In BER Case 71-2, a case involving the brokerage of engineering services by two firms competing for government work and the question of professional competence, 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'
Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning on competency and specialist retention
Cited as precedent recognizing the propriety of retaining specialists and establishing that engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience, or to retain those who do
BER Case 78-5 involved an effort by a consulting firm under consideration to perform services to a public utility, in which the firm sought to alter its qualifications following its interview… The Board affirmed its decision rendered in BER Case 71-2 that in the field of consulting practice, engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience
Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning on qualification representation and competency limits
Cited as precedent affirming BER Case 71-2's holding that engineers must seek work only in areas of genuine competence and may not misrepresent qualifications to secure contracts; used to reinforce the obligation against practicing outside one's competency
in Case 94-8, Engineer A, a professional engineer, worked with a construction contractor on a design/build project… Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering… The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings
Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning on competency limits
Cited as precedent establishing that it is unethical for an engineer to perform design work (structural footings) outside their area of competence (chemical engineering background), and that a co-engineer has an ethical responsibility to question and report such competency concerns
BER Board Multi-Precedent Competence Domain Synthesis BER 94-8 71-2 78-5
BER Multi-Precedent Competence Domain Obligation Synthesis Capability
The BER demonstrated the multi-precedent competence domain obligation synthesis capability by retrieving and synthesizing BER Cases 94-8, 71-2, and 78-5 to extract the shared normative principle that engineers must seek work only in areas of established competence or retain qualified specialists, and applying that synthesized framework to the CD-ROM facilities design expansion case.
The BER applied its multi-precedent synthesis capability to determine that Engineer A's reliance on a CD-ROM to expand into facilities design violated the competence domain obligations established across BER 94-8, 71-2, and 78-5.
The Board's discussion section systematically citing and synthesizing three prior BER cases on competence domain obligations to derive the applicable ethical standard for Engineer A's situation.
Over the years, the Board of Ethical Review has examined the issue of professional competency on numerous occasions under a variety of factual situations.
In BER Case 71-2... the Board recognized 'the propriety and value of the prime professional or client retaining the services of experts and specialists'.
In Case 94-8... The Board decided that it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings.
Likewise, BER Case 78-5... The Board affirmed its decision rendered in BER Case 71-2 that in the field of consulting practice, engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience.
BER Board Precedent-Informed Competence Standard Application CD-ROM Case
Precedent-Informed Competence Standard Application Capability
The BER demonstrated the precedent-informed competence standard application capability by applying BER Cases 94-8, 71-2, and 78-5 to determine that Engineer A's reliance on a CD-ROM to expand into facilities design constituted an ethical violation of the competence domain obligation.
The BER applied precedent-informed competence standard reasoning to determine that Engineer A's consideration of facilities design services based on a CD-ROM violated established ethical standards for professional competence.
The BER's systematic application of prior competence-domain precedents to reach the conclusion that Engineer A's CD-ROM-based competence claim was ethically impermissible.
The Board affirmed its decision rendered in BER Case 71-2 that in the field of consulting practice, engineers have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where they possess educational background and experience.
BER Case 71-2 (1971) before BER Case 78-5 (1978)
BER Case 71-2 precedent before BER Case 78-5 affirmation of BER Case 71-2
CD-ROM Vendor Deceptive Engineering Tool Vendor
{'entity_type': 'Commercial software vendor', 'solicitation_method': 'Direct mail', 'product': 'CD-ROM interactive library of standard design'}
The unnamed commercial entity that mailed the solicitation to Engineer A, marketing a CD-ROM as enabling engineers to design in any domain regardless of experience, thereby inducing out-of-competence practice and creating public safety risks.
{'type': 'solicits', 'target': 'Engineer A Solicitation-Induced Out-of-Competence Design Engineer'}
Never designed a highway before? No problem.
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
CD-ROM Vendor Deceptive Engineering Tool Vendor Solicitation Misrepresentation
Deceptive Solicitation Competence Claim Recognition Capability
The CD-ROM vendor's solicitation exemplifies the type of deceptive competence-substitution claim that licensed engineers must be capable of recognizing and resisting — the vendor explicitly claimed that domain experience is unnecessary and that the software enables design in any domain, which constitutes the paradigm case of a deceptive solicitation against which engineer recognition capability must be calibrated.
The CD-ROM vendor is the source of the deceptive solicitation; their marketing materials define the type of claim that engineers must learn to recognize as ethically problematic.
The vendor's solicitation text provides the canonical example of deceptive competence-substitution marketing: 'no matter your design experience', 'never designed a highway before? No problem', framing the CD-ROM as eliminating the need for domain expertise.
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.
never designed a highway before? No problem. Just point to the 'Highways' window and click.
Case 94-8 (1994) before current case (Engineer A and CD-ROM)
CausalLink_Offering Facilities Design Ser
Commercial Profit Motive Non-Override Invoked Against Engineer A Acceptance of CD-ROM Engagement
Engineer A CD-ROM Facilities Design Engineer
Technology Non-Substitution for Domain Expertise Principle
Engineer A's acceptance of the facilities design engagement — motivated by the commercial opportunity presented by the CD-ROM solicitation — was held to be an impermissible subordination of the competence obligation to commercial profit motive, regardless of the financial attractiveness of the engagement.
The commercial appeal of the CD-ROM product and the facilities design opportunity did not constitute legitimate grounds for accepting work outside Engineer A's actual competence in chemical engineering.
Commercial Profit Motive Non-Override of Competence Obligation
It is clear that Engineer A, a chemical engineer, has no apparent substantive background or experience in the area of facilities design and construction.
Commercial motive was explicitly subordinated to competence obligation; the Board found no legitimate basis for the engagement.
The Board considers such activities completely contrary to the basic ethical principles established in the Code of Ethics.
Commercial Profit Motive Non-Override of Competence Obligation Violated by Engineer A
Engineer A's decision to order the CD-ROM and expand service offerings
Engineer A, induced by a solicitation explicitly framing the CD-ROM as a profit-maximization tool that allows engineers to accept any job regardless of experience, allows the commercial appeal of expanded service offerings to override the threshold competence requirement for accepting engineering engagements
The solicitation's explicit framing that engineers 'cannot afford to pass up a single job' instrumentalizes profit over competence; Engineer A's acceptance of this framing and subsequent service expansion constitutes a subordination of competence obligations to commercial motive
Commercial profit motives cannot override competence obligations; the principle is categorical and admits no balancing against revenue considerations
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services.
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption Violated by Engineer A CD-ROM Reliance
Engineer A's reliance on CD-ROM software to perform facilities design
Third-Party Inducement to Incompetent Practice Prohibition
Engineer A accepts the CD-ROM vendor's claims at face value and begins offering design services without independently verifying whether the tool's outputs are technically sound, without understanding the tool's limitations, and without possessing the domain knowledge necessary to evaluate the tool's outputs critically
Competence assurance requires engineers to possess sufficient understanding of any tool before relying on it professionally; a chemical engineer cannot evaluate the adequacy of facilities design outputs without the domain expertise that the tool purports to replace
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption
The vendor's solicitation creates a commercial inducement, but the engineer's independent obligation to verify tool adequacy is not diminished by vendor claims
specifying, designing and costing out any construction project is as easy as pointing and clicking your mouse - no matter your design experience.
Competence Boundary Recognition and Escalation Obligation Violated by Engineer A
Engineer A's failure to recognize and act upon competence limitations before offering facilities design services
Engineer A fails to recognize that their chemical engineering background does not qualify them for facilities design and construction work, and instead of escalating to a specialist or declining the work, accepts the engagement based on a commercial software tool's implied promise of domain-agnostic design capability
The obligation requires not merely refraining from incompetent work but affirmatively recognizing the limitation; Engineer A's failure to recognize that no software tool can substitute for genuine domain expertise is itself an ethical violation
Competence Boundary Recognition and Escalation Obligation
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, receives a solicitation in the mail
Recognition of competence limits is a threshold obligation that precedes any commercial consideration; Engineer A's failure to recognize the limit is compounded by the commercial inducement that obscured it
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience
Competence Principle Violated by Engineer A CD-ROM Facilities Design
Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design and construction services
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, accepts and begins offering facilities design and construction services after receiving a commercial solicitation, violating the core obligation to practice only within areas of genuine competence
The Competence Principle prohibits engineers from accepting work in domains where they lack genuine expertise; the availability of a software tool does not create the domain competence that the principle requires
No balancing is permissible — competence is a threshold requirement, not a factor to be weighed against commercial opportunity
Competence Scope Limitation Invoked Against BER 78-5 Qualification Alteration
Consulting Firm BER 78-5 Qualification Alterer
In BER Case 78-5, a consulting firm's attempt to alter its stated qualifications after a public utility interview — to improve its competitive position — was held to violate the ethical obligation to seek work only in areas where the firm possessed actual educational background and experience.
The Competence Principle here operates to prohibit retroactive qualification inflation: a firm cannot expand its claimed competence after the fact to secure a contract, as this would misrepresent the basis of its actual capabilities.
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.
Competence integrity prevailed; post-interview qualification alteration was held unethical regardless of competitive motivation.
BER Case 78-5 involved an effort by a consulting firm under consideration to perform services to a public utility, in which the firm sought to alter its qualifications following its interview with the public utility in order to improve its position to secure the contract.
The Board affirmed its decision rendered in BER Case 71-2 that in the field of consulting practice, 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.
Competence Self-Certification Prohibition Invoked Against Engineer A Diploma Mill Analogy
Licensure Integrity and Public Protection Principle
Engineer A's act of ordering and using the CD-ROM was characterized by the Board as equivalent to obtaining a diploma-mill certification — a perfunctory self-certification of competence in facilities design without the substantive education, examination, and practice experience that genuine competence requires.
The self-certification prohibition operates here to invalidate Engineer A's implicit claim of competence derived from the CD-ROM product, treating the act of ordering and using the product as an ethical violation independent of any specific design error.
Competence Self-Certification Prohibition Principle
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.
No competing principle justified the self-certification; the Board found the conduct completely contrary to basic ethical principles.
In a sense, 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.
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 services was unethical, the ethical violation occurred at the moment Engineer A decided to offer those services to prospective clients — not at the later stage of sealing drawings or completing actual design work. The act of marketing services outside one's competence is itself a misrepresentation to the public, because prospective clients reasonably rely on an engineer's service offering as an implicit representation of qualification. Engineer A's competence gap in facilities design and construction was not remedied by possession of a general professional engineering license, which authorizes practice only within areas of demonstrated competence and does not confer universal disciplinary authority. The structural condition created by general PE licensure — where the license credential does not signal disciplinary boundaries to lay clients — makes Engineer A's implicit misrepresentation particularly dangerous, because clients lack independent means to detect the competence gap before engaging services.
The Board's conclusion is further supported by the observation that the CD-ROM solicitation itself constituted a deceptive commercial inducement that Engineer A had an independent ethical obligation to resist. The solicitation explicitly framed professional competence as irrelevant — stating that engineers could design highways or any unfamiliar project type by simply clicking a menu option — which is a direct contradiction of the foundational engineering ethics principle that competence derives from education and experience, not from access to a software library. Engineer A's failure to critically evaluate this premise and instead accept it as a legitimate basis for practice expansion reflects not merely a lapse in judgment but a failure of the professional character obligation to preserve the honor and dignity of the profession. The CD-ROM vendor bears independent ethical responsibility for marketing a tool in a manner designed to induce engineers to practice outside their competence, but this third-party culpability does not diminish Engineer A's own obligation to exercise independent professional judgment and reject the solicitation's false premise. An engineer's ethical duties are non-delegable and cannot be discharged by reliance on a vendor's implicit assurances of adequacy.
