROM Design was resolved by treating the public welfare principle as categorically superior and structurally immune to technological workarounds. The case establishes that no commercial tool — however sophisticated or comprehensively marketed — can reduce public welfare risk to an acceptable level when the engineer deploying it lacks the foundational education and experience to evaluate, verify, or override the tool's outputs. This resolution reflects a deeper principle: engineering competence is not merely the ability to produce a design artifact, but the professional capacity to exercise independent judgment about whether that artifact is safe, appropriate, and correct. A CD-ROM can generate output; it cannot supply the judgment needed to validate that output. The public welfare principle therefore does not merely outweigh the convenience of technology substitution — it renders technology substitution categorically impermissible as a competence strategy, regardless of the tool's claimed capabilities or commercial validation.
The simultaneous operation of Engineer A Competence Reporter Footing Concerns and Engineer A Competence Boundary CD-ROM Facilities Design reveals a particularly instructive principle interaction: Engineer A demonstrated a sound and accurate understanding of competence norms when applying them to Engineer B's out-of-competence footing work, yet failed to apply those same norms to their own conduct. This asymmetry suggests that the ethical failure in this case is not mere ignorance of the competence principle, but a selective application of it — one that is more ethically serious than simple ignorance because it implies that Engineer A possessed the conceptual tools to recognize the violation and chose not to deploy them self-critically. The case therefore teaches that professional integrity requires symmetric application of competence norms: an engineer who correctly identifies a peer's competence boundary violation is held to a higher standard of self-awareness, not a lower one. Engineer A Commercial Inducement Resistance Failure and Engineer A Professional Honesty Omission are thus compounded by this selective awareness, making the overall ethical failure more culpable than it would have been had Engineer A never encountered a competence boundary question before.
Should Engineer A accept the promotional solicitation offering a CD-ROM as a basis for entering a new engineering discipline?
Engineer A receives a commercial solicitation offering a CD-ROM as a shortcut to competency in a new engineering discipline. At this initial moment, Engineer A must decide whether to engage with the solicitation or reject it based on professional judgment about what constitutes genuine credentialing. The normative record shows Engineer A's solicitation evaluation proficiency is only basic, meaning the risk of misjudging the offer's legitimacy is high. A careful response here could interrupt all downstream harms before they begin.
Engineer A declines the promotional offer, recognizing that a commercial CD-ROM cannot substitute for genuine education, training, and credentialing in a new discipline, and takes no further steps toward offering services in that area.
Engineer A accepts the promotional material and considers purchasing the CD-ROM as a means of expanding into a new service area, treating the commercial product as a credentialing pathway.
Engineer A pauses upon receiving the solicitation and seeks guidance from the relevant state licensing board or professional society about whether such a product could satisfy competency requirements before making any decision.
Should Engineer A purchase the CD-ROM and treat it as a valid credential for offering services in a new engineering discipline?
Having accepted the solicitation, Engineer A now faces the direct purchase decision: whether to buy the CD-ROM and treat it as a sufficient basis for claiming competency in a new engineering discipline. This is the moment of active misrepresentation, where the normative record confirms Engineer A's Self-Certification CD-ROM and Tool Substitution Refusal obligations were both unmet. The purchase directly enables the subsequent unauthorized service offering and constitutes a concrete act of dishonesty about the basis of qualification.
Engineer A declines to purchase the CD-ROM and instead pursues legitimate pathways to competency, such as formal coursework, mentorship under a licensed specialist, or retaining a qualified specialist for any work in the new discipline.
Engineer A purchases the CD-ROM and proceeds to treat completion of its content as sufficient qualification to offer services in the new discipline, without obtaining formal credentials or specialist oversight.
Engineer A purchases the CD-ROM strictly as a supplemental educational resource while simultaneously pursuing formal credentialing, making clear to any prospective clients that the CD-ROM does not constitute a credential.
Should Engineer A offer engineering services in a discipline for which the only claimed qualification is completion of a commercial CD-ROM?
After acquiring the CD-ROM, Engineer A must decide whether to offer engineering services in the new discipline to prospective clients. This decision point represents the convergence of multiple obligation violations simultaneously: practicing outside competency, misrepresenting qualifications, failing to protect public health and safety, and failing to retain qualified specialists. The normative record confirms all four related obligations were unmet. This is the point at which abstract misrepresentation becomes concrete public safety risk.
Engineer A refrains from offering services in the new discipline and informs prospective clients that genuine competency has not yet been established, directing them to appropriately credentialed specialists.
Engineer A proceeds to market and offer engineering services in the new discipline, representing the CD-ROM completion as sufficient qualification to prospective clients and the public.
Engineer A offers services in the new discipline while privately subcontracting the technical work to a qualified specialist, without disclosing to clients that Engineer A personally lacks the claimed competency.
Must Engineer A take affirmative steps to ensure a qualified specialist is retained for the footing design work, beyond merely reporting competency concerns?
In the context of a multi-discipline project, Engineer A becomes aware that Engineer B is performing footing design work outside Engineer B's area of competency. The normative record shows Engineer A's Competence Reporting Footing Concerns obligation was met, indicating Engineer A did report concerns, but the Multi-Discipline Project Specialist Retention obligation was unmet. This decision point concerns whether Engineer A takes the further step of insisting on or facilitating the retention of a qualified specialist rather than simply noting the concern.
Engineer A goes beyond reporting concerns and affirmatively insists that a qualified specialist be retained for the footing design, refusing to allow the project to proceed on that component without proper credentialing, and escalates if necessary.
Engineer A reports the competency concern to the relevant party and then defers to the project decision-makers, taking no further action if the concern is not acted upon.
Engineer A withdraws from the multi-discipline project entirely upon recognizing that Engineer B is performing work outside competency and that the project structure does not support proper specialist retention.
Engineer A ordering the CD-ROM before Engineer A offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer B's structural footing design during construction of the industrial facility
During the construction of the project, the construction contractor separately retained the services of Engineer B, a professional engineer to design structural footings as part of the facility.
Entity1 occurs entirely within the duration of Entity2
Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence.
Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.
Engineers shall not affix their signatures to any plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence, nor to any plan or document not prepared under their direction and control.
Engineers may accept assignments and assume responsibility for coordination of an entire project and sign and seal the engineering documents for the entire project, provided that each technical segment is signed and sealed only by the qualified engineers who prepared the segment.
Engineers shall not complete, sign, or seal plans and/or specifications that are not in conformity with applicable engineering standards. If the client or employer insists on such unprofessional conduct, they shall notify the proper authorities and withdraw from further service on the project.
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers, Section II.2.a
Cited as the foundational code provision governing the requirement that engineers practice only within their areas of competence
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'NSPE Code Provision'
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, begins to offer facilities design and construction services
Applied to evaluate whether Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design and construction services without relevant experience violates professional obligations, particularly provisions requiring engineers to practice only within their areas of competence.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Professional Code'
The question arose because Engineer A's action of offering facilities design services rested entirely on a CD-ROM acquired through a commercial solicitation rather than on any prior training, experience, or credentialed knowledge in that domain. The gap between the competence boundary obligation and the tool-substitution claim created genuine argumentative contest over whether the offer was ethically permissible, which is precisely the condition under which an ethical question surfaces in Toulmin's model.
The question emerged because Engineer A's acceptance of a commercial solicitation and subsequent service offering created a direct collision between the deontological duty encoded in NSPE Code Section II.2.a and the implicit claim of the CD-ROM marketing that tool ownership substitutes for education and experience. The question is not merely whether Engineer A acted unwisely but whether the deontological framework admits any condition under which a commercial tool could satisfy the competence obligation, and the entities Engineer A CD-ROM Self-Certified Competence and Engineer A Diploma Mill Equivalence make clear that the answer is no.
This question arose because Engineer A's act of publicly offering facilities design services, grounded in nothing more than a purchased CD-ROM tool and no prior experience, created a gap between what prospective clients could reasonably infer about qualifications and what Engineer A actually possessed. The deontological framing sharpens the question by asking whether that gap, produced by omission rather than false statement, satisfies the conditions for a categorical honesty violation under duties that treat misleading silence as equivalent to active misrepresentation.
This question emerged because Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design services rested entirely on a commercial CD-ROM rather than on education or experience, creating a direct collision between the consequentialist obligation to prevent foreseeable public harm and the economic rationale that motivated the service expansion. The question could not be resolved by inspecting the action alone because the magnitude of harm depends on contested assumptions about what a CD-ROM tool can and cannot substitute for in professional engineering judgment.
This question arose because virtue ethics demands that professional integrity and intellectual humility operate as internal character dispositions, not merely as rule-following behaviors, so the question is not only whether Engineer A violated a code provision but whether the decision to accept a commercial solicitation as sufficient justification reveals a deficiency in the character traits a competent engineer is expected to embody. The tension between the Competence Boundary Principle and the Commercial Inducement Resistance Principle, both triggered by the same sequence of data events, forces an evaluation of whether Engineer A's conduct reflected the virtues of honest self-assessment and appropriate epistemic caution or instead reflected a willingness to subordinate professional judgment to commercial opportunity.
