Absorbing Construction Burden Internally
Diverted County staff from other responsibilities
Effectively shielded Engineer B from the full consequences of incompetent design
Set a precedent that inadequate design work could be absorbed without formal accountability
Commitment to completing public infrastructure for the community
Practical duty to minimize disruption to construction contractor
Stewardship of public funds by keeping project within budget
Accountability for professional service quality
Fiscal responsibility and budget management
Complete the roadway project within budget and on schedule despite design deficiencies
Construction inspection and quality assurance
Field engineering judgment for roadway construction
Quantity adjustment and change order management
Construction phase, throughout the duration of active construction
Arguably, obligation to hold Engineer B accountable for deficient professional services
Responsibility to document and formally address professional incompetence that endangered public infrastructure
County staff made an ongoing deliberate choice during construction to absorb the excessive workload created by Engineer B's design deficiencies: resolving field revisions, correcting miscalculated quantities, and managing construction issues, rather than halting the project, seeking compensation from Engineer B, or escalating to formal dispute resolution. This decision kept the project within budget but at significant cost to County staff resources.
County now holds a complete but potentially unqualified applicant pool; Engineer B is now formally in contention despite lacking relevant experience
Following advertisement issuance; during procurement response period
Every firm eligible under the locally-restricted advertisement submitted a response, meaning the County received the full universe of locally available consulting options, including Engineer B's firm, which lacked roadway design experience.
Potential construction problems and cost overruns if design was deficient
Risk of engaging an incompetent designer for public infrastructure
Procedural compliance with local-preference procurement process
Responsiveness to local economic interests
Engage a local firm to complete roadway design in time for the construction season
Assessment of engineering qualifications for rural roadway design
Procurement evaluation and due diligence
Reference and portfolio review of prospective consultants
Award phase, following Engineer B's lobbying and assurances
Obligation to exercise due diligence in selecting competent engineering services for public infrastructure
Responsibility to independently verify qualifications rather than rely solely on self-reported assurances
Stewardship of public funds and public safety
County A's Commission made the deliberate decision to award Engineer B a roadway design contract, relying on Engineer B's lobbying and assurances of competence rather than independently verifying qualifications or experience. This decision accepted at face value claims that were not substantiated by demonstrated rural roadway design experience.
NSPE Board of Ethical Review Cases on Engineer Competence and Qualification Misrepresentation
Engineer B did admit that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design.
While not experienced in rural roadway design, Engineer B gave assurances to the County that they could perform the services adequately.
Ethical reviewers conducting analogical analysis of this case
Prior BER cases addressing situations where engineers accepted work outside their demonstrated competence or misrepresented qualifications to clients, providing analogical reasoning patterns applicable to Engineer B's conduct
BER Case 02-5 Emerging Standard Non-Familiarity
At time of design through structural failure event
the engineer was not familiar with the recently proposed design parameters
Structural engineer's relationship to recently proposed severe weather design parameters
Not specified; parameters presumably later adopted as standards
it was not unethical for the engineer to fail to follow the most recent design parameters for structural design in severe weather areas
those recently proposed design parameters had not yet become standards
Publication of new design parameters in technical literature prior to their adoption as formal standards
BER Case 02-5 before present case analysis
In BER Case 02-5, the Board studied a situation... In the present case, the question is whether Engineer B is competent.
BER Case 94-8 provided an extreme example of incompetence. In that case, a professional engineer with a degree and background in chemical engineering was asked to provide a foundation design for an industrial facility. The Board determined that it would be unethical for the engineer to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility.