The Board's conclusion would not be altered by Engineer A's hypothetical disclosure to clients of the competence gap or by informed client consent, because the ethical obligation to practice only within areas of competence is grounded in public safety and is not waivable by individual client agreement. However, the ethical analysis would change materially if Engineer A had structured the engagement to retain qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform, review, and seal all work outside chemical engineering, with Engineer A serving only as a coordinating prime professional responsible for chemical process integration. Code Section II.2.c explicitly contemplates that engineers may accept coordination responsibility for entire projects provided they ensure that all component work is performed by qualified practitioners. Under that structure, Engineer A would not be substituting a CD-ROM for domain competence but rather fulfilling a legitimate coordination role while ensuring actual design work is performed by those qualified to do so. The precise ethical fault in the present case is therefore not Engineer A's ambition to serve as a prime professional on facilities projects, but rather Engineer A's reliance on a software tool as a functional substitute for the domain-specific engineering judgment that qualified subconsultants would otherwise supply. This distinction reveals that the CD-ROM itself is not categorically impermissible as a productivity aid, but becomes ethically impermissible when used as the sole basis for claiming competence in an unfamiliar discipline.
The CD-ROM vendor bears independent ethical responsibility for its solicitation conduct, though this responsibility does not diminish Engineer A's own culpability. The vendor's marketing explicitly targets engineers facing financial pressure, frames incompetence as a non-issue ('no matter your design experience'), and implicitly represents that a software library can substitute for domain-specific education and experience. This constitutes a deliberate commercial inducement to incompetent practice. While the NSPE Code directly governs licensed engineers rather than software vendors, the ethical principle that one must not associate with or facilitate deceptive enterprises applies to the engineering profession broadly. The Board's silence on vendor responsibility reflects a jurisdictional limitation — the Code cannot discipline non-engineers — but the ethical analysis is clear: the vendor's conduct is ethically indefensible because it knowingly exploits the financial anxieties of professionals whose competence obligations are well-established. Engineer A's culpability is not diminished by the vendor's inducement because a licensed professional engineer is presumed to know the boundaries of competent practice and cannot delegate that judgment to a commercial solicitation. The appropriate NSPE response would be to issue guidance warning engineers about such solicitations and potentially advocate for consumer protection or professional accountability mechanisms targeting vendors who market tools as competence substitutes.
Engineer A's conduct would become ethical — or at least potentially ethical — if, before offering facilities design services, he engaged qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform, review, and seal all work outside his chemical engineering competence, retaining for himself only coordination responsibilities and chemical process design work within his actual competence. Code Section II.2.c explicitly contemplates that a prime professional may accept responsibility for an entire project and assume overall coordination responsibility, provided that each component is performed by qualified personnel. Under this framework, Engineer A's role would shift from incompetent practitioner to competent coordinator, and the public safety rationale underlying the Board's conclusion would be satisfied. However, this ethical rehabilitation requires more than a nominal subconsultant arrangement: the subconsultants must genuinely perform and independently review the design work, must be qualified by education and experience in the specific facilities design disciplines involved, and must seal their own work. A sham arrangement in which Engineer A uses subconsultants as a fig leaf while retaining substantive design control would remain unethical. The CD-ROM tool could legitimately serve as a productivity aid within such a properly structured arrangement, but it cannot serve as the competence foundation. The critical distinction is whether Engineer A is coordinating competent specialists or merely laundering his own incompetence through a subconsultant label.
The ethical violation occurs at the moment Engineer A begins offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients — not at the later stages of accepting a contract or sealing drawings. The act of marketing services one is not competent to perform is itself a misrepresentation to the public and to prospective clients, regardless of whether any contract is signed or any drawing is sealed. Code Section II.2.a requires that engineers undertake assignments only when qualified; the logical corollary is that engineers must not solicit assignments they are not qualified to undertake, because the solicitation itself initiates a chain of reliance by clients who may forego seeking qualified alternatives. Ordering the CD-ROM, while ethically concerning as a signal of Engineer A's susceptibility to the vendor's deceptive framing, does not by itself constitute an ethical violation — the CD-ROM could theoretically be used as a legitimate productivity tool within areas of actual competence. The ethical line is crossed when Engineer A translates the CD-ROM's implicit promise into an affirmative market offering of facilities design services. Each subsequent step — accepting a contract, performing design work, and sealing drawings — compounds the violation but does not constitute its origin. This temporal analysis matters because it establishes that the ethical obligation to self-assess and decline incompetent engagements arises before any client relationship is formed, not merely at the point of professional seal.
A general professional engineering license does not represent to the public that the licensee is competent across all engineering disciplines, and the licensing system's failure to communicate this limitation clearly does create a structural condition that makes cases like Engineer A's more likely. Licensure in most jurisdictions is granted based on demonstrated competence in a specific discipline or examination domain, but the license itself — a document stating simply that the holder is a 'licensed professional engineer' — does not specify disciplinary boundaries on its face. This creates an information asymmetry: clients and the public may reasonably but incorrectly infer universal competence from the license, while the Code and professional norms impose discipline-specific competence obligations that are not visible to lay persons. Engineer A may have exploited — consciously or not — this ambiguity when offering facilities design services, relying on the general PE credential as implicit authorization. The ethical analysis under the Code is unambiguous: licensure does not confer competence, and Engineer A's general PE license provides no ethical cover for practicing outside chemical engineering. However, the structural problem identified here suggests that the NSPE and state licensing boards have an institutional obligation to better communicate the discipline-specific nature of competence obligations, both to licensees and to the public, to reduce the frequency of cases in which engineers mistake licensure breadth for competence breadth.
The principle that engineers may adopt novel tools and technologies to enhance their capabilities does not conflict irreconcilably with the principle that technology cannot substitute for domain-specific engineering judgment, provided the distinction between tool and competence surrogate is properly understood. A software tool is a legitimate engineering aid when it accelerates, organizes, or checks work that the engineer is independently capable of performing and evaluating — the engineer can recognize errors, exercise judgment about applicability, and take professional responsibility for outputs. A tool crosses into impermissible competence surrogate territory when the engineer lacks the domain knowledge necessary to evaluate whether the tool's outputs are correct, applicable, or safe. In Engineer A's case, the CD-ROM's standard design library for facilities construction falls squarely in the surrogate category: Engineer A, lacking facilities design education and experience, cannot independently assess whether the library's outputs are appropriate for a given project, cannot identify when standard designs require modification for site-specific conditions, and cannot exercise the professional judgment that the engineering seal represents. The ethical test is not the sophistication of the tool but the engineer's independent capacity to evaluate its outputs. This principle applies equally to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence design tools: an engineer who cannot independently verify AI-generated structural calculations is using AI as a competence surrogate, not a productivity tool, regardless of the tool's technical sophistication.
The tension between Engineer A's self-policing obligation regarding Engineer B's apparent structural footing incompetence (Case 94-8) and the requirement that competence assessments rest on objective grounds reveals a genuine ethical paradox: Engineer A, who is himself practicing outside his area of competence, may lack the domain-specific knowledge necessary to objectively evaluate whether Engineer B's structural footing design is actually deficient. This creates a situation in which the self-policing mechanism of the profession — which depends on peer engineers recognizing incompetent work — is compromised when the observing engineer is himself incompetent in the relevant domain. The ethical resolution is not that Engineer A is relieved of reporting obligations, but rather that Engineer A's reporting obligation is conditioned on the basis of his concern: if Engineer A's concern about Engineer B's work is grounded in observable facts accessible to a reasonable engineer (e.g., Engineer B has explicitly stated he has no structural experience, or the design contains errors visible to any competent engineer), the reporting obligation stands. If Engineer A's concern requires domain-specific structural judgment that Engineer A does not possess, he should seek a qualified structural engineer's assessment before making a formal report, to avoid the compounding ethical problem of an incompetent engineer making unfounded competence allegations against a peer. This analysis underscores that the self-policing obligation is not self-executing but requires the reporting engineer to exercise honest self-assessment about the basis of their concern.
The ethical framework distinguishes permissible entrepreneurial growth from impermissible profit-driven competence boundary violation by reference to the sequence of competence acquisition and service offering: an engineer may legitimately expand into new service areas by first acquiring competence — through education, supervised experience, collaboration with qualified specialists, or other recognized means — and then offering services in those areas. What is impermissible is the reverse sequence: identifying a profitable market opportunity and then attempting to manufacture apparent competence through tools, credentials, or arrangements that do not constitute genuine domain expertise. Engineer A's conduct exemplifies the impermissible sequence: the financial framing of the CD-ROM solicitation ('Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job') preceded and motivated the competence claim, rather than genuine competence development preceding the service offering. The commercial profit motive is not inherently unethical — engineers have legitimate interests in firm viability and practice growth — but it cannot serve as the justification for crossing competence boundaries. The ethical engineer asks 'Am I competent to do this?' before asking 'Is this profitable?' Engineer A inverted this sequence, allowing the profit question to answer the competence question by proxy.
The potential ambiguity between Code Section II.2.c's authorization for prime professional coordination and the honesty obligation that condemns Engineer A's implicit competence representation is resolvable without genuine conflict. Section II.2.c permits an engineer to accept overall project coordination responsibility provided that each component is performed by engineers competent in the relevant specialty. The provision does not authorize an engineer to offer services in a domain where neither the engineer nor any identified qualified specialist will perform the work — it presupposes that the coordination role is backed by genuine specialist engagement. Engineer A's offer of facilities design services was not structured as a coordination arrangement with identified qualified subconsultants; it was an unqualified offer to perform facilities design, backed only by a CD-ROM library. There is therefore no genuine conflict between II.2.c and the honesty principle: II.2.c would only become relevant — and potentially legitimizing — if Engineer A had structured his offering as a prime professional coordination arrangement with qualified specialists identified and engaged. The ethical problem is not that Engineer A offered to coordinate a project but that he offered to perform design work he is not competent to perform, without any qualified specialist backstop.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer A failed the categorical duty to practice only within areas of demonstrated competence, and the financial framing of the solicitation is ethically irrelevant to this failure. Deontological ethics evaluates the moral quality of an action by reference to the duty it fulfills or violates, not by reference to the consequences that follow or the pressures that motivated the action. Engineer A's duty under the Code — and under the broader professional duty of competence — is unconditional: it does not yield to financial necessity, market opportunity, or the persuasive framing of a commercial solicitation. The solicitation's argument that engineers 'cannot afford to pass up a single job' is precisely the kind of consequentialist reasoning that deontological ethics rejects as a basis for overriding categorical duties. A deontological analysis would further note that Engineer A's acceptance of the solicitation's premise — that a CD-ROM can substitute for domain expertise — reflects a failure to apply the universalizability test: if every engineer adopted the principle 'I may offer services in any domain for which a software tool exists,' the institution of professional engineering competence would be destroyed, and the public safety rationale for licensure would be undermined. Engineer A's conduct therefore fails the categorical duty test on both the specific competence obligation and the universalizability criterion.
From a consequentialist perspective, the potential harms from Engineer A's out-of-competence facilities design practice decisively outweigh any economic benefits. The harms are both probable and severe: facilities design errors can result in structural failures, fire hazards, code violations, and physical harm to occupants and workers; clients who rely on Engineer A's implicit competence representation may forego engaging qualified designers, foreclosing safer alternatives; and the broader profession suffers reputational harm when incompetent practice is normalized. The economic benefits — lower-cost design services enabled by the CD-ROM tool — are speculative, contingent on the tool producing adequate designs (which cannot be verified without domain expertise), and do not accrue to the public in any reliable way. A consequentialist analysis would also account for systemic effects: if the CD-ROM vendor's model succeeds, it creates incentives for other engineers to similarly expand into unfamiliar domains, multiplying the aggregate harm potential across the profession. The only consequentialist argument in Engineer A's favor — that clients in underserved markets might benefit from access to any engineering services rather than none — is insufficient because incompetent engineering services are not merely less good than competent ones; they may be actively harmful, producing designs that create risks the client would not have faced without any engineering intervention.