This question emerged because the original ethical violation involved two separable problems: Engineer A offered services outside personal competence, and Engineer A substituted a commercial CD-ROM for genuine specialist knowledge. The NSPE Code provides a recognized pathway for engineers to offer multi-discipline services by retaining qualified specialists, which raises the genuine question of whether following that pathway would have made the offer ethical, or whether the act of offering facilities design services was itself improper for a chemical engineer regardless of how the work would later be staffed.
This question arose because the case record focuses on Engineer A's downstream conduct, specifically the offering of services and the use of the CD-ROM on a project, but leaves unexamined whether the upstream decision to respond to the solicitation was itself an ethical failure requiring professional judgment. The question surfaces a gap in the argument structure: the data of solicitation receipt and purchase could support a warrant about commercial inducement resistance that the original analysis did not fully develop, creating a contested claim about where exactly Engineer A's professional obligation was first breached.
This question arose because the original ethical analysis condemned the CD-ROM partly on the grounds that it was a commercial product with no independent validation, which implicitly left open whether professional-body validation would change the conclusion. The gap between the source-based critique and the deeper competence-gap critique created a genuine structural ambiguity in the argument that demanded explicit resolution.
This question arose because Engineer A's conduct implicated two distinct ethical structures at once. The disclosure path addresses the honesty and misrepresentation obligation, but the competence boundary obligation under NSPE Code Section II.2.a is grounded in public welfare paramountcy, which means the rebuttal condition of client consent may simply not be available to defeat it.
This question arose because the sequence of Solicitation Receipt followed by Competency Shortcut Purchase and Unauthorized Service Offering created a causal chain in which an external commercial actor appeared to play a triggering role in Engineer A's ethical failure. The question forces analysis of whether the Commercial Inducement Resistance Principle places an affirmative critical evaluation duty on engineers, or whether it merely prohibits acting on inducements, because the answer determines how moral responsibility is distributed between the soliciting vendor and the engineer who accepted the invitation to overreach.
This question emerged because the data record contains two meaningfully different causal paths to the same prohibited act: one in which the engineer knowingly exploits a marketing shortcut, and one in which the engineer is genuinely misled by vendor claims about what the tool confers. The NSPE Code's competence obligation is written in objective terms, but ordinary moral reasoning treats deception-induced error as culpability-reducing, and that gap between the code's structure and common moral intuition is precisely what forced the question into view.
This question arose because the factual sequence contains three discrete acts, each with a plausible claim to being the first ethical breach, and the Code does not explicitly rank or sequence the obligations that attach to solicitation, purchase, and offering. The absence of a clear temporal trigger in the warrant structure forces the question of whether the Code imposes a continuous duty of resistance from first contact or only a terminal duty at the point of public misrepresentation.
This question arose because the data shows Engineer A using a commercial CD-ROM as a functional substitute for facilities design education and experience, which simultaneously activates the tool substitution prohibition and the specialist retention obligation. The question surfaces the unresolved boundary between legitimate tool-assisted practice under qualified supervision and impermissible self-certification through technology, a boundary that Code Section II.2.c governs but does not resolve automatically when a supplementary framing is introduced.
This question arose because Engineer A's acceptance of a facilities design project created a factual record of out-of-competence service offering, but the NSPE Code contains two structurally competing provisions: one prohibiting engineers from practicing beyond their competence, and one authorizing coordinators to satisfy competence requirements through specialist retention. The question is not merely about what Engineer A did, but about which warrant governs the coordinator role itself, and whether holding that role without personal facilities design expertise constitutes a competence violation or a permissible structural arrangement.
This question emerged because the data shows Engineer A relying on a commercially marketed tool as the entire basis for entering a new practice domain, which forces a collision between two expressions of the same underlying value. Both the technology substitution prohibition and the public welfare paramountcy principle claim to protect the public, but they reach opposite conclusions about whether tool quality could ever close the competence gap, and that internal tension within a shared value is precisely what generates the question.
The question emerged because Engineer A's conduct involved two analytically distinct wrongs: a representational wrong in offering services without disclosing incompetence, and a judgment wrong in treating a commercial CD-ROM as a legitimate path to competence. The NSPE Code provision at NSPE Code Section II.2.a governs both, but the case record does not specify whether the Code treats misrepresentation of qualifications as a more serious violation than susceptibility to commercial inducement, leaving open whether these are parallel failures or whether one is the root cause from which the other follows.
This question emerged because Engineer A occupied two ethically contradictory roles at the same time, functioning as both a competence enforcer toward Engineer B and a competence violator in the facilities design offering. The structural tension is not merely about hypocrisy but about whether selective competence awareness, where an engineer can identify incompetence in others while failing to apply the same standard to themselves, constitutes a more culpable failure than simple ignorance, because it implies the engineer possessed the normative knowledge required to self-regulate and chose not to apply it.
Was it ethical for Engineer A to offer facilities design and construction services under the facts presented?
Does the commercial solicitation itself bear any ethical responsibility for inducing engineers to overreach their competence boundaries, and should engineers have an affirmative obligation to critically evaluate marketing claims before acting on them?
Is there an ethical distinction between an engineer who offers out-of-competence services knowingly and one who is genuinely deceived by a commercial tool's marketing claims into believing competence has been acquired, and does that distinction affect culpability under the NSPE Code?
At what point in the sequence of events — receiving the solicitation, ordering the CD-ROM, or actively offering services — does Engineer A's conduct first become ethically impermissible, and does the Code impose obligations at each stage?
Would Engineer A's conduct become ethically permissible if the CD-ROM were used only as a supplementary tool while a qualified specialist retained overall design responsibility, and how does Code Section II.2.c govern that scenario?
Does the principle of Engineer A Competence Boundary Overreach conflict with the principle of Specialist Retention Obligation Multi-Discipline Project — that is, could Engineer A ethically accept a facilities design project as overall coordinator under II.2.c while delegating technical design to qualified specialists, thereby satisfying competence requirements without personally possessing facilities design expertise?
Does the principle of Engineer A Technology Substitution Violation conflict with the principle of Public Welfare Paramountcy Engineering Competence in a nuanced way — specifically, could a sufficiently robust and validated CD-ROM tool ever reduce public welfare risk enough to justify its use by an otherwise unqualified engineer, or does the public welfare principle categorically prohibit technology from substituting for foundational competence?
Does the principle of Engineer A Professional Honesty Omission conflict with the principle of Engineer A Commercial Inducement Resistance Failure — that is, is Engineer A's primary ethical failure one of dishonesty toward clients and the public about the absence of competence, or is it a failure of professional judgment in succumbing to a commercially motivated shortcut, and does the Code treat these as equally serious or hierarchically ordered violations?
Does the principle of Engineer A Competence Reporter Footing Concerns conflict with the principle of Engineer A Competence Boundary CD-ROM Facilities Design — in that Engineer A demonstrated sound ethical judgment by reporting Engineer B's out-of-competence footing work, yet simultaneously violated the same competence norms by offering facilities design services, raising the question of whether selective competence awareness constitutes a more serious ethical failure than simple ignorance?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill their duty to practice only within areas of competence, given that no amount of commercial tooling can substitute for the education and experience required by professional engineering codes?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A violate a categorical duty of honesty by publicly offering facilities design and construction services without disclosing the absence of any relevant experience, thereby misrepresenting professional qualifications to prospective clients?
From a consequentialist perspective, does the potential for harm to public welfare — arising from facilities designed by an engineer with no relevant experience relying solely on a commercial CD-ROM — outweigh any economic benefit Engineer A might gain by expanding service offerings?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A demonstrate the professional integrity and intellectual humility expected of a competent engineer when they accepted a commercially motivated solicitation as sufficient justification to enter an entirely unfamiliar engineering discipline?
Would Engineer A's offer of facilities design and construction services have been ethical if, instead of relying solely on the CD-ROM, they had retained qualified specialist engineers for each discipline involved in the project, as permitted under NSPE Code Section II.2.c?
What if Engineer A had critically evaluated the CD-ROM solicitation, recognized it as an inducement to practice outside their competence, and declined to order it — would this have demonstrated the professional judgment and commercial solicitation resistance that the NSPE Code implicitly demands?
If the CD-ROM had been developed and validated by a recognized professional engineering body rather than a commercial vendor, would that have meaningfully changed the ethical analysis of whether Engineer A could legitimately offer facilities design services — or would the fundamental competence gap remain an insurmountable ethical barrier?
Had Engineer A disclosed their lack of facilities design experience to prospective clients before accepting any engagement, and obtained informed client consent, would this disclosure have resolved the ethical violation — or does the competence requirement under the NSPE Code operate independently of client consent?
Given that Engineer A had no facilities design background and offered those services based only on a commercial CD-ROM, the board concluded the offer was unethical because the Code requires qualification by education or experience before undertaking an assignment, and the CD-ROM satisfied neither criterion.
Because Engineer A offered facilities design services without any specialist retention structure and used the CD-ROM as a competence substitute, the board concluded that the II.2.c coordination pathway was unavailable, though it would have been available had the proper specialist-retention framework been in place.