Board of Ethical Review to illustrate the spectrum of incompetence in professional practice
Referenced as an extreme example of incompetence where a chemical engineer performing structural footing design acted unethically, reinforcing the principle that competence must be specific to the technical field involved
BER Case 94-8 Chemical Engineer Foundation Design Incompetence
From request to perform foundation design through Board determination
a professional engineer with a degree and background in chemical engineering was asked to provide a foundation design for an industrial facility
Domain-Specific Incompetence with General Licensure State
Chemical engineer's competence relative to structural foundation design
Board determination that performing the design would be unethical
BER Case 94-8 provided an extreme example of incompetence
it would be unethical for the engineer to perform the design of the structural footings as part of the facility
Chemical engineer asked to provide foundation design for industrial facility outside their domain of competence
Case numbers 94-8 and 98-8 imply sequential BER publication years 1994 and 1998 respectively.
BER Case 98-8 Arms Storage Domain Incompetence
From acceptance of Army certification assignment through ethical determination
a professional engineer in civil engineering was asked to certify certain arms storage rooms and racks for the Army
Civil engineer's competence relative to arms storage room and rack certification
Board determination that certification would be unethical
This engineer had no significant training or knowledge in that area, although the engineer was considered a qualified engineer
it would not be ethical for the engineer to certify the arms storage rooms and arms storage racks
Civil engineer asked to certify arms storage rooms and racks despite lacking training or knowledge in that area
Case numbers 98-8 and 02-5 imply sequential BER publication years 1998 and 2002 respectively.
Engineer B's decision-making context now includes financial distress, creating a known ethical risk factor where personal interest may conflict with professional obligation to decline work outside competence
Concurrent with advertisement period; pre-existing condition at time of response
Engineer B's water/wastewater consulting firm experienced a business downturn, creating financial pressure that motivated pursuit of work outside the firm's area of demonstrated competence.
CausalLink_Absorbing Construction Burden
CausalLink_Awarding Contract Based on Ass
CausalLink_Completing and Signing Roadway
CausalLink_Excluding Engineer B from Cons
CausalLink_Lobbying Commission and Assert
CausalLink_Local-Only Advertisement Decis
CausalLink_Post-Hoc Admission of Incompet
CausalLink_Responding to Advertisement De
Licensed Professional Engineer, Principal/Owner
Design deficiencies due to lack of roadway expertise would manifest during construction
Miscalculated quantities and need for field revisions were foreseeable risks given known competence gap
Public infrastructure and safety could be compromised
Contractual obligation to deliver design documents to County A
Competence as prerequisite to sealing engineering documents
Public trust in the PE seal as certification of competence
Deliver completed design documents to County A to fulfill contract obligations and receive compensation
Accurate earthwork and quantity calculations
Construction document preparation for roadway projects
Knowledge of drainage, grading, and roadway cross-section design
Rural roadway geometric design per applicable standards (AASHTO, state DOT)
Design phase, after contract award and before construction bidding
NSPE Code Section I. Fundamental Canon to hold public safety, health, and welfare paramount
NSPE Code Section II.2. Engineers shall perform services only in areas of their competence
NSPE Code Section II.2.a, If not qualified by education AND experience, must engage or advise client to engage qualified associates
NSPE Code Section II.2.b. Engineers shall not affix signature or seal to plans not conforming to accepted engineering standards or outside their competence
Professional licensure obligation. PE seal certifies competence and accuracy
Engineer B completed the rural roadway design and affixed their professional engineer's signature and seal to the plans, certifying competence and accuracy of work that was outside their area of expertise. This act constitutes the most direct violation of the NSPE Code competence provisions, as it formally certified work Engineer B lacked the experience to perform adequately.