From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer A's acceptance of the CD-ROM solicitation's premise reflects a character deficiency that virtue ethics would identify as a failure of intellectual honesty and professional integrity. The virtuous engineer possesses not only technical competence but the intellectual humility to recognize the boundaries of that competence and the courage to decline profitable opportunities that fall outside those boundaries. Engineer A's conduct reveals the absence of both virtues: the acceptance of the solicitation's claim that a CD-ROM can substitute for domain expertise reflects a failure of intellectual honesty — a willingness to believe a convenient falsehood because it enables a financially attractive course of action. The virtue ethics analysis is particularly illuminating because it focuses on character rather than rule-following: an engineer of genuine professional integrity would have recognized the solicitation as an inducement to self-deception and rejected it, not because a rule prohibited ordering the CD-ROM, but because the claim that software can substitute for engineering judgment is transparently false to anyone with genuine professional self-knowledge. The CD-ROM solicitation's appeal to financial anxiety ('cannot afford to pass up a single job') is designed to exploit a character weakness — the subordination of professional integrity to financial self-interest — and the virtuous engineer's resistance to this appeal is a marker of professional character, not merely rule compliance.
From a deontological perspective, the CD-ROM vendor bears an independent ethical duty not to induce engineers to practice outside their competence, but Engineer A's culpability is not diminished by the vendor's conduct. The vendor's duty arises from the general moral principle that one must not knowingly induce others to violate their professional obligations, particularly when those violations create risks of harm to third parties. The solicitation's explicit framing — 'no matter your design experience' — demonstrates that the vendor was aware that its target audience included engineers without relevant experience and deliberately sought to overcome their competence-based hesitation. This is ethically indefensible on deontological grounds regardless of the vendor's commercial motivations. However, Engineer A's culpability is not diminished by the vendor's conduct under deontological analysis for two reasons: first, the duty of competence is a categorical professional obligation that cannot be delegated or excused by third-party inducement; second, Engineer A, as a licensed professional engineer, is presumed to know the ethical obligations of the profession and cannot claim ignorance of the competence requirement as a defense. The vendor's culpability and Engineer A's culpability are independent and concurrent — the vendor violated a duty to the profession and the public, and Engineer A violated a duty to clients, the public, and the profession. Neither violation excuses the other.
Engineer A's offer of facilities design services would have been ethical if, before making that offer, he had engaged qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform and seal all work outside chemical engineering, retaining only coordination and chemical process responsibilities. This counterfactual is ethically significant because it demonstrates that the ethical fault in the actual case lies not in the desire to offer comprehensive project services but in the failure to structure that offering around genuine competence — either Engineer A's own or that of qualified specialists. Code Section II.2.c explicitly contemplates this prime professional model. The counterfactual also reveals that the CD-ROM tool is not inherently the problem: in a properly structured arrangement, the CD-ROM might serve as a legitimate preliminary scoping or cost-estimation aid, provided that qualified engineers independently reviewed and took professional responsibility for all design outputs. The ethical rehabilitation of Engineer A's conduct therefore required two steps that were not taken: first, honest recognition that facilities design falls outside his competence; and second, proactive engagement of qualified specialists before offering services, not as an afterthought following contract award.
Had Engineer A conducted a rigorous self-assessment before ordering the CD-ROM, recognized the competence gap, and declined the solicitation, this act of restraint would have fully satisfied Engineer A's ethical obligations with respect to the solicitation itself. The ethical obligation is not to avoid receiving commercial solicitations — which are beyond an engineer's control — but to resist the inducement to practice outside areas of competence. Declining the solicitation would have demonstrated the intellectual honesty and professional integrity that the Code requires and that virtue ethics would identify as markers of professional character. This counterfactual also reveals that the harm potential in Engineer A's actual conduct was not inevitable: the solicitation created an opportunity for ethical failure, but Engineer A's decision to order the CD-ROM and begin offering services was a voluntary choice that could have been made differently. The broader harm potential to the public — which the Board's conclusion implicitly recognizes — was therefore not a product of the solicitation alone but of Engineer A's failure to exercise the competence self-assessment that the Code requires at every stage of practice expansion.
Disclosure to prospective clients that Engineer A's background is in chemical engineering and that facilities design services would be produced using a CD-ROM-based standard design library would not render the practice ethical, because the public safety obligation underlying the competence requirement is not satisfied by informed client consent alone. The competence requirement exists not merely to protect the immediate client but to protect third parties — building occupants, workers, neighbors, and the general public — who have no opportunity to consent to or evaluate the engineer's competence. A client's informed consent to receive services from an incompetent engineer does not protect these third parties, and the Code's public safety mandate cannot be waived by private agreement between engineer and client. Furthermore, disclosure of the CD-ROM methodology would not itself constitute disclosure of incompetence in a form that clients could meaningfully evaluate: most clients lack the technical knowledge to assess whether a CD-ROM standard design library is an adequate substitute for domain expertise, and the information asymmetry that justifies professional licensing in the first place means that client consent cannot serve as a reliable proxy for competence verification. Disclosure might mitigate the misrepresentation element of Engineer A's conduct but would not cure the underlying competence violation.
Had Engineer A been a licensed professional engineer with prior facilities design experience who adopted the CD-ROM as a productivity tool, the ethical analysis would change fundamentally: the conduct would be presumptively ethical, subject only to the general obligation to verify that the tool's outputs meet applicable standards and that the engineer exercises independent professional judgment in evaluating those outputs. This counterfactual precisely identifies the ethical fault in the actual case: the problem is not the CD-ROM tool itself but the competence gap it was used to paper over. The tool is ethically neutral — its ethical valence depends entirely on whether the engineer using it possesses the domain knowledge necessary to evaluate its outputs, identify its limitations, and exercise independent professional judgment about its applicability to specific project conditions. This analysis has significant implications for the profession's approach to emerging technologies: the ethical question about any design tool — whether a CD-ROM library, a parametric design program, or an artificial intelligence system — is not 'Is this tool reliable?' but 'Does the engineer using this tool possess the domain competence necessary to evaluate its reliability and exercise independent professional judgment about its outputs?' The tool is an extension of the engineer's competence, not a substitute for it.
The most fundamental tension in this case — between an engineer's legitimate interest in expanding practice and the absolute obligation to practice only within areas of competence — was resolved decisively and without compromise in favor of competence. The Board's conclusion makes clear that commercial opportunity, however attractively framed, cannot function as a competence-conferring event. The CD-ROM solicitation explicitly invoked financial pressure ('Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job') as a justification for crossing competence boundaries, and the Board's implicit rejection of this framing establishes that the Commercial Profit Motive Non-Override of Competence Obligation is not a balancing principle but a categorical one: profit motives are simply not a legitimate variable in the competence calculus. This resolution teaches that when the Competence Principle and the Commercial Profit Motive Non-Override principle are in tension, the latter functions as a reinforcing constraint on the former rather than as a competing value — the engineer's financial interest in expanding services is not weighed against the competence requirement but is instead subordinated to it entirely.
The case reveals a critical interaction between the Technology Non-Substitution principle and the Competence Principle that clarifies the ethical status of engineering software tools generally: a tool is ethically permissible when it amplifies the judgment of a competent practitioner, but becomes ethically impermissible when it is deployed as a surrogate for the judgment that competence would otherwise supply. The CD-ROM's own marketing language — 'no matter your design experience' — inadvertently exposed this distinction by explicitly positioning the tool as a competence substitute rather than a competence amplifier. The Board's conclusion, read against this language, establishes that the ethical fault lies not in the tool itself but in the relationship between the tool and the practitioner's existing competence. This synthesis resolves the tension identified in Q201: the principle that engineers may adopt novel technologies does not conflict with the Technology Non-Substitution principle because the two principles operate at different levels — the former governs tool adoption by competent practitioners, while the latter governs the impermissible use of tools to paper over competence gaps. An engineer with genuine facilities design experience using the same CD-ROM as a productivity aid would face no ethical violation, as the counterfactual in Q404 confirms.
The interaction between the Honesty in Professional Representations principle and Code Section II.2.c — which permits engineers to accept coordination responsibility for entire projects — reveals an important boundary that this case implicitly defines: offering to perform a service and offering to coordinate a project are ethically distinct acts, and the ethical analysis turns on which act Engineer A actually performed. When Engineer A began offering 'facilities design and construction services' without qualification, the representation was one of personal competence in design execution, not merely coordination capacity. Had Engineer A instead offered to serve as a coordinating prime professional while engaging qualified subconsultants for all facilities design work outside chemical engineering — as contemplated in BER Case 71-2 — the Honesty principle and Section II.2.c would have operated in harmony rather than tension. The case therefore teaches that the Honesty principle does not prohibit broad project responsibility claims per se, but it does prohibit competence representations that exceed the engineer's actual domain expertise, and the ethical line is crossed precisely when the service offering implies personal design competence that does not exist. This resolution also addresses the ambiguity raised in Q204: the coordination exception in II.2.c is not a loophole that permits incompetent engineers to offer full-service design by labeling themselves coordinators, but rather a structured mechanism that requires genuine specialist engagement for all work outside the prime professional's own competence.
The case establishes a principle hierarchy in which Public Welfare Paramountcy functions as the apex principle that resolves all subordinate tensions: when competence, honesty, technology use, and profit motivation principles come into conflict, each is resolved by reference to the question of whether the public is adequately protected. This hierarchy is not merely implicit — it is structurally embedded in the NSPE Code's ordering of obligations — but this case makes the hierarchy operationally visible by presenting a scenario in which every subordinate principle (profit motive, technology adoption, service expansion) pointed toward Engineer A proceeding, while the apex principle of public welfare pointed unambiguously toward restraint. The Board's conclusion that Engineer A's conduct was unethical reflects the apex principle's override function: no combination of subordinate considerations — financial need, tool availability, licensing status, or client consent — can collectively outweigh the public safety obligation when an engineer lacks the domain competence to evaluate whether their own work is safe. This also illuminates why informed client consent, as contemplated in Q403, is insufficient to legitimize out-of-competence practice: the public welfare obligation runs not only to the client but to third parties and the broader public who may be affected by deficient facilities design, and client consent cannot waive obligations owed to non-consenting parties.
The interaction between the Third-Party Inducement to Incompetent Practice Prohibition and the Competence Boundary Recognition obligation reveals an important but unresolved ethical asymmetry in this case: while the CD-ROM vendor's solicitation was demonstrably deceptive and designed to induce engineers to practice outside their competence, the Board's conclusion places the full ethical burden on Engineer A without addressing the vendor's independent culpability. This asymmetry is ethically significant because it implies that the engineer's obligation to resist deceptive commercial inducements is absolute and non-transferable — the vendor's misconduct does not diminish Engineer A's culpability even partially. From a deontological perspective, as raised in Q304, this is defensible because Engineer A's duty to practice within competence is categorical and self-executing, requiring no external validation. However, the case also teaches that the engineering profession's ethical framework, as currently structured, addresses only the conduct of licensed engineers and does not extend to the third-party commercial actors who profit from inducing incompetent practice. This structural gap — identified in Q101 — suggests that the principle of Third-Party Inducement Prohibition, while recognized in the analytical framework, lacks enforcement mechanisms within the NSPE Code, leaving the entire ethical burden on the individual engineer who receives the solicitation.
Consulting Firm BER 78-5 Competence-Only Work Seeking Constraint
BER Case 78-5 precedent cited to affirm that engineers must seek work only in areas of genuine competence and may not misrepresent qualifications to secure contracts.