Given that Engineer A personally offered to perform facilities design using only a CD-ROM rather than delegating technical work to specialists, the board concluded that the ethical failure was not the breadth of the project but the choice to bypass the specialist retention pathway that II.2.c expressly provides.
Given that Engineer A had no facilities design experience and the CD-ROM was a commercial product without professional body validation, the board concluded that no degree of tool sophistication can substitute for the experiential judgment required to protect public welfare, because the ability to recognize tool errors and novel edge cases cannot be conferred by software.
Given that Engineer A's susceptibility to the CD-ROM solicitation produced the competence gap that was then misrepresented to prospective clients, the board concluded that the commercial inducement resistance failure is the causal root of the compound violation, making the competence violation foundational and the honesty violation secondary but serious.
Given that Engineer A had already shown the capacity to identify and report a peer's competence boundary violation, the board concluded that Engineer A's own simultaneous violation cannot be attributed to ignorance and therefore represents a more serious ethical failure reflecting motivated reasoning in the face of commercial incentive.
Given that Engineer A had no qualifying education or experience in facilities design and the Code defines competence in terms of personal knowledge rather than tool access, the board concluded that the duty to practice within competence is categorical under these facts and is not satisfied by client consent, disclosure, or the acquisition of commercial software.
Because Engineer A had no facilities design background and relied entirely on a commercial solicitation rather than any independent professional judgment, the board found that the conduct reflected a character failure, specifically the displacement of intellectual humility by financial opportunism, rather than a mere technical rule violation.
Because Engineer A sought to personally deliver facilities design services using the CD-ROM rather than engaging qualified specialists and limiting their own role to coordination, the board found the conduct impermissible, while confirming that a properly structured coordination arrangement under Section II.2.c would have been ethically available.
Because the competence requirement protects parties beyond the immediate client and operates as an objective standard independent of consent, the board concluded that even full disclosure and client agreement could not cure the underlying violation, though such disclosure would have mitigated the honesty dimension of Engineer A's conduct.
Because the Code itself provides a pathway for coordinating multi-discipline projects through specialist retention, the board found that the competence boundary principle does not bar project acceptance but does bar personal technical execution without qualification, and that no commercial tool can substitute for the specialist retention that makes coordination ethically permissible.
Given that Engineer A offered facilities design services to the public without any disclosure of the competence gap and treated a commercial software package as a substitute for recognized qualification, the board concluded this constituted an independent misrepresentation violation layered on top of the base competence violation.
Because Engineer A could not independently assess whether the CD-ROM's outputs were safe, appropriate, or correct, the board concluded that using the tool created an irreducible public welfare risk that the public welfare principle categorically prohibits, regardless of the tool's claimed sophistication or commercial validation.
Given that Engineer A had already demonstrated accurate understanding of competence norms by reporting Engineer B, the board concluded that Engineer A's failure to apply those same norms to their own CD-ROM-based facilities design offering was not a product of ignorance but of selective deployment of a principle they possessed, and that this asymmetry made the combined ethical failures of commercial inducement resistance failure and professional honesty omission more culpable than they would have been in the absence of that prior competence reporting conduct.
Given that Engineer A failed to critically assess the solicitation before ordering the CD-ROM and then proceeded to offer services, the board concluded the ethical violation was a sequence of progressively deepening failures beginning at solicitation receipt, not a single discrete act at the moment of offering.
Given that Engineer A offered facilities design services with no specialist retention and no scope limitation, the board concluded the II.2.c coordination pathway was not available, though it acknowledged that pathway could have changed the ethical analysis had its conditions been met.
Given that Engineer A reported Engineer B's footing design work as an out-of-competence violation while offering their own out-of-competence facilities design services in the same case, the board concluded that selective competence awareness represents a more serious ethical failure than simple ignorance, because the capacity for self-assessment was present and was not applied.
Because Engineer A had no facilities design experience, the board concluded that no commercial tool, however sophisticated or validated, could reduce public welfare risk to an acceptable level, since the capacity to assess the tool's adequacy was itself the missing competence.
Because Engineer A was a licensed engineer and the solicitation's language openly advertised bypassing competence requirements, the board concluded that acting on the solicitation without critical evaluation was itself an ethical lapse, not merely a precursor to one.
Because Engineer A had the professional background to critically evaluate the solicitation and the solicitation's language was explicit about substituting for experience, the board concluded that any claim of genuine deception was weakened, though intent remained relevant to the character and severity of the resulting censure.
Because Engineer A moved through each stage of the sequence, the board concluded that the Code imposed obligations of escalating force at each step, with the definitive violation occurring at the point of public service offering rather than at the earlier stages of receipt or purchase.
property=causedByAction; causal chain's causedByAction text resolved to the case individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=cause; causal chain's cause text resolved to the case individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=effect; causal chain's effect text resolved to the case individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=responsibleAgent; causal chain's responsibleAgent text resolved to the case individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
consulting firm's interview with public utility before firm's attempt to alter its qualifications
the firm sought to alter its qualifications following its interview with the public utility in order to improve its position to secure the contract
consulting firm's interview with public utility
firm's attempt to alter its qualifications
source_field=interpretation; confidence=0.6
The obligation to resist such inducements is heightened when the solicitation explicitly frames competence requirements as obstacles to profit.
source_field=interpretation; confidence=0.7
The Competence Principle is violated when an engineer offers services in a domain for which the engineer has no substantive background, relying instead on a commercial software tool that the vendor claims eliminates the need for domain experience. Acquiring a tool does not constitute acquiring competence.
The Technology Substitution Prohibition Principle applies not only to AI tools but to any technological tool that an engineer uses as a replacement for, rather than an aid to, independent professional judgment. A design tool cannot supply the foundational competence that the engineer lacks.
source_field=interpretation; confidence=0.75
The Board explicitly stated that technology must never be a replacement or substitute for engineering judgment. A CD-ROM that generates design outputs cannot supply the foundational knowledge needed to evaluate those outputs critically.
Acquiring a commercial tool and using it to generate design outputs is not equivalent to obtaining professional competence. The Board analogized this conduct to diploma mill self-certification, treating it as a misrepresentation of qualification basis rather than merely a competence gap.
design/build project work by Engineer A overlaps structural footing design by Engineer B
Engineer A, a professional engineer, worked with a construction contractor on a design/build project... During the construction of the project, the construction contractor separately retained the services of Engineer B... to design structural footings
Entity1 starts before Entity2 and ends during Entity2
property=initiates; happening's initiates state text resolved to the case State(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select (Event Calculus fluent transition)
Competency Deficit Active; Professional Boundary Condition
Self-Certification State; Unqualified Practice Preparation State
Public Safety Risk State; Unqualified Practice Active State; Client Reliance on Unqualified Engineer State
property=guidedByPrinciple; action's guidedByPrinciple text resolved to the case Obligation/Principle individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select (obligation-engagement grounding)
Protection of Public Health and Safety; Professional Judgment Over Technology Shortcuts; Rigorous Credentialing Over Self-Certification
property=raisesObligation; action's raisesObligation text resolved to the case Obligation/Principle individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select (obligation-engagement grounding)
Obligation to Practice Within Competency
property=violatesObligation; action's violatesObligation text resolved to the case Obligation/Principle individual(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select (obligation-engagement grounding)
Obligation to Represent Qualifications Honestly
Protection of Public Health and Safety; Professional Judgment Over Technology Shortcuts
Protection of Public Health and Safety; Professional Judgment Over Technology Shortcuts; Rigorous Credentialing Over Self-Certification; Ethical Obligation to Seek Work Only Within Areas of Competency
Obligation to Practice Within Competency; Obligation to Represent Qualifications Honestly; Obligation to Protect Public Health and Safety; Obligation to Retain Qualified Specialists When Lacking Competency
property=constrainedEntity; component party text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=invokedBy; component party text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=obligatedParty; component party text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
property=possessedBy; component party text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM select
relation_type=peer; property=professionalPeerOf
Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings and reported his concerns to the contractor
property=availableTo; resource used_by text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select
Engineer A, working on the same design/build project, recognized that Engineer B lacked the competence to design structural footings and reported those concerns to the contractor
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background in facilities design and construction, began offering facilities design services after acquiring a CD-ROM tool
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, began offering facilities design and construction services after acquiring a CD-ROM design tool
Engineer A used a CD-ROM design tool as a substitute for the engineering judgment, education, and experience required to perform facilities design
Engineer A treated the purchase and use of a commercial CD-ROM design tool as sufficient basis to represent himself as competent to perform facilities design and construction services
The Board grounded the competence obligations at issue in the fundamental duty to protect public health and safety
By offering facilities design and construction services without disclosing to prospective clients that Engineer A had no experience or training in that domain, Engineer A implicitly represented a level of competence that did not exist
Engineer A responded to a direct mail solicitation marketing a CD-ROM as a means to expand practice into facilities design
Engineer A responded to a commercial solicitation that explicitly framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit
By offering facilities design and construction services without the requisite competence, Engineer A created a risk that members of the public who rely on engineered facilities would be exposed to designs
In multi-discipline projects such as facilities design and construction, engineers who lack competence in required technical domains are obligated to retain or recommend qualified specialists
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, undertook the design of structural footings for an industrial facility, a task requiring civil and structural engineering competence that Engineer B did not pos
Engineer A treated a CD-ROM design tool as a substitute for the domain knowledge and professional judgment required to practice facilities design and construction engineering
Engineer A, working on the same design/build project, recognized that Engineer B lacked the competence to design structural footings and reported those concerns to the contractor, fulfilling the obligation to act when another practitioner's
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, undertook the design of structural footings for an industrial facility
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background in facilities design and construction, was obligated to refrain from offering and performing facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A, as a licensed chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, was obligated to refrain from offering facilities design and construction services, regardless of the availability of a CD-ROM design tool.