Completing and Signing Roadway Design → Immediate Construction Problems Emerged
Engineer B completed the rural roadway design and affixed their professional engineer's signature and seal, certifying documents that reflected their underlying inexperience, which directly produced the construction problems that emerged immediately upon commencement
A competent designer or rigorous independent design review would have produced documents requiring fewer field revisions; Engineer B's involvement in construction services might have partially mitigated problems through early identification
Absence of qualified peer review of the design
Engineer B's decision to seal and certify the documents
Engineer B's lack of rural roadway design competence
Exclusion of Engineer B from construction-period services
Engineer B (primary); County A (secondary for excluding Engineer B from construction services)
Incompetent design + professional seal certifying adequacy + no construction-phase oversight by designer = immediate field problems requiring numerous revisions
It was unethical for Engineer B to accept the rural roadway design contract under these circumstances.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer B's acceptance of the rural roadway contract was unethical, Engineer B committed a compounding and independent ethical violation by affixing a professional seal to the completed roadway design documents. The professional seal carries a categorical representation that the signing engineer possesses the requisite education, experience, and judgment to stand responsible for the work. Because Engineer B's own admission during the construction meeting confirmed that the design deficiencies were 'outside the firm's understanding of proper design,' the act of sealing those documents constituted a false certification of competence. This is not merely a derivative consequence of the original acceptance decision — it is a discrete breach of the engineer's obligation under Canon II.2.b, which prohibits affixing signatures to plans dealing with subject matter in which the engineer lacks competence. The Board's conclusion focused on the acceptance decision, but the sealing act extended and formalized the misrepresentation into the permanent project record, creating downstream reliance by County A, contractors, and the public on documents that Engineer B knew — or should have known — were produced without adequate domain expertise.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer B acted unethically in accepting the contract does not fully account for the independent ethical significance of Engineer B's lobbying of the County Commission. Responding to a public advertisement — even when unqualified — might be characterized as a passive competitive act subject to correction by the client's due diligence. Lobbying, however, is an affirmative act of political persuasion that substitutes personal advocacy and relationship capital for merit-based evaluation. When Engineer B lobbied the County Commission while simultaneously providing false assurances of competence, Engineer B weaponized political access to circumvent the very merit-screening function that competitive procurement is designed to perform. This conduct implicates the principle of Procurement Integrity and the obligation under Canon I.6 to conduct oneself honorably and in a manner that enhances the reputation of the profession. The lobbying did not merely accompany the ethical violation — it was an independent mechanism by which Engineer B undermined the integrity of the selection process, and it warrants separate analytical treatment as an ethical breach distinct from the competence question the Board addressed.
The Board's conclusion appropriately centers on Engineer B's ethical failure, but a complete analysis must also recognize that County A bears a degree of institutional responsibility that, while not rising to an independent ethical violation by the County, meaningfully contributed to the harm that materialized. County A's local-only advertisement policy structurally constrained the competitive pool to firms whose competence profiles may not have matched the technical requirements of rural roadway design. More critically, County A accepted Engineer B's assurances of adequate performance without independently verifying the firm's qualifications in highway engineering — a verification that would have been straightforward given that Engineer B's established domain expertise was in water and wastewater engineering, a materially different discipline. Furthermore, County A's decision to exclude Engineer B from construction period services removed the one mechanism that might have enabled earlier detection and correction of design deficiencies before they cascaded into excessive field revisions and quantity miscalculations. These institutional choices do not transfer ethical culpability away from Engineer B, whose misrepresentations were the proximate cause of the harm, but they illustrate that robust procurement systems — including qualification verification and integrated construction-period oversight — function as essential safeguards against the type of competence-gap harm that occurred here. The ethical framework governing engineers cannot substitute for sound institutional procurement practice on the client side.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer B's eventual admission during the construction meeting that the problems were 'outside the firm's understanding of proper design' does not retroactively satisfy the categorical duty of honest competence representation that was violated at the time of bidding and contract acceptance. The duty to represent one's qualifications honestly is triggered at the moment of professional engagement, not remediated by post-hoc acknowledgment after harm has materialized. Engineer B's admission, while reflecting a degree of professional accountability, cannot be treated as meaningful mitigation of the original breach because it arrived only after County staff had already absorbed excessive burden, field revisions had already been necessitated, and public safety had already been placed at risk by deficient design documents that bore Engineer B's professional seal. A consequentialist analysis reaches the same conclusion: the aggregate harm — including miscalculated quantities, field revision costs, County staff burden, and public safety exposure — substantially outweighed the benefit of preserving Engineer B's firm and preventing staff layoffs, particularly because those layoffs were a private economic harm to Engineer B's firm rather than a public benefit. The financial pressure Engineer B faced, while understandable as a human circumstance, cannot function as an ethical justification under either framework, because accepting the subordination of public welfare to private economic interest is precisely what the NSPE Code's competence and honesty provisions are designed to prevent.