Consulting firm (BER Case 78-5 reference)
Education-Experience Competence Threshold Constraint
The consulting firm in BER Case 78-5 was constrained to seek work only in areas where it possessed educational background and experience, or to retain individuals with the necessary background and experience, and was prohibited from altering its stated qualifications post-interview to improve its competitive position.
NSPE Code Section II.2.a; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5
During the qualification and procurement process with the public utility
{'context': 'Public utility consulting services procurement', 'violation': 'Post-interview qualification alteration to improve competitive position', 'client': 'Public utility'}
A consulting engineering firm under consideration to perform services for a public utility that sought to alter its stated qualifications after its initial interview in order to improve its competitive position, found by the Board to have an ethical obligation to seek work only in areas of genuine competence and to represent qualifications honestly.
{'type': 'analogous_to', 'target': 'Engineer A CD-ROM Facilities Design Engineer'}
{'type': 'competes_for_contract_with', 'target': 'Public Utility Client'}
Qualification-Misrepresenting Competing Engineering Firm
the firm sought to alter its qualifications following its interview with the public utility in order to improve its position to secure the contract
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
Consulting Firm BER 78-5 Seek Work Only in Competence Areas
BER Case 78-5 involved a consulting firm under consideration to perform services for a public utility that sought to alter its qualifications following its interview in order to improve its position to secure the contract.
Domain-Specific Competence Verification Before Assignment Acceptance Obligation
The consulting firm was obligated to seek work only in areas where it possessed educational background and experience, or to retain individuals with the necessary background and experience, rather than altering its stated qualifications after an interview to improve its competitive position.
in the field of consulting practice, 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.
Before and during the qualification and procurement process
Should Engineer A offer facilities design and construction services to prospective clients after ordering the CD-ROM, or decline to offer those services absent demonstrated competence in facilities design?
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience, receives a CD-ROM solicitation claiming that 'no matter your design experience' anyone can specify, design, and cost out construction projects. Engineer A must decide whether to offer facilities design and construction services to prospective clients based on this tool, or to decline pending genuine competence development.
Decline to offer facilities design and construction services to prospective clients, recognizing that chemical engineering credentials do not confer competence in the civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-disciplines required, and that the CD-ROM does not substitute for that education and experience.
Begin offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients, relying on the CD-ROM standard design library as the technical basis for the work and treating the general PE license as authorization to practice across engineering disciplines.
Offer facilities design and construction services in a prime-professional coordination capacity, explicitly engaging qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform, review, and seal all work outside chemical engineering before accepting any project.
Should Engineer A critically evaluate and reject the CD-ROM solicitation's claim that software access substitutes for domain-specific engineering experience, or accept that premise as a sufficient basis for offering facilities design services?
Engineer A receives a commercial solicitation that explicitly frames professional competence as irrelevant to facilities design — stating that 'no matter your design experience' the CD-ROM enables any engineer to specify, design, and cost out construction projects. Engineer A must decide whether to critically evaluate and reject this premise or accept it as a legitimate basis for expanding services.
Critically evaluate the solicitation's claim that the CD-ROM eliminates the need for domain experience, independently verify that no software tool can substitute for facilities design education and experience, and decline to order the CD-ROM or offer facilities design services.
Accept the solicitation's framing that the CD-ROM provides a sufficient basis for offering facilities design services, order the product, and begin marketing those services to prospective clients in reliance on the vendor's representations.
Order the CD-ROM to conduct a personal technical evaluation of its capabilities before deciding whether to offer facilities design services, treating the purchase as a preliminary assessment step rather than a commitment to expand services.
If Engineer A wishes to offer facilities design and construction services, should Engineer A first engage qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform all out-of-competence work, or proceed to offer those services relying solely on the CD-ROM design library?
Engineer A, having identified a potential market opportunity in facilities design and construction, must decide whether to structure any service offering around genuine subconsultant engagement — retaining qualified specialists with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform and seal all work outside chemical engineering — or to proceed using only the CD-ROM as the technical basis for design work.
Before offering facilities design and construction services, identify and engage qualified subconsultants with demonstrated education and experience in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering, verify their qualifications, establish arrangements for them to perform and seal all out-of-competence work, and retain only coordination and chemical process responsibilities.
Offer facilities design and construction services relying on the CD-ROM standard design library as the primary technical basis for design work, without engaging qualified subconsultants, on the premise that the tool provides sufficient technical support for the work.
Offer facilities design and construction services to prospective clients and plan to identify and engage qualified subconsultants after contract award, treating subconsultant engagement as a project execution step rather than a prerequisite to the service offering.
Should Engineer A treat the general PE license as authorizing practice in facilities design and construction across all required sub-disciplines, or recognize that the license authorizes practice only within demonstrated areas of competence and decline to offer services outside chemical engineering?
Engineer A must determine whether the general professional engineering license — obtained in chemical engineering — authorizes offering facilities design and construction services across civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-disciplines, or whether the license authorizes practice only within the discipline in which competence has been demonstrated.
Recognize that the general PE license authorizes practice only within the discipline in which competence has been demonstrated — chemical engineering — and decline to offer facilities design and construction services across civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-disciplines absent demonstrated competence in each.
Treat the general professional engineering license as authorizing practice across all engineering disciplines, including facilities design and construction, on the basis that the license was issued without disciplinary restriction and that the CD-ROM provides the technical support necessary for competent performance.
Offer facilities design and construction services while disclosing to prospective clients that Engineer A's PE license was obtained in chemical engineering, presenting the CD-ROM as the technical basis for non-chemical engineering components, and allowing clients to decide whether to engage Engineer A on that basis.
Should Engineer A treat the CD-ROM design library as a legitimate productivity tool that supplements engineering judgment, or recognize it as an impermissible competence surrogate that cannot substitute for the domain-specific education and experience required for facilities design?
Engineer A must determine whether the CD-ROM design library constitutes a legitimate engineering tool that supplements existing competence or an impermissible competence surrogate that papers over the absence of facilities design education and experience. This determination governs whether Engineer A may ethically rely on the tool as the primary technical basis for offering facilities design services.
Recognize that the CD-ROM standard design library constitutes an impermissible competence surrogate in the hands of an engineer without facilities design education and experience, because Engineer A cannot independently evaluate whether the tool's outputs are correct, applicable, or safe, and therefore decline to rely on it as the basis for offering facilities design services.
Treat the CD-ROM design library as equivalent to other standard engineering software tools — such as structural analysis programs or CAD applications — that engineers routinely use without requiring discipline-specific credentials, and rely on it as the primary technical basis for facilities design work.
Use the CD-ROM as a preliminary scoping and cost-estimation tool only, while requiring that all design outputs be independently reviewed and sealed by qualified facilities design engineers before any work product is delivered to clients, treating the tool as a starting point rather than a final design basis.
Should Engineer A decline to expand into facilities design and construction services out of professional honor and public welfare obligations, or proceed with the expansion in response to the financial pressure and commercial opportunity framed by the CD-ROM solicitation?
Engineer A must decide whether to preserve the honor and reputation of the engineering profession by declining to offer facilities design services without the requisite competence, or whether the commercial opportunity and financial pressure invoked by the CD-ROM solicitation justify expanding services into an unfamiliar domain. This decision implicates Engineer A's professional character obligations and the broader public welfare mission of professional engineering licensure.
Decline to offer facilities design and construction services, recognizing that the financial pressure invoked by the solicitation cannot override the categorical obligation to practice only within demonstrated areas of competence, and that accepting out-of-competence work damages the profession's honor and the public trust that professional licensure is designed to protect.
Proceed with offering facilities design and construction services, accepting the solicitation's premise that financial necessity justifies expanding into unfamiliar domains when a software tool is available to provide technical support, and treating the general PE license as sufficient professional authorization for the expanded service offering.
Treat the commercial opportunity as a legitimate motivation to pursue genuine competence development — through continuing education, mentorship, hiring qualified personnel, or establishing subconsultant relationships — before offering facilities design services, ensuring that competence acquisition precedes rather than follows the service offering.
Direct Mail Solicitation Received → Ordering CD-ROM Product
Engineer A CD-ROM Diploma Mill Self-Certification Analogy Non-Recognition
Diploma Mill Self-Certification Analogy Recognition Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the diploma mill self-certification analogy recognition capability, treating the CD-ROM design library as a legitimate competence-acquisition mechanism rather than recognizing it as a perfunctory self-certification process analogous to diploma mill certification.
Engineer A received a direct-mail CD-ROM solicitation claiming it would enable virtually anyone to specify, design, and cost out facilities projects, and considered using it as a basis for expanding into facilities design services.
Engineer A's ordering and intended use of the CD-ROM as a basis for self-certifying competence in facilities design, without recognizing that this constituted a perfunctory process lacking comprehensive study, examination, or practice.
Engineer A CD-ROM Diploma Mill Self-Certification Non-Equivalence
Engineer A received a direct-mail CD-ROM solicitation claiming that domain experience was unnecessary and that the product enabled any purchaser to specify, design, and cost out facilities projects; Engineer A's reliance on this product as a competence basis was found contrary to basic ethical principles.
Diploma Mill Self-Certification Competence Non-Equivalence Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from treating the acquisition and use of the commercial CD-ROM design library as equivalent to substantive engineering education, examination, and supervised practice for purposes of establishing competence in facilities design and construction services.
NSPE Code Sections II.2.a, II.2.b; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5, 94-8
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.
Upon receipt of the CD-ROM solicitation and throughout any period of reliance on the CD-ROM as a competence basis
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Chemical Engineering', 'out_of_competence_domain': 'Facilities design and construction (civil, structural, mechanical, electrical)', 'inducement_mechanism': 'Direct-mail CD-ROM product'}
A chemical engineer who, induced by a direct-mail CD-ROM product promising that virtually anyone could specify, design, and cost out facilities, began offering facilities design and construction services in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains entirely outside his established competence, effectively self-certifying his qualifications without substantive education or experience in those areas.
{'type': 'analogous_to', 'target': 'Engineer B Case 94-8 Out-of-Competence Structural Designer'}
{'type': 'peer_subject', 'target': 'Engineer A Case 94-8 Competency Challenger'}
Solicitation-Induced Out-of-Competence Design Engineer
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
Engineer A in a sense was 'self-certifying' his competency to perform facilities design and construction services
Engineer A CD-ROM Self-Certification of Facilities Design Competence
From acquisition of the CD-ROM through Engineer A's provision of facilities design 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
Self-Certified Competence via Commercial Product State
Engineer A's reliance on a CD-ROM as the basis for offering facilities design and construction services
Not resolved in the case; Board condemns the practice
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
not unlike mail order certifications offered by so called 'diploma mills'
Engineer A ordered and used a direct-mail CD-ROM marketed to enable specifying, designing, and costing out facilities projects, treating this as sufficient qualification
Engineer A Case 94-8 Competency Challenger
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'project_role': 'Co-engineer on design/build project', 'action_taken': 'Reported competency concerns to contractor'}
A professional engineer working on the same design/build industrial facility project who identified that Engineer B lacked the competence to design structural footings, reported those concerns to the contractor, and was found by the Board to have an ethical responsibility to do so.
{'type': 'challenges_competency_of', 'target': 'Engineer B Case 94-8 Out-of-Competence Structural Designer'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'Construction Contractor (Case 94-8)'}
Competency-Challenging Co-Project Engineer
Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings and reported his concerns to the contractor
Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor
Engineer A Case 94-8 Peer Competence Challenge Reporting Constraint
BER Case 94-8 precedent cited in the discussion to establish that competence boundaries apply to all engineers regardless of general licensure, and that peer competence challenges are ethically required.