Engineer A was obligated to report concerns about Engineer B's competence to design structural footings to the construction contractor, and did so.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from treating the CD-ROM design tool as a substitute for the domain knowledge, education, and professional experience required to competently perform facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A was obligated to recognize that the CD-ROM design library could not substitute for the domain knowledge and professional experience required to competently practice facilities design and construction
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from treating the purchase and use of a commercial CD-ROM design tool as a basis for representing competence to perform facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A, undertaking a multi-discipline facilities design and construction project involving civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains outside the engineer's chemical engineering background, was obligated to retai
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from representing to prospective clients that the engineer was qualified to perform facilities design and construction services, and to disclose the absence of relevant experience before soliciting or acc
Engineer A was obligated to critically evaluate the commercial solicitation, which explicitly framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit, and to refrain from accepting its premise as justification for offering servic
Engineer A was obligated to critically evaluate and resist the direct mail solicitation that framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit and promised that a CD-ROM could substitute for domain expertise in facilities d
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, was obligated to refrain from designing structural footings for an industrial facility, a domain outside the engineer's competence.
property=affects; state affectedParties text resolved to the case Agent(s) by embedding shortlist + LLM multi-select
Engineer A; Prospective clients; Public relying on facilities designed under Engineer A's seal
Engineer A; Prospective clients soliciting facilities design and construction services; Public relying on competent engineering work product
Engineer A; Clients receiving facilities design services; Public affected by engineered facilities
Engineer A; Clients receiving facilities design services; Public safety stakeholders
Engineer A; Clients receiving work product generated by the tool; Public affected by resulting engineering work
Engineer B; Engineer A; Contractor; Public occupying or using the industrial facility
property=activatedByEvent; description resolved to the endpoint by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Professional begins offering services outside their area of demonstrated competence
property=activatesConstraint; description resolved to the endpoint by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Must not represent capability to clients based solely on automated tool availability
property=activatesObligation; description resolved to the endpoint by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Duty to refrain from offering services beyond competence
Duty to disclose limitations to prospective clients
Duty to obtain supervision or associate with competent professionals before proceeding
property=terminatedByEvent; description resolved to the endpoint by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Professional discloses limitations and declines engagements beyond competence
Professional acquires sufficient education, training, or supervised experience in the domain
Engineer A begins to offer facilities design and construction services to the public after acquiring only a commercial CD-ROM tool
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services despite having no facilities design and construction experience
No subsequent training, education, or supervised experience in the target discipline is demonstrated
Must not perform out-of-discipline design without demonstrated competence
Duty to practice only within areas of competency
Obligation of other engineers to question and report competence concerns
Duty to retain or recommend specialists for out-of-discipline components
Must not seal or certify work product generated by a tool the professional cannot independently evaluate
Duty to obtain competent supervision before delivering work product
Duty to verify that tool outputs meet applicable professional standards
property=toEntity; temporal relation's toEntity text resolved to the case Action/Event individual by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, receives a solicitation in the mail
property=fromEntity; temporal relation's fromEntity text resolved to the case Action/Event individual by embedding shortlist + LLM select
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, receives a solicitation in the mail... Engineer A orders the CD-ROM
Interactive Library of Standard Design CD-ROM (commercial solicitation)
Commercial Engineering Software Marketing Resource
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services
thanks to a revolutionary new CD-ROM - specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience
Engineer A relies on this commercial CD-ROM product as the basis for offering facilities design and construction services despite having no prior experience in that domain. The tool's marketing claims that it enables any engineer to design any construction project regardless of experience are central to the ethical analysis of competence and professional responsibility.
Engineer A received a direct mail solicitation for a CD-ROM that claimed to allow virtually anyone to specify, design, and cost out facilities projects. Engineer A purchased the tool and used it as the basis for offering multi-discipline facilities design and construction services despite having no education or experience in civil, structural, mechanical, or electrical engineering as applied to facilities design.
Self-Certification Competence Constraint
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background in facilities design and construction, was prohibited from treating the purchase and use of a commercial CD-ROM design tool as a sufficient basis for claiming or representing competence to perform facilities design and construction services.
At the time Engineer A acquired the CD-ROM and began offering facilities design and construction services
A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to 'specify, design and cost out' a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency to perform facilities design and construction services.
By ordering and using the CD-ROM, Engineer A in a sense was 'self-certifying' his competency to perform facilities design and construction services without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications to perform those services in a competent and professional manner.
Via class 'Self-Certification Competence Constraint': The Unfamiliar Tool Competence Constraint addresses limits on using tools the engineer lacks sufficient experience with, which partially overlaps. However, the present constraint is more specifically about the prohibition on treating tool acquisition as a substitute for domain competence certification, which is a distinct concept closer to self-certification and misrepresentation than to mere unfamiliarity with a tool. The match is a variant rather than an exact match; the existing class does not fully capture the self-certification dimension.
Engineer A Commercial Solicitation Reliance
Engineer A received a direct mail solicitation advertising a CD-ROM that would allow virtually anyone to perform facilities design work, framing the professional experience requirement as an obstacle the product could circumvent. Engineer A purchased the product and relied on it as a competence basis.
Commercial Solicitation Reliance Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from treating the direct mail commercial solicitation for the CD-ROM, which explicitly framed professional experience requirements as obstacles to be bypassed, as a sufficient basis for acquiring or claiming competence in facilities design and construction.
At the time Engineer A received and acted upon the direct mail solicitation
Relying on a 'how to' CD-ROM appears to show a general disregard for the fundamental role that professional engineers play in protecting the public health and safety.
Engineer A Commercial Solicitation Resistance
The solicitation explicitly told engineers they could not afford to pass up unfamiliar jobs and that the CD-ROM eliminated the need for design experience. Engineer A failed to critically evaluate these claims and instead ordered the product and expanded services accordingly.
Engineer A was constrained from accepting the commercial solicitation's framing that professional competence requirements are obstacles to be bypassed by a software tool, and was required to critically evaluate the solicitation against professional ethics standards before acting on it.
NSPE Code of Ethics; professional ethics principles governing competence and commercial solicitation evaluation
At the point of receiving and evaluating the commercial solicitation
Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job that comes by - including construction projects that may be new or unfamiliar.
no matter your design experience. For instance, never designed a highway before? No problem.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Technology Substitution Constraint'
Engineer A demonstrated the capability to recognize that Engineer B appeared to lack competence to design structural footings and to report those concerns to the construction contractor.
Engineer A, working on a design/build industrial facility project, identified that Engineer B, a chemical engineer retained by the contractor to design structural footings, appeared to lack the necessary training in foundation design, and reported his concerns to the contractor.
Identifying Engineer B's apparent lack of foundation design training and reporting concerns about Engineer B's competence to the contractor.
Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor
Engineer A failed to accurately assess the boundaries of their own competence before offering facilities design and construction services, not recognizing that a chemical engineering background without facilities design experience did not qualify the engineer to hold out those services.
Engineer A is a chemical engineer who ordered a CD-ROM design library and began offering facilities design and construction services to clients without possessing the requisite domain knowledge or experience.
Engineer A began offering facilities design and construction services despite having no facilities design and construction experience, demonstrating an absence of accurate self-assessment of competence boundaries.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience
Via class 'Competence Self-Assessment Capability': Competence Limit Recognition Capability covers recognizing the boundaries of one's own technical competence when assigned a task and taking appropriate action. This new capability is closely related but differs in emphasis: Competence Limit Recognition Capability is framed around a task assignment context where the engineer is asked to do something, whereas this capability concerns the proactive self-assessment required before offering services to the market. The holding-out and misrepresentation dimensions are not captured in the existing class. The match is a variant rather than identical, so medium confidence is appropriate.
Engineer A Cross-Discipline Facilities Offer
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no apparent substantive background in facilities design and construction, offered multi-discipline facilities design services after acquiring a commercial CD-ROM, without possessing the education or experience required in civil, structural, mechanical, or electrical engineering.
Engineer A, licensed as a chemical engineer, was prohibited from offering or performing facilities design and construction services encompassing civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering disciplines in which the engineer lacked the requisite education, training, and experience.