A critical nuance the Board did not address is whether Engineer B could have remediated the ethical violation after contract award — but before design work began — by engaging a qualified rural roadway design subconsultant or seeking mentorship from an experienced highway engineer. Had Engineer B taken such steps transparently and disclosed the arrangement to County A, the competence gap might have been bridged in a manner consistent with professional standards. However, this remediation pathway would not have erased the independent ethical breach of the initial misrepresentation during bidding, because Engineer B provided assurances of adequate performance before any such remediation was arranged or even contemplated. The misrepresentation was complete at the moment it was made. Moreover, the case facts indicate no such remediation was pursued — Engineer B proceeded to complete and seal the design without engaging qualified highway engineering expertise, which is why the construction problems emerged immediately and why Engineer B admitted during the construction meeting that the issues were outside the firm's understanding. This counterfactual analysis clarifies that the ethical violation was not merely structural — it was compounded at every subsequent decision point where Engineer B had an opportunity to correct course and did not.
Engineer B's lobbying of the County Commission constitutes an independent ethical violation separate from and in addition to the competence violation. By actively campaigning for the contract award through political channels rather than relying solely on merit-based evaluation of qualifications, Engineer B substituted political influence for professional qualification as the basis for selection. This conduct implicates the principle of Procurement Integrity and violates the obligation that engineers not use political pressure as a substitute for demonstrated competence. The lobbying was particularly problematic because it was paired with false assurances of competence — the political pressure was deployed precisely to overcome any skepticism the County Commission might have had about Engineer B's qualifications in rural roadway design. The two acts together — misrepresentation of competence and political lobbying — compounded each other into a more serious ethical breach than either would constitute alone. Even if Engineer B had been fully competent in rural roadway design, lobbying a commission to secure a contract award would raise serious questions under the principle of Fairness in Professional Competition, because it introduces non-merit factors into a procurement process that should be governed by technical qualification.
Engineer B bore an affirmative obligation to disclose design deficiencies to County A at the earliest moment those deficiencies became apparent during construction, rather than waiting until a formal meeting convened by the County to address the emerging problems. The delayed admission compounds the original ethical violation in a materially significant way. Once construction problems began emerging immediately, Engineer B possessed — or should have possessed — the professional self-awareness to recognize that the field revisions and miscalculated quantities were symptoms of the firm's own competence deficit. Waiting for the County to organize a meeting before acknowledging this transferred the burden of problem identification entirely onto County staff, who were already absorbing excessive time and effort to resolve issues that Engineer B's design had created. The principle of Professional Accountability required proactive disclosure, not reactive admission under institutional pressure. The delayed acknowledgment also denied County A the opportunity to make an informed decision about whether to bring in qualified highway engineering expertise during construction to mitigate ongoing harm. The admission, while ethically required and better than continued silence, arrived too late to prevent the accumulation of harm and therefore carries insufficient mitigating weight against the original violation.
County A bears a degree of shared institutional responsibility for the outcome, though this responsibility does not diminish Engineer B's primary ethical culpability. County A's local-only advertisement policy structurally constrained the competitive pool to firms that may not have included any with demonstrated rural roadway design competence, and the County accepted Engineer B's assurances of adequate performance without independently verifying the firm's qualifications in that specific domain. A prudent procurement process would have required applicants to demonstrate relevant experience through project references, resumes of key personnel, or similar qualification evidence before contract award. By relying solely on Engineer B's self-reported assurances, County A created the institutional conditions under which an incompetent firm could successfully obtain a contract through misrepresentation. However, this shared institutional responsibility is categorically different from Engineer B's ethical violation: County A's failure was one of procurement process design, while Engineer B's failure was one of deliberate misrepresentation and knowing acceptance of work outside competence. The ethical framework governing licensed professional engineers places the primary duty of honest competence representation on the engineer, not on the client to independently audit that representation. County A's procedural shortcomings therefore constitute an institutional lesson about procurement design rather than an ethical violation equivalent to Engineer B's.