Engineer A in BER Case 94-8 had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency to design structural footings and to report those concerns to the contractor, establishing that the education-experience competence threshold triggers peer challenge and reporting obligations when a colleague appears to lack the requisite background.
Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor.
During the construction of the industrial facility when Engineer A observed Engineer B's apparent incompetence
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.
Engineer A Case 94-8 Peer Competency Challenge and Contractor Report
Engineer A worked with a construction contractor on a design/build industrial facility project. The contractor separately retained Engineer B (chemical engineering background) to design structural footings. Engineer A identified that Engineer B lacked apparent training in foundation design.
Engineer A (Case 94-8, professional engineer on design/build project)
Out-of-Competence Peer Competency Challenge and Escalation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to question Engineer B's competency to design structural footings and to report those concerns to the contractor, which Engineer A fulfilled by reporting reservations about Engineer B's qualifications.
Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings and reported his concerns to the contractor.
Upon identifying Engineer B's apparent lack of competence in foundation design
Engineer A Case 94-8 Peer Competency Objective Basis Assessment Structural Footings
Peer Competency Objective Basis Assessment Capability
Engineer A in Case 94-8 demonstrated the peer competency objective basis assessment capability by objectively assessing Engineer B's competence to design structural footings based on available evidence of education and experience, correctly identifying that Engineer B's chemical engineering background without apparent subsequent foundation design training was insufficient for the task.
Engineer A worked alongside Engineer B on a design/build industrial facility project and identified that Engineer B, a chemical engineer, lacked the competence to design structural footings, reporting those concerns to the contractor.
Engineer A's investigation of Engineer B's background, determination that Engineer B lacked apparent training in foundation design, and reporting of competency concerns to the contractor.
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 and reported his concerns to the contractor.
The Board decided that... Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor.
Engineer A Chemical Engineer CD-ROM Facilities Design Competence Gap
From Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design services through the period of CD-ROM-based practice
Clients receiving facilities design services
Domain-Specific Incompetence with General Licensure State
Engineer A (chemical engineer) offering facilities design and construction services
Not resolved in the case; Board finds the state ethically impermissible
all engineers are implored to exercise careful professional judgment and discretion and practice solely within his or her area(s) of competency
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no substantive background in facilities design and construction, accepted work in civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains
Engineer A Competence Gap Subconsultant Engagement Planning Facilities Design
Competence Gap Subconsultant Engagement Planning Capability
If Engineer A were to accept facilities design and construction work, Engineer A was required to possess the capability to identify the competence gap, engage qualified subconsultants or specialists with demonstrated facilities design experience, and structure appropriate supervisory and quality assurance arrangements — rather than relying on a CD-ROM design library as the sole basis for performing the work.
The conditional obligation to engage subconsultants if accepting out-of-competence work was not fulfilled; Engineer A proceeded without either declining the work or assembling a qualified team.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A did not engage qualified subconsultants or specialists, instead relying solely on the CD-ROM as a basis for offering facilities design services.
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Competence Misrepresentation to Prospective Clients
From the commencement of offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients
Competence Misrepresentation to Client State
Engineer A's implicit representation of competence in facilities design and construction when offering such services without the requisite experience
Engineer A begins to offer facilities design and construction services to clients without disclosing the absence of relevant experience or the reliance on a CD-ROM tool
Engineer A Consulting Practice Competence Gap Subconsultant Engagement Facilities Design
Engineer A, lacking facilities design and construction experience, had the option of engaging qualified specialists to perform or supervise such work rather than relying on a commercial software tool as a substitute for genuine competence.
Consulting Practice Competence Gap Subconsultant Engagement Obligation
If Engineer A were to accept facilities design and construction work, Engineer A was obligated to engage qualified subconsultants, establish joint ventures, or hire qualified personnel with facilities design and construction expertise to fill the competence gap, rather than performing the out-of-competence work directly using only a CD-ROM design library.
Before performing any facilities design and construction work without the requisite personal competence
Engineer A Deceptive Commercial Solicitation Resistance CD-ROM
The solicitation explicitly and falsely claimed that domain experience is irrelevant ('no matter your design experience'); Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering services, demonstrating failure to resist the deceptive commercial framing
Deceptive Commercial Solicitation Resistance Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from accepting, acting upon, or allowing their professional judgment to be displaced by the CD-ROM solicitation's false representation that domain-specific experience is unnecessary for engineering design; Engineer A was required to independently verify their own competence rather than rely on the vendor's commercially motivated claims.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5, 94-8
From receipt of the solicitation through Engineer A's decision to order the CD-ROM and offer facilities design services
Engineer A Deceptive Solicitation Competence Claim Recognition
Engineer A was required to possess the capability to recognize that the CD-ROM solicitation's claim that domain experience is unnecessary for engineering design was materially false and deceptive, and to refrain from acting on that claim as a basis for expanding into facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A received a direct-mail solicitation claiming that a CD-ROM design library enables engineers to design in any domain regardless of experience, and ordered the product without critically evaluating the deceptive competence-substitution claim.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A failed to exercise this capability, ordering the CD-ROM and beginning to offer facilities design services despite having no relevant experience, indicating absence or non-exercise of this recognition capability.
never designed a highway before? No problem.
Engineer A Deceptive Solicitation Resistance and Competence Self-Verification
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design or construction experience, received a direct-mail solicitation marketing a CD-ROM as enabling any engineer to design any project regardless of experience, ordered the product, and began offering facilities design and construction services without any independent competence verification.
Deceptive Solicitation Resistance and Competence Self-Verification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated, upon receiving the CD-ROM solicitation explicitly claiming that domain experience is unnecessary for engineering design, to critically evaluate and reject those claims, independently verify whether the CD-ROM genuinely substitutes for facilities design and construction competence, and refrain from offering such services absent independent establishment of the requisite competence.
Upon receipt of the solicitation and before ordering the CD-ROM or offering any new services
Engineer A Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Non-Recognition Facilities Design
Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Recognition Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the domain-specific competence boundary recognition capability, failing to correctly classify facilities design and construction as outside the competence boundary established by their chemical engineering education and experience.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, received a CD-ROM solicitation and failed to recognize that facilities design and construction (civil, structural, mechanical, electrical) fell outside their established competence boundary.
Engineer A's consideration of offering facilities design services despite having no substantive background in that domain, indicating a failure to recognize the boundary between their established chemical engineering competence and the unrelated facilities design domain.
all engineers are implored to exercise careful professional judgment and discretion and practice solely within his or her area(s) of competency.
Engineer A Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Recognition Facilities Design
Engineer A was required to recognize that facilities design and construction constitutes a domain distinct from chemical engineering, and that their established competence in chemical engineering did not extend to facilities design, highway design, or other construction domains referenced in the solicitation.
The solicitation explicitly referenced diverse domains (highways, facilities) as equally accessible via the CD-ROM regardless of prior experience, and Engineer A accepted this framing without recognizing the competence boundary violation.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A failed to recognize the competence boundary between chemical engineering and facilities design, treating the CD-ROM as bridging a gap that required actual domain-specific education, training, and experience.
Engineer A Domain-Specific Competence Verification Before Facilities Design Acceptance
Engineer A holds a chemical engineering background with no facilities design or construction experience, yet began offering such services after receiving a deceptive commercial solicitation, without any verification of domain-specific competence.
Engineer A was obligated to verify, before accepting or offering facilities design and construction services, that their competence — established by both education AND relevant experience in facilities design and construction — was sufficient to perform such work to professional standards, recognizing that chemical engineering credentials do not substitute for demonstrated competence in facilities design and construction.
Before offering facilities design and construction services to any client
Engineer A Domain-Specific Incompetence Seal Prohibition Facilities Design
Engineer A (chemical engineer) began offering facilities design services after ordering a CD-ROM; sealing such documents would constitute a violation of the domain-specific incompetence seal prohibition
Domain-Specific Incompetence Seal Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was absolutely prohibited from affixing their professional seal or signature to any facilities design and construction plans or documents, because Engineer A lacked competence in that domain — general PE licensure as a chemical engineer did not confer authority to seal work in an unrelated engineering sub-discipline.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.b; BER Case 94-8
Throughout any facilities design and construction work Engineer A might undertake following receipt of the CD-ROM solicitation
Engineer A Economic Pressure Non-Subordination CD-ROM Facilities Design
Economic Pressure Resistance in Contract Acceptance Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the economic pressure resistance capability, allowing the profit opportunity presented by the CD-ROM solicitation to drive consideration of expanding into facilities design services without verifying genuine competence.
Engineer A received a direct-mail CD-ROM solicitation promising business expansion opportunities in facilities design and considered acting on it despite lacking the requisite competence.
Engineer A's consideration of using the CD-ROM to expand into facilities design services in response to a commercially motivated solicitation, subordinating competence verification to revenue opportunity.
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 Economic Pressure Non-Subordination of Competence CD-ROM Solicitation
The solicitation explicitly invoked economic pressure ('Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job') and profit motive ('increase your firm's profits') as justifications for accepting unfamiliar work. Engineer A yielded to this framing without competence verification.
Economic Pressure Non-Subordination of Competence Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from accepting or offering engineering services in facilities design and construction solely due to the commercial opportunity and profit-maximization framing of the CD-ROM solicitation, recognizing that economic self-interest does not justify undertaking work for which the engineer lacks the requisite technical qualifications.
Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job that comes by - including construction projects that may be new or unfamiliar
Upon receipt of the solicitation and before offering any new services
Engineer A Economic Pressure Resistance CD-ROM Profit Solicitation
Engineer A was required to recognize that the profit-opportunity framing of the CD-ROM solicitation was creating economic pressure to expand into facilities design services, and to resist that pressure by declining to offer services in a domain where they lacked demonstrated competence, rather than subordinating professional competence standards to the financial opportunity presented.
The solicitation explicitly invoked financial pressure ('Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job') and profit motivation ('increase your firm's profits') as reasons to expand into unfamiliar domains using the CD-ROM.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A succumbed to the profit-opportunity framing ('increase your firm's profits', 'cannot afford to pass up a single job'), ordering the CD-ROM and expanding service offerings without competence verification.
Engineer A Education-Experience Competence Threshold Facilities Design
Engineer A is a chemical engineer with no facilities design and construction experience; the solicitation falsely represented that experience is irrelevant; Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering services outside their competence
Engineer A was prohibited from accepting or offering facilities design and construction services because Engineer A lacked the domain-specific practical experience required for competence in that field — general chemical engineering licensure and the acquisition of a CD-ROM library did not satisfy the education-plus-experience threshold required by NSPE Code II.2.a.
Throughout Engineer A's consideration and acceptance of facilities design work
Engineer A Facilities Design Multi-Discipline Competence Demonstration Gap
Multi-Discipline Facilities Design Education-and-Experience Demonstration Capability
Engineer A lacked the multi-discipline facilities design education-and-experience demonstration capability, having only a chemical engineering background with no substantive training or experience in civil, structural, mechanical, or electrical engineering sub-domains required for facilities design and construction.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, received a CD-ROM solicitation and considered offering facilities design and construction services despite having no substantive background in that multi-disciplinary domain.
Engineer A's inability to demonstrate appropriate engineering education and experience across the civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-domains of facilities design before considering acceptance of facilities design services via CD-ROM.
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.
Engineer A Financial Pressure Practice Expansion Prohibition CD-ROM Solicitation
The CD-ROM solicitation explicitly framed the product as a profit-maximization tool ('increase your firm's profits'); Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering services, suggesting financial motivation drove the decision
Financial Pressure Practice Continuation Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from expanding their firm's services into facilities design and construction on the basis of the profit opportunity framed in the commercial solicitation; financial incentive — including the promise of increased firm profits — did not constitute a professional justification for practicing beyond Engineer A's competence.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections I.6, II.2.a; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5
Engineers today cannot afford to pass up a single job that comes by
From receipt of the solicitation through any decision to offer facilities design services
Engineer A General PE Licensure Universal Practice Non-Authorization
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, received a commercial CD-ROM solicitation and considered expanding into facilities design and construction services despite lacking substantive background in that domain.