At the time Engineer A offered and undertook facilities design and construction services
An individual seeking to obtain an acceptable level of competency in the basic elements of facilities design and construction (e.g., civil, structural, mechanical, electrical engineering) should seek and be able to demonstrate appropriate engineering and related education and experience.
It is clear that Engineer A, a chemical engineer, has no apparent substantive background or experience in the area of facilities design and construction.
The Board analogized Engineer A's reliance on the commercial CD-ROM to diploma mill self-certification, noting that both involve a perfunctory process that does not involve comprehensive study, examination, or practice, and that both are contrary to the basic ethical principles of the Code of Ethics.
Engineer A was prohibited from relying on the CD-ROM acquisition process, which the Board characterized as functionally equivalent to a diploma mill certification, as a basis for representing competence in facilities design and construction.
At the time Engineer A used the CD-ROM as a competence credential
The Board considers such activities completely contrary to the basic ethical principles established in the Code of Ethics.
The direct mail product described under the facts is not unlike mail order certifications offered by so called 'diploma mills' whereby individuals 'self certify' their competency based upon a perfunctory review process that rarely involves comprehensive study, examination, or practice.
Engineer A failed to exercise the capability to recognize that purchasing and using the CD-ROM did not constitute a legitimate basis for representing competence in facilities design and construction, effectively self-certifying competence without substantive education, examination, or experience.
Engineer A ordered a commercial CD-ROM design tool and used it as the basis for holding out facilities design and construction services, without obtaining the substantive education and experience required to practice competently in that domain.
Treating the CD-ROM purchase as sufficient qualification to offer facilities design services, analogous to a diploma mill self-certification.
By ordering and using the CD-ROM, Engineer A in a sense was 'self-certifying' his competency to perform facilities design and construction services without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications to perform those services in a competent and professional manner
the direct mail product described under the facts is not unlike mail order certifications offered by so called 'diploma mills'
Engineer A Solicitation Critical Evaluation
Solicitation Critical Evaluation Capability
Engineer A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to critically evaluate the direct mail solicitation that framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit and implied that a CD-ROM could substitute for domain knowledge.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design background, received a direct mail solicitation for a CD-ROM design tool and ordered it without critically evaluating the solicitation's implicit claim that the tool could confer competence.
Failure to recognize the solicitation as misrepresenting the basis for professional competence, resulting in purchase of the CD-ROM and offering of out-of-competence services.
A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to 'specify, design and cost out' a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency to perform facilities design and construction services
Engineer A lacked the capability to critically evaluate the commercial solicitation and failed to recognize that its framing of professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit was a warning sign that the tool could not substitute for domain expertise.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design experience, received a solicitation claiming that a CD-ROM library enabled any engineer to design any construction project regardless of experience, and acted on it without critical scrutiny.
Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering facilities design services without questioning the solicitation's claims, indicating an absence of critical evaluation of the marketing material.
Via class 'Solicitation Critical Evaluation Capability': CADD Proficiency Capability addresses recognizing when a technological tool is being used as a substitute for professional judgment, which partially overlaps. However, that class is scoped to CADD systems and proficiency within a known tool context, whereas this capability concerns critically evaluating an external commercial solicitation that misrepresents what a tool can do before the engineer even acquires it. The awareness dimension and the solicitation-evaluation context are sufficiently distinct to warrant a new class. No existing class captures the front-end critical evaluation of marketing claims directed at engineers.
Engineer A Specialist Retention Judgment
Specialist Retention Judgment Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the capability to recognize that a multi-discipline facilities design and construction project required retention of qualified specialists in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering, and instead attempted to cover those domains through a CD-ROM tool.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, undertook a multi-discipline facilities design and construction project involving civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering without retaining specialists in those domains.
Attempting to perform multi-discipline facilities design services without retaining qualified specialists in the relevant engineering disciplines.
a prime professional will be expected to retain or recommend the retention of experts and specialists in situations in which the prime professional is performing substantial services on the project
engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience or to retain individuals who possess the necessary educational background and experience to perform the work
Engineer A Technology Substitution CD-ROM
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design experience, received a commercial solicitation promising that a CD-ROM would allow any engineer to perform construction project design regardless of prior experience. Engineer A ordered the tool and began offering facilities design services on that basis.
Engineer A was prohibited from treating the commercial CD-ROM design library as a substitute for the engineering education, training, and experience required to competently perform facilities design and construction services.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2.a; professional ethics principles governing competence
From the point Engineer A received the solicitation and considered ordering the CD-ROM onward
specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience
Engineer A Technology Substitution Facilities
The Board explicitly stated that technology must never be a replacement or substitute for engineering judgment, and that professional engineering cannot be reduced to reliance on computers and technical information instead of time-tested professional experience.
Engineer A was prohibited from using the CD-ROM design tool as a replacement or substitute for the engineering judgment, education, and professional experience required to perform facilities design and construction services.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Board position on technology in engineering practice
Throughout Engineer A's use of the CD-ROM to offer and perform facilities design services
It is the Board's position that technology has an important place in the practice of engineering, but it must never be a replacement of a substitute for engineering judgment.
Professional engineering cannot be reduced to an activity whereby practitioners rely upon computers and technical information instead of time-tested professional experience and engineering judgment.
Engineer A Tool Substitution Recognition
Technology Non-Substitution Judgment Capability
Engineer A lacked the capability to recognize that the CD-ROM design library was being marketed as a substitute for domain competence rather than as an aid to a competent practitioner, and failed to resist treating tool possession as conferring professional qualification.
The CD-ROM solicitation explicitly stated that design experience was irrelevant because the tool handled all design tasks. Engineer A ordered the tool and offered services on that basis, failing to recognize the tool could not supply the professional judgment required.
Engineer A accepted the solicitation's premise that the CD-ROM enabled competent facilities design regardless of experience and began offering such services, treating the tool as a replacement for the domain knowledge the engineer did not possess.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Technology Non-Substitution Judgment Capability'
Engineer A had no prior experience with the CD-ROM tool and no domain knowledge in facilities design against which to evaluate or verify its outputs. The tool was used as the primary basis for offering and performing professional engineering services in an unfamiliar domain.
Engineer A, having no prior experience evaluating or verifying the outputs of the CD-ROM design tool and no background in the domain it addressed, was required to either acquire adequate competence before use or limit reliance on the tool's outputs, and could not use the tool as the basis for professional work products delivered to clients.
Throughout Engineer A's use of the CD-ROM to produce facilities design work products
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Unfamiliar Tool Competence Constraint'
Engineer A lacking facilities design experience before Engineer A receiving the CD-ROM solicitation
Engineer A lacking facilities design experience
Engineer A receiving the CD-ROM solicitation
Engineer A receiving the CD-ROM solicitation before Engineer A ordering the CD-ROM
Engineer B Competence Self-Assessment Footing
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, failed to accurately assess the boundaries of his own competence before undertaking structural footing design, proceeding despite lacking the requisite expertise.
Engineer B, a professional engineer with a chemical engineering background and no apparent subsequent training in foundation design, was retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings as part of an industrial facility.
Accepting a commission to design structural footings for an industrial facility without possessing apparent training or experience in foundation design.
Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering. Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any apparent subsequent training in foundation design
the Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility
Engineer B Footing Design Cross-Discipline
Engineer B, whose degree and background was in chemical engineering, was separately retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings. Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any subsequent training in foundation design and reported concerns to the contractor. The Board found it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the footing design.
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no demonstrated training or experience in foundation design, was prohibited from designing structural footings as part of an industrial facility construction project.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Case 94-8
At the time Engineer B was retained to design structural footings for the industrial facility
Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering. Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any apparent subsequent training in foundation design.
The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility.
Commercial CD-ROM product marketed to engineers for facilities design and construction
A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to specify, design and cost out a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency to perform facilities design and construction services
Identified as the commercial tool Engineer A relied upon as a purported basis for competency in facilities design and construction, which the Board found to be an inadequate substitute for genuine professional education and experience
After Competency Shortcut Purchase; before service offering begins
Predates the case narrative; becomes salient at point of solicitation receipt
After receiving the solicitation, before offering new services
At point of analysis; retroactively applicable from service offering onward
At point of service offering; persists throughout
Before CD-ROM purchase; initial contact point
Solicitation Receipt → Competency Shortcut Purchase
Simply sign and return this letter today and you'll be among the first engineers to see how this full-featured interactive library of standard design can help you work faster than ever and increase your firm's profits.
Solicitation Receipt -- Engineer A receives direct mail advertising a CD-ROM claiming any engineer can design any project regardless of experience
Promotional Material Acceptance -- Engineer A reads and accepts the premise that pointing and clicking can substitute for design experience
Competency Shortcut Purchase -- Engineer A orders the CD-ROM, implicitly accepting its premise
Without receiving the solicitation promising competency 'no matter your design experience,' Engineer A would not have ordered the CD-ROM to pursue unfamiliar facilities design work
Engineer A's willingness to respond to the solicitation
Marketing claims that design experience was unnecessary ('no matter your design experience')
Receipt of the direct mail solicitation advertising the CD-ROM
Compelling marketing message + Engineer A's interest in expanding services + low barrier to ordering (sign and return letter)
Unauthorized Service Offering → Ethical Precedent Application
engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience or to retain individuals who possess the necessary educational background and experience to perform the work.