Engineer B's act of affixing a professional seal to the completed rural roadway design documents constitutes a separate and distinct ethical violation beyond the initial violation of accepting work outside competence. Code provision II.2.b. explicitly prohibits engineers from affixing their signatures to plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence, and Code provision II.1.b. requires that engineers approve only those engineering documents that conform to applicable standards. By sealing documents in a domain — rural roadway design — where the firm's own subsequent admission confirmed a lack of understanding of proper design principles, Engineer B made a formal professional representation to the public, to the County, and to any reviewing authority that the documents met professional standards. This representation was false. The professional seal carries legal and ethical weight precisely because it signals to non-engineers that a qualified professional has exercised responsible charge over the work. Using that seal to certify work that Engineer B knew or should have known was deficient transforms the seal from a mark of professional accountability into an instrument of misrepresentation. This sealing violation is analytically independent of the contract acceptance violation: even if one were to argue that accepting the contract was marginally defensible on the theory that Engineer B genuinely believed competence could be developed, the act of sealing completed documents after the design work revealed the firm's deficiencies admits of no similar defense.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer B failed their categorical duty of honest competence representation to County A. The duty to represent one's qualifications honestly is not contingent on outcomes — it is not discharged by the fact that the project ultimately remained within budget through the extraordinary efforts of County staff. Engineer B's assurances of adequate performance in rural roadway design were representations about a matter of fact — the firm's competence — that Engineer B had reason to know were false or at minimum unverified. A deontological analysis does not permit Engineer B to argue that the assurances were given in good faith simply because the firm hoped to develop competence through the project itself. The duty of honest representation requires that the engineer assess their actual competence before making representations, not after contract award. Furthermore, the categorical duty to protect public welfare — implicated by affixing a professional seal to deficient roadway design documents — is not satisfied by the absence of catastrophic physical harm. The duty exists independently of whether harm materializes, because the professional seal is a public-facing representation that triggers reliance by contractors, inspectors, and the public who cannot independently evaluate the adequacy of engineering design.
From a consequentialist perspective, the aggregate harm produced by Engineer B's acceptance of the rural roadway contract clearly and substantially outweighed the benefit of preserving the firm's financial position and preventing staff layoffs. The harms were concrete and documented: a significant number of field revisions required during construction, miscalculated quantities of work, excessive time and effort imposed on County staff, growing institutional frustration with the quality of work, and an ongoing public safety risk from a deficient roadway design. The benefit — preservation of Engineer B's firm and staff employment — was real but private and concentrated, accruing only to Engineer B's organization. Against this, the harms were diffuse and public, falling on County A's staff, on the taxpayers funding the project, and on the public who would use the roadway. A consequentialist calculus must also account for systemic harms: if engineers routinely accept work outside their competence to preserve their firms, the reliability of the professional engineering system as a whole is degraded, imposing diffuse but significant costs on public trust in engineering credentials. The fact that the project remained within budget does not neutralize the consequentialist analysis, because budget preservation was achieved only through the uncompensated absorption of extraordinary effort by County staff — a cost that was real even if it did not appear as a budget overrun.