General PE Licensure Universal Practice Non-Authorization Constraint
Engineer A's PE license, obtained in chemical engineering, did not authorize Engineer A to offer or perform facilities design and construction services across civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering domains in which Engineer A lacked substantive education and experience.
NSPE Code Section II.2.a; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5, 94-8
this position should not be understood to suggest that all engineers are free to practice without restriction in any and all areas within the practice of engineering
At the time Engineer A received the CD-ROM solicitation and considered offering facilities design services
Engineer A Honest Competence Representation Facilities Design Services
By offering facilities design and construction services without relevant experience, Engineer A implicitly represented to prospective clients that they were competent to perform such work, which was false and misleading.
Honest Competence Representation in Procurement Obligation
Engineer A was obligated, when offering facilities design and construction services to prospective clients, to represent their qualifications, experience, and competence honestly and accurately — including refraining from implying competence in facilities design and construction that they did not possess — so that clients could make informed decisions about whether to engage Engineer A for such work.
When offering or advertising facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Multi-Discipline Facilities Design Competence Demonstration
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no apparent substantive background or experience in facilities design and construction, sought to offer multi-discipline facilities design services (encompassing civil, structural, mechanical, electrical engineering) based solely on a commercial CD-ROM product.
Multi-Discipline Facilities Design Education-and-Experience Demonstration Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to demonstrate appropriate engineering education and experience across the civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-disciplines required for facilities design and construction before offering such services, or to retain qualified individuals possessing the necessary background in each sub-discipline.
Before accepting or offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Multi-Discipline Facilities Design Substantive Competence Prerequisite
Engineer A, a chemical engineer, lacked substantive background in facilities design and construction; the Board identified civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering as the relevant sub-disciplines requiring demonstrated competence.
Multi-Discipline Facilities Design Substantive Competence Prerequisite Constraint
Engineer A was required to demonstrate substantive engineering education and experience across civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical engineering sub-disciplines before offering or accepting facilities design and construction engagements, and could not satisfy this requirement through general chemical engineering licensure alone.
Engineer A Non-Association Fraudulent CD-ROM Solicitation Enterprise
The CD-ROM solicitation made materially false representations about the nature of engineering competence; by ordering the product and offering services based on its claims, Engineer A associated their professional name with a dishonest commercial enterprise
Non-Association with Fraudulent Enterprise Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from associating their professional name and services with the CD-ROM vendor's enterprise, which was engaged in a fraudulent or dishonest scheme by falsely representing that engineering design requires no domain experience and that a commercial software library can substitute for professional competence.
From the moment Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering services premised on the vendor's false representations
Engineer A Outside Area of Competence - Facilities Design and Construction
From the moment Engineer A begins offering facilities design and construction services, persisting indefinitely as no competence development is described
Engineer A's professional competence relative to facilities design and construction services
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM and begins to offer facilities design and construction services despite having no facilities design and construction experience
Engineer A Peer Competence Challenge and Reporting Obligation (Case 94-8 Reference)
From Engineer A's identification of Engineer B's competence gap through reporting to the contractor
Peer Competence Challenge Reporting Obligation State
Engineer A's obligation upon discovering Engineer B's apparent incompetence in structural footing design
Engineer A reported concerns to the contractor
it would be unethical for Engineer B to perform the design of the structural footings
Engineer A identified that Engineer B, a chemical engineer, lacked apparent training in foundation design yet was retained to design structural footings
Engineer A Perfunctory Self-Certification CD-ROM Diploma Mill
Engineer A ordered a commercial CD-ROM and used it as the basis for offering facilities design and construction services, without obtaining the substantive education, experience, and qualifications required to perform those services competently.
Perfunctory Self-Certification Competence Prohibition Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from self-certifying competence in facilities design and construction through the perfunctory act of ordering and using a commercial CD-ROM product, which constituted a diploma-mill-equivalent credentialing mechanism rather than substantive education, experience, and qualification.
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.
Upon ordering the CD-ROM and before offering or performing facilities design services
Engineer A Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Facilities Design
Engineer A received a solicitation framing facilities design as commercially lucrative and technically accessible via software, and accepted the framing without conducting any honest self-assessment of actual competence in the domain.
Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to conduct an honest and rigorous self-assessment of their technical competence in facilities design and construction before offering or accepting such work, and to decline to offer those services given the absence of relevant experience — regardless of the commercial opportunity presented by the CD-ROM solicitation.
Before advertising or offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Facilities Design CD-ROM
Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Capability
Engineer A failed to conduct an honest and rigorous pre-acceptance competence self-assessment before considering expansion into facilities design services, failing to identify the gap between their chemical engineering background and the multi-disciplinary competence required for facilities design and construction.
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no facilities design background, considered accepting facilities design work based on a CD-ROM solicitation without conducting a genuine competence self-assessment.
Engineer A's failure to recognize that their chemical engineering background did not constitute substantive competence in the civil, structural, mechanical, and electrical sub-domains required for facilities design.
Engineer A Professional Honor Non-Degradation Facilities Design Expansion
Engineer A began offering facilities design and construction services without competence in that domain, relying on a CD-ROM marketed as eliminating the need for experience; this conduct degrades professional honor
Professional Honor Non-Degradation Through Incompetent Bidding Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from offering or bidding on facilities design and construction services in which Engineer A lacked competence, because doing so would degrade the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession — regardless of the commercial attractiveness of the opportunity presented by the CD-ROM solicitation.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I.6; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5
From the moment Engineer A began offering facilities design services following receipt of the solicitation
Engineer A Professional Honor Preservation Facilities Design Expansion Constraint
The Board characterized CD-ROM-based competence claims as showing disregard for the fundamental role of professional engineers and as contrary to basic ethical principles, linking the competence violation to professional honor degradation.
Engineer A was constrained from offering facilities design and construction services without genuine competence, as such conduct would degrade the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession and show disregard for the fundamental role engineers play in protecting public health and safety.
At the time of considering expansion into facilities design services
Engineer A Professional Honor and Reputation Preservation Facilities Design Expansion
Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design and construction services based solely on a commercial CD-ROM solicitation, without any relevant experience, undermines public trust in the engineering profession and damages its reputation for competence and integrity.
Professional Honor and Reputation Preservation in Competence Decisions Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession when deciding whether to offer facilities design and construction services, including refraining from offering such services without the requisite competence, recognizing that accepting out-of-competence work damages the profession's honor and public trust.
Before offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Profit-Motivated CD-ROM Service Expansion Competence Prerequisite
Engineer A received a direct-mail solicitation marketing a CD-ROM as enabling profit-maximizing expansion into facilities design and construction services, and accepted the commercial opportunity without first establishing genuine domain competence.
Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Prerequisite Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to establish genuine competence in facilities design and construction through substantive education, training, or hiring of qualified personnel before expanding service offerings into that domain, rather than expanding based solely on the commercial opportunity presented by the CD-ROM 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 Profit-Motivated Competence Boundary Violation
From Engineer A's response to the solicitation through commencement of facilities design services
Profit-Motivated Competence Boundary Violation State
Engineer A's decision to expand into unfamiliar service domains driven by financial opportunity framing in the solicitation
Simply sign and return this letter today
Engineer A receives and acts upon a solicitation explicitly framing financial gain ('cannot afford to pass up a single job', 'increase your firm's profits') as justification for taking unfamiliar work
Engineer A Profit-Motivated Scope Expansion into Facilities Design
From Engineer A's decision to market facilities design services through the case review period
Engineer A's financially motivated decision to offer facilities design services outside chemical engineering competence
Not resolved in the case; Board finds conduct unethical
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 sought to expand practice into facilities design and construction for business development purposes, acquiring a CD-ROM as the sole qualification basis
Engineer A Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Gate
Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Gate Capability
Engineer A was required to apply a competence prerequisite gate before expanding their firm's service offerings into facilities design and construction, recognizing that the profit motivation driving the expansion did not itself satisfy the competence requirement, and that verified domain-specific education, training, and experience must precede any marketing or acceptance of services in the new domain.
Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design services was directly triggered by a profit-motivated solicitation, without any intervening competence verification step before beginning to market the new services.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A allowed profit motivation, triggered by the CD-ROM solicitation, to drive service expansion into facilities design without applying any competence prerequisite gate.
Engineer A Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Non-Subordination Discussion
The CD-ROM solicitation explicitly claimed that domain experience was unnecessary, directly contradicting the NSPE Code's competence requirements; Engineer A was obligated to resist this commercially motivated framing.
Engineer A was prohibited from accepting the CD-ROM solicitation's framing that domain experience was unnecessary for facilities design, and was required to independently verify genuine competence rather than rely on the vendor's representation that the product enabled any purchaser to perform engineering design.
The issue of whether an engineer possesses the appropriate level of competence to perform specified services is one of most basic professional and ethical issues faced by practitioners.
Engineer A Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Non-Subordination Facilities Design
The solicitation framed the CD-ROM as a profit-maximization tool and argued engineers 'cannot afford to pass up a single job'; Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering services, indicating profit motivation drove the competence boundary violation
Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Non-Subordination Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from expanding their firm's service offerings into facilities design and construction primarily in response to the profit-opportunity framing of the CD-ROM solicitation, without having independently verified competence in that domain through education, training, and experience; the commercial attractiveness of the opportunity was ethically irrelevant to the competence determination.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections II.2.a, II.2.b, I.6; BER Cases 71-2, 78-5, 94-8
From receipt of the solicitation through Engineer A's decision to offer facilities design services
Engineer A Profit-Motivated Service Expansion Competence Prerequisite Facilities Design
The solicitation explicitly framed the CD-ROM as a profit-maximization tool enabling engineers to 'increase your firm's profits' by accepting any job. Engineer A responded by ordering the product and immediately offering new services without any competence-building activities.
Engineer A was obligated, before expanding their firm's service offerings into facilities design and construction in response to a profit-motivated commercial solicitation, to first establish genuine competence in that domain through education, training, mentorship, or hiring of qualified personnel, rather than relying solely on a commercial software tool.
Engineer A Public Safety Paramount CD-ROM Competence Disregard
The Board characterized CD-ROM reliance as showing 'a general disregard for the fundamental role that professional engineers play in protecting the public health and safety,' linking competence boundary violations directly to the public safety paramount obligation.
Engineer A's reliance on a CD-ROM as the basis for offering facilities design services constituted a disregard for the fundamental role that professional engineers play in protecting public health and safety, violating the paramount obligation to hold public safety above commercial opportunity.
NSPE Code Section I; NSPE Code Section II.2.a
At the time of considering and offering facilities design services based on CD-ROM competence
Engineer A Public Welfare Paramountcy Recognition Facilities Design Competence
Public Welfare Paramountcy Recognition Capability
Engineer A failed to exercise the public welfare paramountcy recognition capability, failing to recognize that offering out-of-competence facilities design services would subordinate public health and safety to personal business interests.
Engineer A considered expanding into facilities design services using a CD-ROM, failing to recognize that doing so without genuine competence would violate the paramount obligation to protect public health, safety, and welfare.
Engineer A's failure to recognize that the CD-ROM-based competence claim would expose the public to safety risks from incompetent facilities design, contrary to the paramount obligation to protect public health and safety.
Engineer A was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public by refraining from offering facilities design and construction services.
Engineer A Safety Obligation Out-of-Competence Facilities Design Practice
Facilities design and construction work performed by an engineer without relevant experience creates direct public safety risks, as design errors in such projects can result in structural failures, hazardous conditions, or other harm to building occupants and the public.