Unauthorized Service Offering -- Engineer A offers facilities design and construction services outside his competency
Ethical Precedent Application -- Prior BER decisions from 1971, 1978, and 1994 become applicable to Engineer A's situation
Had Engineer A not offered services outside his competency, the competency precedents would not be triggered for evaluation of his conduct
Code Section II.2.a governing competence
Engineer A offering services outside his area of competence
Existence of prior BER decisions (71-2, 78-5, 94-8) addressing professional competency
An engineer practicing outside competency + existing precedent on competency obligations
Competency Shortcut Purchase → CD-ROM Delivery
Competency Shortcut Purchase -- Engineer A orders the CD-ROM
CD-ROM Delivery -- The CD-ROM product is delivered, making the tool physically available
Without ordering the CD-ROM, the product would never have been delivered to Engineer A
Existence of the product available for delivery
Placement of the order + vendor fulfillment process
Unauthorized Service Offering → Inadequate Competency Basis
A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to “specify, design and cost out” a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency to perform facilities design and construction services.
Unauthorized Service Offering -- Engineer A markets and provides facilities design services
Competency Gap Exposure -- Engineer A's lack of facilities design experience becomes a material condition of the engagement
Inadequate Competency Basis -- The CD-ROM is established as an inappropriate foundation for professional competency, amounting to 'self-certifying' competency
If Engineer A had obtained appropriate education and experience or retained qualified specialists, the competency basis would have been adequate
Engineer A's lack of appropriate engineering education and experience in facilities design
Engineer A's reliance on the CD-ROM as the foundation for offering services
The CD-ROM being an inappropriate substitute for professional competency
Reliance on a 'how to' CD-ROM in place of education and experience to offer professional services
CD-ROM Delivery → Unauthorized Service Offering
CD-ROM Delivery -- The CD-ROM is delivered and physically available
Unauthorized Service Offering -- Engineer A begins actively marketing and providing facilities design and construction services
Without the delivered CD-ROM as the foundation, Engineer A would have lacked even the purported basis to begin offering these services
Engineer A's intent to enter the facilities design and construction market
Engineer A's reliance on the CD-ROM as his competency basis
Physical availability of the CD-ROM tool
Possession of the tool + Engineer A's decision to market services he believed it enabled
Engineer A, a professional engineer working on a design/build industrial facility project, identified that Engineer B lacked competence to design structural footings and reported those concerns to the construction contractor.
Not specified; working on design/build industrial facility
Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any apparent subsequent training in foundation design
Engineer B Out-of-Competence Footing Design
Engineer B, a professional engineer with a chemical engineering background and no apparent training in foundation design, was retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings for an industrial facility, a domain outside Engineer B's established competence.
Chemical engineering; no apparent training in foundation or structural design
Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering
it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility
Established professional ethics precedents became normatively binding on Engineer A's conduct, framing the service offering as ethically impermissible under existing standards.
Prior BER case decisions from 1971, 1978, and 1994 automatically became applicable to Engineer A's situation once the facts of the case matched the established patterns of competency-based ethical violations, triggering their normative force without any further agent decision.
Engineer A Commercial Solicitation Resistance Failure
Engineer A received a direct mail solicitation marketing a CD-ROM as a means to expand practice into facilities design and construction, with the solicitation explicitly framing competence requirements as obstacles to profit. Engineer A accepted the solicitation's premise and ordered the tool.
Commercial Solicitation Resistance Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to critically evaluate and resist the direct mail solicitation that framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit and promised that a CD-ROM could substitute for domain expertise in facilities design.
At the time of receiving and responding to the commercial solicitation
The Board considers such activities completely contrary to the basic ethical principles established in the Code of Ethics
From acquisition and first use of the CD-ROM tool in connection with client services
Clients receiving work product generated by the tool
Public affected by resulting engineering work
Transforms the general principle that engineers shall practice only in areas of competence into a specific prohibition on treating automated tools as competence proxies and a requirement to maintain independent professional judgment over tool outputs.
Engineer A's use of a CD-ROM design tool with no prior experience evaluating or verifying its outputs
Engineer A orders and deploys a CD-ROM design tool in a domain where Engineer A has no independent basis for assessing the tool's accuracy or limitations
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Unfamiliar Tool Deployment State'
Engineer B Out-of-Competence Footing Design Obligation
Engineer B was separately retained by a construction contractor on a design/build industrial facility project to design structural footings. Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering with no apparent subsequent training in foundation design.
At the time of accepting and performing the footing design assignment
Engineer A Commercial Inducement Resistance Failure
Vendor solicitation for CD-ROM design tool
Engineer A responded to a commercial solicitation that explicitly framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit, and accepted the vendor's claim that a CD-ROM tool eliminated the need for domain experience, without applying independent professional judgment to evaluate that claim.
The solicitation's language directly targeted engineers' commercial anxieties and explicitly dismissed competence requirements. A professionally responsible engineer should have recognized this framing as a commercial inducement incompatible with professional obligations and declined to act on it.
Commercial Inducement Resistance Principle
No genuine tension. The commercial inducement does not create a competing professional obligation. The principle requires the engineer to resist the inducement, not balance against it.
specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience.
Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job that comes by - including construction projects that may be new or unfamiliar. Now - thanks to a revolutionary new CD-ROM - specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience.
The solicitation received by Engineer A stated that engineers cannot afford to pass up unfamiliar jobs and that a CD-ROM eliminates the need for design experience. Engineer A accepted this framing and ordered the tool without critically evaluating whether it could substitute for genuine domain competence.
Engineer A was obligated to critically evaluate the commercial solicitation, which explicitly framed professional competence requirements as obstacles to profit, and to refrain from accepting its premise as justification for offering services outside the engineer's competence.
Upon receipt of the commercial solicitation
Now - - thanks to a revolutionary new CD-ROM - specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience.
Engineer A Competence Boundary CD-ROM Facilities Design
Facilities design and construction services
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background in facilities design and construction, began offering facilities design services after acquiring a CD-ROM tool, without obtaining the education or experience required to practice competently in civil, structural, mechanical, or electrical engineering.
The competence boundary for facilities design encompasses civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering disciplines. A chemical engineering background does not satisfy that boundary, and a commercial software tool does not substitute for the required education and experience.
The commercial appeal of the CD-ROM and the vendor's marketing framing competence requirements as obstacles to profit do not override the obligation to remain within competence boundaries.
It is clear that Engineer A, a chemical engineer, has no apparent substantive background or experience in the area of facilities design and construction. A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to 'specify, design and cost out' a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency to perform facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A Competence Reporter Footing Concerns
Engineer B's structural footing design assignment
Engineer A, working on the same design/build project, recognized that Engineer B lacked the competence to design structural footings and reported those concerns to the contractor, fulfilling the obligation to act when another practitioner's qualifications are in doubt.
Recognizing and reporting competence concerns about another engineer on the same project is an affirmative professional obligation, not merely a permissible act. The Board held that Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report concerns.
The obligation to protect the public from incompetent work overrides any collegial reluctance to question another engineer's qualifications. Reporting to the contractor was the appropriate channel given the project structure.
Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings and reported his concerns to the contractor.
The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility and that Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Competence Recognition Principle'
Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor.
Engineer A Professional Honesty Omission
Prospective clients seeking facilities design and construction services
By offering facilities design and construction services without disclosing to prospective clients that Engineer A had no experience or training in that domain, Engineer A implicitly represented a level of competence that did not exist, constituting a form of professional dishonesty through omission.
Honesty in professional practice requires not only avoiding affirmative misrepresentations but also refraining from conduct that creates false impressions about one's qualifications. Offering services in an unfamiliar domain without disclosure of that unfamiliarity misleads clients about the basis on which they are engaging the engineer.
Honesty and competence obligations are mutually reinforcing. Full honesty would require disclosing the lack of domain experience, which would in turn prevent the engineer from offering the services at all.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Honesty'
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience... orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services.
Facilities design and construction services offered to prospective clients
By offering facilities design and construction services without the requisite competence, Engineer A created a risk that members of the public who rely on engineered facilities would be exposed to designs that lacked the professional judgment necessary to ensure their safety.
The Public Welfare Paramountcy Principle is implicated whenever an engineer offers services outside their competence, because the public and clients cannot independently assess whether the engineer is qualified. The principle requires engineers to protect the public by maintaining competence boundaries even when commercial pressures push toward expansion.
Public welfare paramountcy reinforces the competence obligation. There is no competing principle that would justify offering incompetent services to the public.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Public Welfare Paramountcy Principle'
Engineer A Scope of Practice Facilities Design
Engineer A's chemical engineering license and background did not encompass facilities design and construction. The engineer expanded into this domain solely on the basis of a commercial CD-ROM solicitation, without acquiring the requisite competence.