Engineer A was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public by refraining from offering facilities design and construction services without the requisite competence, recognizing that incompetent engineering design of facilities poses direct risks to the safety of those who will occupy, use, or be affected by those facilities.
Before and during any offering or performance of facilities design and construction services
Engineer A Software Tool Competence Substitution Non-Reliance CD-ROM
Engineer A accepted a CD-ROM vendor's claims that the product enabled virtually anyone to specify, design, and cost out facilities, and relied on the tool as the basis for offering facilities design services without independent verification of whether it substituted for domain expertise.
Software Tool Competence Substitution Non-Reliance Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from treating the commercial CD-ROM design library as a substitute for the domain-specific education, training, and experience required to practice competently in facilities design and construction, and to independently verify whether the tool genuinely supported rather than replaced the requisite competence.
Upon receipt of the CD-ROM solicitation and before offering facilities design 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.
Engineer A Software Tool Competence Substitution Non-Reliance Facilities Design
The CD-ROM vendor claimed the product enabled any engineer to design any project regardless of experience. Engineer A accepted this claim at face value and began offering services without independent verification of the tool's technical adequacy or of their own underlying competence.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from treating the CD-ROM design library as a substitute for the domain-specific education, training, and experience required to practice competently in facilities design and construction, and to independently verify whether the tool genuinely supported rather than replaced the requisite competence before relying on it for client services.
Before ordering the CD-ROM and before offering any services based on it
Engineer A Software Tool Substituted for Domain Competence
From Engineer A's acquisition of the CD-ROM and commencement of service offerings, persisting as long as services are offered on this basis
Clients engaging Engineer A for facilities design
Software Tool Substituted for Domain Competence State
Engineer A's reliance on a CD-ROM software tool as the basis for offering facilities design and construction services
never designed a highway before? No problem. Just point to the 'Highways' window and click
Engineer A orders the CD-ROM marketed as enabling any engineer to design any construction project regardless of experience, then begins offering services based on this tool
Engineer A Software Tool Substituted for Facilities Design Judgment
Duration of Engineer A's CD-ROM-based facilities design practice
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's use of CD-ROM software as a functional substitute for engineering judgment in facilities design
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 deployed a commercial CD-ROM to perform facilities design work in lieu of developing genuine domain competence
Engineer A Solicitation-Induced Out-of-Competence Design Engineer
{'license': 'Chemical Engineer (licensed)', 'specialty': 'Chemical engineering', 'domain_gap': 'No facilities design and construction experience', 'inducement': 'CD-ROM solicitation promising software-enabled design competence'}
A chemical engineer with no facilities design or construction experience who, after receiving a deceptive CD-ROM solicitation, orders the product and begins offering facilities design and construction services outside their area of competence, violating the obligation to practice only within established areas of expertise.
{'type': 'induced_by', 'target': 'CD-ROM Vendor Deceptive Engineering Tool Vendor'}
{'type': 'provider_to', 'target': 'Prospective facilities design and construction clients'}
Engineer A Technology-as-Tool Boundary Judgment CD-ROM
Technology-as-Tool Boundary Judgment Capability
Engineer A was required to recognize that a CD-ROM design library constitutes a tool that supplements professional engineering judgment — not a substitute for domain-specific education, training, and experience — and that relying on the CD-ROM as a basis for offering facilities design services crossed from appropriate tool use into inappropriate substitution for professional competence.
The CD-ROM solicitation explicitly marketed the product as enabling design in any domain regardless of experience, and Engineer A accepted this framing, failing to apply the tool-versus-competence-substitute distinction.
Not demonstrated — Engineer A treated the CD-ROM as a competence substitute, ordering it and beginning to offer facilities design services on the basis of the tool alone, without the underlying domain expertise the tool was falsely claimed to replace.
this full-featured interactive library of standard design can help you work faster than ever
Engineer A Technology-as-Tool Boundary Non-Recognition CD-ROM
Engineer A failed to exercise the technology-as-tool boundary judgment capability, treating the CD-ROM design library as a replacement for professional engineering judgment and experience rather than as a supplementary tool that presupposes underlying domain competence.
Engineer A received a CD-ROM marketed as enabling virtually anyone to design facilities, and failed to recognize that such a tool cannot substitute for the domain-specific education, training, and experience required for professional engineering practice.
Engineer A's consideration of using the CD-ROM as the primary basis for offering facilities design services, crossing the boundary from appropriate tool use into inappropriate substitution for professional competence.
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 Non-Substitution CD-ROM Facilities Design
Engineer A (chemical engineer) received a CD-ROM solicitation claiming that domain experience is unnecessary and that any construction project can be designed by 'pointing and clicking'; Engineer A ordered the CD-ROM and began offering facilities design services despite having no experience in that domain
Technology Non-Substitution for Engineering Judgment Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from using the CD-ROM interactive design library as a substitute for independent engineering judgment and domain-specific competence in facilities design and construction; the tool could only lawfully supplement — not replace — genuine professional expertise that Engineer A did not possess.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Cases 94-8, 71-2, 78-5
From the moment Engineer A received the solicitation and throughout any subsequent offering of facilities design services
Engineer A Technology Non-Substitution CD-ROM Facilities Design Discussion
The Board explicitly addressed the role of technology in engineering practice, affirming that computers, CD-ROMs, and technical information must supplement rather than replace engineering judgment, and that professional engineering cannot be reduced to reliance on such tools.
Engineer A was prohibited from using the CD-ROM design library as a replacement or substitute for independent engineering judgment and domain-specific professional experience in facilities design and construction; the CD-ROM could only serve as a supplement to, not a replacement for, genuine engineering expertise.
NSPE Code Section II.2.a; Board's closing statement on technology's role
Throughout any use of the CD-ROM product in connection with facilities design services
Engineer A ordering the CD-ROM before Engineer A offering facilities design and construction services
Engineer B Case 94-8 Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Non-Recognition Structural Footings
Engineer B in Case 94-8 failed to exercise the domain-specific competence boundary recognition capability, failing to correctly classify structural footing design as outside the competence boundary established by their chemical engineering degree and background.
Engineer B, a professional engineer with a chemical engineering background, was separately retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings as part of an industrial facility, despite lacking apparent competence in foundation design.
Engineer B's acceptance of structural footing design work despite having a chemical engineering degree and no apparent subsequent training in foundation design, as determined by the BER to be unethical.
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 Case 94-8 Domain-Specific Incompetence Structural Footing Seal Prohibition
In BER Case 94-8, Engineer B (chemical engineering background) was separately retained to design structural footings; the Board found it unethical for Engineer B to perform this work given the absence of demonstrated competence in foundation design.
Engineer B (chemical engineering background, Case 94-8)
Engineer B, whose degree and background was in chemical engineering with no apparent subsequent training in foundation design, was prohibited from performing the design of structural footings as part of the industrial facility, notwithstanding holding a general PE license.
At the time Engineer B was retained by the construction contractor to design structural footings
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 B Case 94-8 Out-of-Competence Structural Designer
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Chemical Engineering', 'out_of_competence_domain': 'Structural footing design', 'retaining_party': 'Construction contractor'}
A professional engineer with a chemical engineering degree and no apparent subsequent training in foundation design, separately retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings for an industrial facility, performing work entirely outside his established area of competence.
{'type': 'competency_challenged_by', 'target': 'Engineer A Case 94-8 Competency Challenger'}
{'type': 'retained_by', 'target': 'Construction Contractor (Case 94-8)'}
Out-of-Competence Engineering Contractor
Engineer B, a professional engineer to design structural footings as part of the facility
Engineer A had been unable to establish that Engineer B had any apparent subsequent training in foundation design
Engineer B's degree and background was in chemical engineering
Engineer B Case 94-8 Structural Footing Out-of-Competence Practice
Engineer B, a professional engineer with a chemical engineering degree and no apparent subsequent training in foundation design, was separately retained by a construction contractor to design structural footings as part of an industrial facility.
Engineer B was obligated to verify that their chemical engineering background and any subsequent training was sufficient to perform structural footing design before accepting that assignment, and to decline the work if they lacked the requisite competence in foundation design.
Before accepting the structural footing design assignment
Engineer B Chemical Engineer Structural Footing Design Incompetence (Case 94-8 Reference)
Duration of Engineer B's retention for structural footing design on the industrial facility project
Engineer B (chemical engineering background) retained to design structural footings
Engineer A reported concerns to the contractor (outcome not specified in this text)
Engineer A had reservations concerning the competence of Engineer B to design the structural footings
Construction contractor retained Engineer B, a chemical engineer with no apparent training in foundation design, to design structural footings
Engineering Self-Policing Obligation Invoked by Engineer A Case 94-8 Competency Challenge
Professional Reciprocity and Collegial Solidarity Principle
In BER Case 94-8, Engineer A had an ethical responsibility to question Engineer B's competency and report his concerns to the contractor when he identified that Engineer B — a chemical engineer — lacked the competence to design structural footings.
The self-policing obligation here requires active peer challenge of observed incompetence, not merely personal abstention from incompetent practice — the profession's integrity depends on engineers reporting concerns about peers.
The self-policing obligation prevailed over any collegial reluctance to report; Engineer A's reporting to the contractor was affirmed as ethically required.
Unnamed commercial vendor (direct mail product)
Direct-Mail CD-ROM Facilities Design and Construction Tool
Commercial Engineering Software Competence Substitute
Engineer A (chemical engineer) as a purported competency substitute for facilities design and construction services
The CD-ROM is the central artifact under ethical scrutiny — it purports to enable any purchaser to 'specify, design and cost out' a facilities project, and Engineer A relied on it as a substitute for substantive education and experience in facilities design; the Board rejects it as an adequate basis for professional competency
Facilities Design CD-ROM Interactive Library
CD-ROM Interactive Library of Standard Design (unnamed commercial product)
Engineer A, who orders and relies upon it to enter unfamiliar engineering domains
The commercial CD-ROM is the proximate trigger for Engineer A's decision to offer services outside their competence; it is marketed as eliminating the need for domain experience, directly raising ethical questions about whether such tools can substitute for professional competence in engineering practice
Honesty in Professional Representations Violated by Engineer A Service Offering
Engineer A's marketing and offering of facilities design services to clients
By offering facilities design and construction services without relevant experience, Engineer A implicitly represents to prospective clients that they possess the competence to perform those services, which is a false and misleading representation about their qualifications and capabilities
Honesty in professional representations requires that engineers not hold themselves out as competent in domains where they lack genuine expertise; offering services in unfamiliar domains constitutes an implicit false representation of qualification
Honesty obligations are not subject to commercial override; Engineer A cannot truthfully represent competence in facilities design based solely on a CD-ROM tool
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers – Section II.2.a
the issue of whether an engineer possesses the appropriate level of competence to perform specified services is one of most basic professional and ethical issues faced by practitioners (See Code Section II.2.a.)
Board of Ethical Review in evaluating Engineer A's conduct
Cited as the foundational code provision requiring engineers to practice only within their areas of competence; the Board anchors its entire competency analysis to this section
Primary normative authority governing Engineer A's obligation to practice only within areas of competence and to represent qualifications honestly; Fundamental Canon requiring engineers to perform services only in areas of competence is directly implicated
Offering Facilities Design Services → Unqualified Service Area Established
Ordering CD-ROM Product → CD-ROM Product Delivered
Prime Professional BER 71-2 Competence Gap Subconsultant Engagement
The prime professional in BER Case 71-2 was expected to demonstrate the competence gap subconsultant engagement planning capability by retaining or recommending the retention of experts and specialists when performing substantial services on a government project in areas outside the prime professional's own competence.
BER Case 71-2 involved brokerage of engineering services and professional competence, where the Board recognized the prime professional's obligation to retain specialists when performing substantial government project services.
The BER's recognition in Case 71-2 of the propriety and value of the prime professional retaining specialists, establishing the normative expectation that prime professionals will engage qualified subconsultants to fill competence gaps.
In BER Case 71-2... 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' and noted that 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.
Prime Professional BER 71-2 Specialist Retainer
{'context': 'Government project brokerage of engineering services', 'obligation': 'Retain or recommend specialists in areas of insufficient personal competence'}
The prime professional referenced in BER Case 71-2 who, while performing substantial services on a government project, bore the obligation to retain or recommend the retention of qualified experts and specialists in areas outside the prime's own competence, illustrating the proper fulfillment of the prime consultant's competence-management duty.
{'type': 'retains', 'target': 'Specialists and Experts'}
{'type': 'serves', 'target': 'Government Client'}
Specialist-Retaining Prime Consulting Engineer
the propriety and value of the prime professional or client retaining the services of experts and specialists in the interests of the project
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
Prime Professional BER 71-2 Specialist Retention Competence Constraint
BER Case 71-2 precedent cited to establish that prime professionals must retain specialists when performing substantial services in domains requiring expertise beyond their own competence.
Prime professional (BER Case 71-2 reference)
Interdisciplinary Threshold Competence Referral Constraint
A prime professional performing substantial services on a government project was constrained to retain or recommend the retention of experts and specialists in domains where the prime professional lacked sufficient competence, establishing that competence gaps trigger specialist engagement obligations rather than permitting the prime professional to proceed without qualified support.
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' and noted that 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.
During performance of substantial services on the government project
Prime Professional BER 71-2 Specialist Retention Consulting Practice
BER Case 71-2 involved brokerage of engineering services by two firms competing for government work, raising the question of professional competence and the obligation of a prime professional to retain specialists.
The prime professional performing substantial services on a government project was obligated to retain or recommend the retention of experts and specialists in technical domains beyond the prime professional's own competence, in the interests of the project.
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'
When performing substantial services on a project requiring expertise beyond the prime professional's competence
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.
Professional Competence Standard — Scope of Practice
NSPE and professional engineering community consensus
Applied by the BER to assess whether Engineer A's conduct is ethically permissible
Governs the ethical obligation that engineers practice only within their demonstrated areas of competence; Engineer A's lack of facilities design and construction experience directly triggers this standard when they begin offering such services based solely on a commercial CD-ROM
Public Welfare Paramount Implicated by Engineer A Out-of-Competence Practice
Facilities design and construction services offered by Engineer A
Engineer A's acceptance of facilities design and construction work without relevant experience creates direct risk to the public who will rely on those designs, as incompetent engineering in construction contexts can result in structural failures, safety hazards, and harm to building occupants and users
Public welfare paramount requires that engineers not place the public at risk through incompetent practice; the public's reliance on professional licensure as a guarantee of competence makes out-of-domain practice a direct public welfare violation
Public welfare is paramount and cannot be subordinated to commercial profit motives; Engineer A's decision to offer incompetent services is an unambiguous violation
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked in Competence-Technology Context
The Board grounded its rejection of CD-ROM-based competence claims in the fundamental public welfare obligation: allowing engineers to self-certify competence through technological shortcuts would undermine the public health and safety protection that professional engineering exists to provide.
Public welfare paramount operates here not as a disclosure or reporting obligation but as the foundational justification for why competence standards cannot be relaxed: the public relies on engineers' genuine expertise for protection from harm in facilities design.
Public welfare was not in tension with any competing principle; it reinforced the competence obligation rather than conflicting with it.
Qualification Representation Standard — Competence Misrepresentation
Applied by the BER to assess Engineer A's representations to clients
Governs the prohibition on engineers misrepresenting or overstating their qualifications and capabilities when seeking professional engagements; Engineer A offering facilities design services without relevant experience implicates honest representation of competence to prospective clients
Was it ethical for Engineer A to offer facilities design and construction services under the facts presented?
Does the CD-ROM vendor bear any independent ethical or legal responsibility for actively soliciting engineers to practice outside their areas of competence, and should the NSPE address the ethics of third parties who market tools that facilitate incompetent practice?
Would Engineer A's conduct become ethical if, before offering facilities design services, he engaged qualified subconsultants or specialists to perform and review the actual design work, with himself serving only as a coordinating prime professional?
At what point in the sequence of events — ordering the CD-ROM, marketing the services, accepting a contract, or sealing drawings — does Engineer A's conduct first cross the ethical line, and does the ethical violation occur before any actual design work is performed?
Does a general professional engineering license implicitly represent to the public that the licensee is competent across all engineering disciplines, and if so, does the licensing system itself create a structural condition that makes cases like Engineer A's more likely?
Does the principle that engineers may use novel tools and technologies to expand their capabilities conflict with the principle that technology cannot substitute for domain-specific engineering judgment and competence, and how should an engineer determine when a software tool crosses from legitimate aid to impermissible competence surrogate?
Does the principle that engineers have an obligation to self-police and report apparent incompetence in peers conflict with the principle that competence assessments must rest on objective grounds, given that Engineer A — who is himself practicing outside competence — may lack the domain knowledge necessary to objectively evaluate whether Engineer B's structural footing design is actually deficient?
Does the principle that commercial profit motives must never override competence obligations conflict with the principle that engineers have a legitimate professional interest in expanding their practice and firm viability, and how should the ethical framework distinguish between permissible entrepreneurial growth and impermissible profit-driven competence boundary violation?
Does the principle of honesty in professional representations — which condemns Engineer A's implicit claim of competence when offering facilities design services — conflict with the principle that engineers may accept coordination responsibility for entire projects under Code Section II.2.c, potentially creating ambiguity about whether offering to manage a project (rather than personally perform all design) constitutes a misrepresentation of competence?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill their categorical duty to practice only within areas of demonstrated competence, or did the financial framing of the solicitation impermissibly override that duty regardless of the consequences that might have followed?
From a consequentialist perspective, did the potential harms to public safety and client welfare resulting from Engineer A offering facilities design services without requisite experience outweigh any economic benefit Engineer A or clients might have derived from access to lower-cost design services enabled by the CD-ROM tool?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A demonstrate the professional integrity and intellectual honesty expected of a competent engineer when accepting the CD-ROM solicitation's implicit premise that software tools can substitute for domain-specific education and experience, and does this acceptance reflect a character deficiency that virtue ethics would identify as a failure of professional honor?
From a deontological perspective, does the CD-ROM vendor bear an independent ethical duty not to induce engineers to practice outside their competence, and if so, does Engineer A's culpability diminish when a third-party commercial actor deliberately frames incompetent practice as professionally acceptable and financially necessary?
Would Engineer A's offer of facilities design services have been ethical if, instead of relying solely on the CD-ROM, Engineer A had engaged qualified subconsultants with demonstrated facilities design expertise to perform and seal all work outside chemical engineering, retaining only coordination and chemical process responsibilities?
What if Engineer A had conducted a rigorous self-assessment before ordering the CD-ROM, recognized the competence gap, and declined the solicitation — would this act of restraint have satisfied Engineer A's ethical obligations, and would it have altered the broader harm potential to the public?
If Engineer A had disclosed to prospective clients that their background was in chemical engineering and that the facilities design services would be produced using a CD-ROM-based standard design library rather than domain-specific experience, would informed client consent have altered the ethical analysis, or does the public safety obligation render such disclosure insufficient to legitimize the practice?
Had Engineer A been a licensed professional engineer with prior facilities design experience who adopted the CD-ROM as a productivity tool rather than a competence substitute, would the ethical analysis change, and what does this counterfactual reveal about the precise ethical fault — the tool itself or the competence gap it was used to paper over?
Specialist Retention Obligation Invoked in BER 71-2 Prime Professional Context
Client Interest Primacy Over Engineer Personal Advantage in Faithful Agent Role
In BER Case 71-2, the Board recognized that a prime professional performing substantial services on a government project bears an obligation to retain or recommend the retention of experts and specialists when the work exceeds the prime's own competence — affirming the propriety and value of specialist engagement in the public interest.
The specialist referral obligation here is grounded in the prime professional's recognition that their own competence has a boundary, and that the project's and public's interests require engagement of those with the necessary expertise.
Interdisciplinary Competence Threshold for Specialized Referral
No tension; retaining specialists was affirmed as both ethically proper and in the project's interest.
Technology Non-Substitution Invoked Against Engineer A CD-ROM Reliance
Engineer A's reliance on a commercial CD-ROM product to perform facilities design and construction services — a domain in which he had no substantive background — was held to be an impermissible substitution of technology for genuine engineering competence, not a legitimate augmentation of existing expertise.
In this context, the principle operates to reject the vendor's implicit claim that the CD-ROM product could enable competent practice across domains, and to reject Engineer A's implicit reliance on that claim as a basis for accepting the facilities design engagement.
No balancing was required; the Board found no legitimate competing principle that could justify reliance on a technological product as a substitute for domain expertise.
the Board's decision should not be understood as a wholesale rejection of the use of computers, CD-ROMs and other technological advances. Rather, 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.
Third-Party Inducement to Incompetent Practice Prohibition Invoked Against CD-ROM Vendor
The CD-ROM vendor's direct-mail solicitation — explicitly marketing the product as enabling 'virtually anyone' to specify, design, and cost out facilities — constituted a commercial inducement to licensed engineers to accept work outside their competence by falsely representing that the software could substitute for genuine domain expertise.
The vendor's solicitation created a market incentive for incompetent practice by implying that the product conferred competence; this is incompatible with the public protection function of professional licensure.
The inducement prohibition was affirmed; the vendor's commercial framing did not legitimate Engineer A's reliance on the product as a competence basis.
Third-Party Inducement to Incompetent Practice Prohibition Violated by CD-ROM Vendor
CD-ROM vendor's direct-mail solicitation to Engineer A and other licensed engineers
Commercial freedom and market innovation
The CD-ROM vendor explicitly solicits licensed engineers to accept work in unfamiliar domains by falsely representing that a software library can substitute for domain expertise, using profit-maximization framing to induce engineers to expand into areas where they lack genuine competence
The vendor's solicitation systematically undermines the public protection function of professional licensure by creating market incentives for incompetent practice; the explicit claim that domain experience is irrelevant ('no matter your design experience') is a direct misrepresentation of what software tools can provide
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Commercial freedom does not extend to systematically inducing licensed professionals to endanger the public through incompetent practice; the vendor's conduct is ethically impermissible regardless of commercial legitimacy
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Universal Competence Scope Limitation Invoked Against Engineer A Chemical-to-Facilities Practice
Engineer A, a chemical engineer with no apparent background in facilities design and construction, was held to be practicing outside his area of competency when he accepted a facilities design engagement, notwithstanding his status as a licensed professional engineer.
The Competence Principle here operates at the sub-discipline level: PE licensure in chemical engineering does not authorize facilities design practice, and the engineer's professional autonomy must be balanced against recognition of his actual technical limitations.
The competence limitation prevailed; commercial opportunity and vendor inducement did not justify accepting work outside actual competence.
Instead, all engineers are implored to exercise careful professional judgment and discretion and practice solely within his or her area(s) of competency.
NSPE has been supportive of the concept that a qualified individual engineer, regardless of his or her particular area of technical discipline, should be licensed as a 'professional engineer'. However, this position should not be understood to suggest that all engineers are free to practice without restriction in any and all areas within the practice of engineering.
Unqualified Service Area Established → Prior BER Precedents Triggered
contractor retaining Engineer B during construction of the industrial facility (Case 94-8)
firm's interview with public utility (BER Case 78-5) before firm seeking to alter its qualifications
receipt of direct mail solicitation before Engineer A ordering the CD-ROM