Engineer A, as a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, was prohibited by professional ethics code provisions from offering or performing facilities design and construction services, which fall outside the scope of practice supported by the engineer's education, training, and experience.
Throughout the period Engineer A offered and performed facilities design services
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Scope of Practice (Constraint)'
Engineer B Competence Boundary Footing Design
Structural footing design for industrial facility
Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, undertook the design of structural footings for an industrial facility, a task requiring civil and structural engineering competence that Engineer B did not possess.
A chemical engineering degree and background does not confer competence to perform structural foundation design. Accepting the engagement without that competence violated the principle prohibiting practice outside one's area of qualification.
The competence boundary obligation overrides any duty to serve the client by accepting the work. The proper response was to decline or to retain a qualified structural engineer.
The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility
Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering. Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any apparent subsequent training in foundation design, and Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings.
Engineer A Commercial Inducement CD-ROM Solicitation
Direct mail CD-ROM marketing solicitation for facilities design
Engineer A responded to a direct mail solicitation marketing a CD-ROM as a means to expand practice into facilities design, accepting the vendor's implicit framing that the tool was sufficient to enable competent practice in a new domain.
The vendor's marketing of the CD-ROM as a route to expanded practice is precisely the kind of commercial solicitation that engineers must critically evaluate and resist. The obligation to resist such inducements is heightened when the solicitation explicitly frames competence requirements as obstacles to profit.
The commercial inducement resistance principle and the competence boundary principle reinforce each other here. Both independently required Engineer A to decline the solicitation and refrain from offering the services.
Relying on a 'how to' CD-ROM appears to show a general disregard for the fundamental role that professional engineers play in protecting the public health and safety and minimizes the high level of knowledge and expertise necessary to perform these critical responsibilities.
Engineer A Technology Substitution CD-ROM Design
CD-ROM-generated facilities design outputs
Engineer A used a CD-ROM design tool as a substitute for the engineering judgment, education, and experience required to perform facilities design, rather than as an aid to be evaluated by a qualified practitioner.
Technology Substitution Prohibition Principle
The technology substitution prohibition and competence boundary principle converge: the tool cannot remedy the competence gap, and using the tool in place of competence violates both principles simultaneously.
it is the Board's position that technology has an important place in the practice of engineering, but it must never be a replacement of a substitute for engineering judgment
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Technology Substitution Prohibition Principle'
it is the Board's position that technology has an important place in the practice of engineering, but it must never be a replacement of a substitute for engineering judgment.
Engineer A Technology Substitution Violation
CD-ROM design tool used to offer facilities design services
Engineer A treated a CD-ROM design tool as a substitute for the domain knowledge and professional judgment required to practice facilities design and construction engineering, rather than as an aid subject to substantive professional evaluation.
The two principles are complementary here. Both are violated by the same conduct: using a software tool to offer services in a domain where the engineer lacks the competence to evaluate the tool's outputs.
specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience. For instance, never designed a highway before? No problem. Just point to the 'Highways' window and click.
Specialist Retention Obligation Multi-Discipline Project
Facilities design requiring civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering disciplines
In multi-discipline projects such as facilities design and construction, engineers who lack competence in required technical domains are obligated to retain or recommend qualified specialists rather than attempting to perform those tasks themselves or leaving them unaddressed.
The Board's references to BER Cases 71-2 and 78-5 establish that engineers must either possess the required competence or retain those who do. This applies both to prime professionals managing multi-discipline projects and to engineers who accept assignments in domains outside their background.
Specialist Retention Obligation Principle
The obligation to serve the client does not authorize accepting work in domains where competence is absent. The proper service to the client is to ensure qualified specialists are engaged, not to attempt the work without qualification.
the Board recognized 'the propriety and value of the prime professional or client retaining the services of experts and specialists in the interests of the project'
Engineer A became aware of a product marketing itself as a competency substitute for facilities design and construction work.
Awareness of Competency Shortcut Product
Engineer A received a direct mail solicitation advertising a CD-ROM product claiming to enable any engineer to design and cost out construction projects regardless of prior experience.
From acquisition of the CD-ROM through any engagement in which Engineer A delivers facilities design work product based solely on the tool's outputs
Clients receiving facilities design services
Public affected by engineered facilities
Engineer A's reliance on a commercial CD-ROM as a substitute for facilities design and construction knowledge
Engineer A orders a CD-ROM marketed as enabling any engineer to design any construction project regardless of design experience
Via class 'Tool Substitution for Competence State': Unfamiliar Tool Deployment State captures the use of a tool without prior experience. This case adds the distinct dimension that the tool is being used as a wholesale substitute for domain competence rather than merely as an unfamiliar instrument within an area where the professional otherwise has expertise. The substitution-for-competence aspect is materially different and ethically more serious, warranting a distinct class, though the existing class is the closest match.
Engineer A Tool Substitution for Competence
From acquisition of the CD-ROM and commencement of facilities design services onward
Engineer A's reliance on a commercial CD-ROM as a functional substitute for engineering education and experience in facilities design
Not resolved in the case; would terminate upon Engineer A obtaining genuine domain competence or ceasing to offer the services
Professional engineering cannot be reduced to an activity whereby practitioners rely upon computers and technical information instead of time-tested professional experience and engineering judgment
Relying on a how to CD-ROM appears to show a general disregard for the fundamental role that professional engineers play in protecting the public health and safety
technology has an important place in the practice of engineering, but it must never be a replacement of a substitute for engineering judgment
Engineer A's decision to use the CD-ROM as the basis for performing facilities design and construction services rather than as a supplement to existing expertise
Acceptance of a false premise that technology can replace substantive competency development
Professional Judgment Over Technology Shortcuts
Susceptibility to Self-Certification State
Identify a means to expand practice into new engineering service areas
Critical evaluation of professional development claims
Self-assessment of competency boundaries
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design or construction experience, receives and engages with a direct mail solicitation claiming that a CD-ROM can substitute for substantive engineering education and experience in unfamiliar disciplines.
The CD-ROM became available to Engineer A as a tool, creating the proximate condition enabling the subsequent service offering.
Following Engineer A's order, the CD-ROM product was delivered, making the tool physically available for use as an attempted basis for competency in facilities design and construction work.
Engineer A is a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience who orders a CD-ROM design tool and begins offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients, practicing outside the domain of their established competence.
lack_of_experience: No facilities design and construction experience
tool_used: CD-ROM interactive library of standard design
Engineer A Tool Substitution CD-ROM Design
Engineer A used a commercially marketed CD-ROM as the sole basis for entering the facilities design field, relying on the tool's outputs rather than on genuine engineering judgment and experience in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
Throughout the period of using the CD-ROM to perform facilities design services
Engineer A's professional competency boundary became a relevant and active constraint on any subsequent service offering in facilities design and construction.
Engineer A's lack of facilities design and construction experience became a material condition of the case once the CD-ROM solicitation was received and acted upon, establishing the foundational competency deficit relevant to all subsequent events.
Engineer A Competence Boundary CD-ROM Facilities
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, responded to a direct mail solicitation for a CD-ROM design tool and began offering facilities design and construction services despite having no apparent education, training, or experience in that domain.
At the time of ordering the CD-ROM and beginning to offer facilities design services
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, has no apparent substantive background or experience in the area of facilities design and construction
Engineer A Competence Misrepresentation Offering
By offering facilities design and construction services to the public, Engineer A implicitly represented competence in that domain. The representation was unsupported by any relevant experience and rested solely on possession of a commercial software tool.
Competence Misrepresentation Avoidance Obligation
Engineer A was constrained from representing to prospective clients that the engineer was qualified to perform facilities design and construction services when no such qualification existed, as the CD-ROM tool did not confer the education, training, or experience required for competent practice in that domain.
NSPE Code of Ethics, Section II.2.a; professional ethics provisions on misrepresentation
From the point Engineer A began advertising or offering facilities design services
Engineer A Self-Certification CD-ROM Facilities Design
Facilities design and construction services offered on basis of CD-ROM acquisition
Engineer A treated the purchase and use of a commercial CD-ROM design tool as sufficient basis to represent himself as competent to perform facilities design and construction services, without obtaining any substantive education, supervised experience, or formal qualification in the relevant engineering disciplines.
Self-Certification Prohibition Principle
The self-certification prohibition addresses the representational wrong of claiming competence through tool acquisition. The technology substitution prohibition addresses the operational wrong of using the tool in place of judgment during practice. Both are violated here and reinforce each other.
The commercial solicitation explicitly claimed that the CD-ROM enabled any engineer to design any construction project regardless of experience. Engineer A accepted this claim and used the tool as a basis for entering a domain of practice in which the engineer had no competence.
Engineer A was obligated to recognize that the CD-ROM design library could not substitute for the domain knowledge and professional experience required to competently practice facilities design and construction, and to refrain from treating acquisition of the tool as conferring competence to offer those services.
Upon ordering the CD-ROM and deciding to offer new services based on its availability
Via class 'Tool Substitution Refusal Obligation': The Technology Non-Substitution Obligation captures the duty to ensure technological tools serve as instruments under the engineer's direction rather than substitutes for professional judgment. This case instantiates that concept specifically in the context of a CD-ROM design library being used to enter an entirely new domain of practice, which is a variant of the same principle. Medium confidence because the existing class focuses on tools within an established practice area, while this case involves using a tool to enter a domain where no competence exists at all.
Public Welfare Paramountcy Engineering Competence
Facilities design and structural footing design affecting public safety
The Board grounded the competence obligations at issue in the fundamental duty to protect public health and safety, treating the use of a CD-ROM as a substitute for genuine competence as a disregard for the protective role that professional engineers play.
Competence requirements are not bureaucratic formalities but are grounded in the paramount obligation to protect the public. Practicing outside one's competence is a violation of public welfare paramountcy because it exposes the public to undetected technical errors.
The paramount duty to public welfare establishes the foundation for all competence obligations. Client or employer interests in having work performed quickly or cheaply do not override the public's interest in having work performed by qualified practitioners.
Engineer A Competence Boundary Overreach
Facilities design and construction services offered by Engineer A
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, began offering facilities design and construction services after acquiring a CD-ROM design tool, without obtaining the training, education, or supervised experience necessary to practice competently in that domain.
No legitimate tension exists here. The commercial solicitation's framing of competence requirements as obstacles to profit does not create a genuine competing professional value. The Competence Principle controls without qualification.
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Competence Principle'
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, receives a solicitation in the mail... Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services.
From the moment Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins offering facilities design and construction services, persisting indefinitely until Engineer A acquires genuine competence or withdraws from the domain
Prospective clients soliciting facilities design and construction services
Public relying on competent engineering work product
Transforms the general competence principle into a discipline-specific prohibition, and activates a parallel obligation on observing engineers to report competence concerns to the responsible party.
Engineer A's professional competence relative to facilities design and construction services
Individual typed as existing ontology class 'Outside Area of Competence'
Engineer A had no facilities design experience and no basis for evaluating whether the CD-ROM tool produced accurate or code-compliant designs. The solicitation explicitly marketed the tool as a competence substitute, which Engineer A accepted without critical evaluation.
Engineer A, having no prior experience evaluating or verifying the outputs of the CD-ROM design tool, was required to either acquire adequate competence in facilities design before relying on the tool, limit reliance on its outputs, or obtain qualified assistance, rather than deploying the tool as the sole basis for professional services.
From the point of ordering the CD-ROM and offering services based on it
Simply sign and return this letter today and you'll be among the first engineers to see how this full-featured interactive library of standard design can help you work faster than ever
Engineer B Cross-Discipline Footing Design
From Engineer B's retention by the contractor to perform structural footing design through the point Engineer A reported concerns
Public occupying or using the industrial facility
Engineer B, a chemical engineer, performing structural footing design without demonstrated training or experience in foundation engineering
Board determination that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the footing design; resolution not specified in the case facts
The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings
Contractor's retention of Engineer B, a chemical engineer, to design structural footings for an industrial facility
Engineer A's professional standing in the facilities design domain became ethically compromised, placing any client engaging those services at potential risk.
Once Engineer A relied on the CD-ROM as the foundation for offering facilities design and construction services, the resulting competency basis became ethically and technically inadequate under established professional standards, as confirmed by prior BER precedents from 1971, 1978, and 1994.
From the point at which Engineer A begins offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients
Prospective clients who may engage Engineer A for facilities design
Transforms the general competence principle into a concrete prohibition on holding out services and a disclosure obligation toward prospective clients who cannot independently assess the professional's actual capability.
Engineer A's public offer of facilities design and construction services without disclosing the absence of relevant experience
Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job that comes by - including construction projects that may be new or unfamiliar
Via class 'Competence Misrepresentation State': Outside Area of Competence captures the core competence boundary condition. However, that class describes a state in which a professional is already engaged and recognizes a boundary, whereas this case involves a professional affirmatively beginning to offer services in a domain where competence is absent, relying on a commercial tool as a substitute. The active misrepresentation and tool-substitution dimension is not captured by the existing class, so a new class is warranted while acknowledging the close relationship.
Engineer A Out-of-Competence Facilities Design
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background or experience in facilities design and construction, ordered a CD-ROM design tool and began offering facilities design and construction services, relying on the tool as a substitute for professional education, experience, and engineering judgment.
Chemical engineering; no facilities design and construction background
By ordering and using the CD-ROM, Engineer A in a sense was self-certifying his competency to perform facilities design and construction services without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications
Multi-Discipline Project Specialist Retention
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, began offering facilities design and construction services encompassing multiple engineering disciplines in which the engineer lacked competence, relying on a CD-ROM rather than retaining qualified specialists.
Engineer A, undertaking a multi-discipline facilities design and construction project involving civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains outside the engineer's chemical engineering background, was obligated to retain or recommend qualified specialists in those domains rather than attempting to perform all work personally using a CD-ROM tool.
At the time of accepting and performing multi-discipline facilities design work
An individual seeking to obtain an acceptable level of competency in the basic elements of facilities design and construction (e.g., civil, structural, mechanical, electrical engineering) should seek and be able to demonstrate appropriate engineering and related education and experience
the Board recognized the propriety and value of the prime professional or client retaining the services of experts and specialists in the interests of the project
Engineer A ordered a CD-ROM marketed as enabling anyone to specify, design, and cost out facilities projects, and used that acquisition as the basis for offering professional facilities design services without obtaining substantive education, experience, or qualifications.
At the time of ordering the CD-ROM and representing competence to prospective clients
By ordering and using the CD-ROM, Engineer A in a sense was self-certifying his competency to perform facilities design and construction services without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications to perform those services in a competent and professional manner
not unlike mail order certifications offered by so called diploma mills whereby individuals self certify their competency based upon a perfunctory review process
Engineer A CD-ROM Self-Certified Competence
From the point Engineer A began offering facilities design and construction services using the CD-ROM through any engagement accepted on that basis
Public relying on facilities designed under Engineer A's seal
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, offering facilities design and construction services based on a commercial CD-ROM tool
Not resolved in the case; would terminate upon Engineer A declining the work or obtaining substantive education and experience in facilities design
A CD-ROM that permits virtually anyone to specify, design and cost out a project clearly is not an appropriate basis upon which an individual can obtain professional competency
Engineer A in a sense was self-certifying his competency to perform facilities design and construction services without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications
Engineer A's acquisition and use of a CD-ROM marketed as enabling anyone to specify, design, and cost out a facilities project, and subsequent offer of those services to clients
Engineer A Competence Boundary Facilities Design
Engineer A received a commercial solicitation promoting a CD-ROM that claimed to enable any engineer to design any construction project regardless of experience. Engineer A ordered the tool and began offering facilities design and construction services outside the engineer's domain of competence.
At the point of deciding whether to order the CD-ROM and offer new services
Via class 'Competence Boundary Obligation': This is a direct instantiation of the canonical Competence Obligation, which requires engineers to perform services only in areas of competence per NSPE II.2. The case presents a clear violation of that obligation. The existing CADD Proficiency Competence Obligation and Technology Non-Substitution Obligation are related but address tool-specific competence rather than the threshold duty to refrain from offering out-of-domain services entirely.
Engineer A Competence Misrepresentation Avoidance
By offering facilities design and construction services without disclosing the absence of any background or experience in that domain, Engineer A implicitly misrepresented qualifications to prospective clients who would rely on those representations in engaging the engineer.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from representing to prospective clients that the engineer was qualified to perform facilities design and construction services, and to disclose the absence of relevant experience before soliciting or accepting such work.
At the point of offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients
Engineer A Competence Reporting Footing Concerns
Engineer A, working on the same design/build industrial facility project, identified that Engineer B lacked apparent competence in foundation design and reported those concerns to the contractor.
During construction of the project when competence concerns arose
Potential exposure of future clients and the public to unqualified engineering services
Self-certification of competency without substantive qualification
Rigorous Credentialing Over Self-Certification
Acquire a tool perceived as enabling expansion into facilities design and construction services to increase firm profits
Demonstrated facilities design and construction experience
Engineering judgment developed through time-tested practice
Substantive engineering education in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM, implicitly accepting its premise that pointing and clicking through a software library constitutes a sufficient basis for professional competency in facilities design and construction across civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains.
Exposure of clients and the public to unqualified engineering design
Misrepresentation of professional competency to prospective clients
Risk of harm to public health and safety from deficient design work
Ethical Obligation to Seek Work Only Within Areas of Competency
Client Reliance on Unqualified Engineer State
Expand the firm's service portfolio and increase profits by capturing construction project work that would otherwise be declined
Civil engineering education and experience
Engineering judgment developed through substantive practice in facilities design and construction
Mechanical and electrical engineering knowledge for facilities
Structural engineering education and experience
Obligation to Protect Public Health and Safety
Obligation to Retain Qualified Specialists When Lacking Competency
Engineer A begins actively marketing and providing facilities design and construction services to clients, relying solely on the CD-ROM as the basis for his claimed competency, despite having no relevant education or experience in that domain.