From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer B failed to demonstrate the core professional virtues of integrity and honesty at the moment of bidding and throughout the project lifecycle. A virtuous engineer, confronting a business downturn and the prospect of staff layoffs, would have recognized the temptation to overstate competence and would have resisted it — not merely because the Code prohibits misrepresentation, but because honesty about one's limitations is constitutive of what it means to be a professional engineer. The virtue of practical wisdom — phronesis — would have directed Engineer B to recognize that accepting work outside competence, even with good intentions toward staff, would ultimately harm the client, the public, and the firm's own long-term reputation more severely than declining the work. Engineer B's lobbying of the County Commission further reflects a deficit of the virtue of professional honor: rather than allowing qualifications to speak for themselves, Engineer B deployed political influence to compensate for a qualification deficit. The eventual admission of incompetence during the construction meeting, while reflecting a belated exercise of honesty, does not retroactively establish the virtuous character that the initial misrepresentation and lobbying revealed to be absent. Virtue ethics evaluates character as expressed through a pattern of conduct, and the pattern here — misrepresentation, political lobbying, deficient design, delayed admission — reflects a consistent prioritization of self-interest over professional integrity.
The construction problems and the excessive burden imposed on County staff would very likely have been substantially avoided had Engineer B declined the rural roadway contract and referred County A to a firm with demonstrated highway design competence. The case facts establish that all local engineering firms responded to the advertisement and that there was sufficient design work for each firm to receive one or more projects. This means the competitive pool included other firms whose qualifications in rural roadway design were not assessed in the record but who, unlike Engineer B, were not known to lack that competence. A referral by Engineer B to a more qualified firm, or Engineer B's non-participation, would have allowed County A to allocate the rural roadway project to a firm better positioned to perform it competently. The immediate emergence of construction problems — field revisions, miscalculated quantities, excessive County staff burden — are precisely the categories of harm that competent rural roadway design would have prevented or substantially reduced. The counterfactual therefore strongly supports the conclusion that Engineer B's acceptance of the contract was not merely a technical ethical violation but a causally significant contributor to concrete, avoidable harm.
Had Engineer B disclosed the firm's lack of rural roadway design experience to County A before contract award rather than providing assurances of adequate performance, County A would have had a meaningful opportunity to make an informed procurement decision. Given that all local firms responded to the advertisement and that sufficient work existed for each firm, County A could have allocated the rural roadway project to a different local firm with relevant highway design experience, or could have required Engineer B to demonstrate a plan for obtaining qualified highway engineering expertise — whether through subconsultant engagement, mentorship, or collaboration — as a condition of award. The disclosure would have converted a situation of uninformed reliance on false assurances into one of informed client choice. This counterfactual underscores that the ethical harm of Engineer B's misrepresentation was not merely abstract: it specifically deprived County A of decision-making information that was material to the procurement outcome. Code provision II.5.a. prohibits engineers from permitting misrepresentation of their qualifications precisely because clients are not positioned to independently verify technical competence claims and must rely on the engineer's honest self-assessment.
Even if Engineer B had engaged a qualified rural roadway design subconsultant or sought mentorship from an experienced highway engineer before beginning design work, the initial misrepresentation to County A during the bidding process would remain an independent and unremediated ethical breach. The ethical violation of falsely representing competence to obtain a contract is complete at the moment the misrepresentation is made — it is not cured by subsequent remediation of the underlying competence deficit. However, the engagement of a qualified subconsultant or mentor would have substantially mitigated the practical harm: the design deficiencies, field revisions, and miscalculated quantities that burdened County staff would likely have been avoided or reduced if competent highway engineering expertise had been applied to the design work. This creates an important analytical distinction: post-award competence remediation through subconsultant engagement addresses the harm dimension of the violation but does not address the honesty and misrepresentation dimension. Engineer B would still have obtained the contract through false assurances and political lobbying rather than through demonstrated merit, and the County would still have been denied the opportunity to make an informed procurement decision. The ethical framework therefore requires both honest pre-award representation and competent post-award performance — remediation of one dimension does not substitute for the other.
The tension between Client Loyalty and Public Welfare Paramount in this case reveals a deeper irony: Engineer B's motivation to preserve the client relationship and avoid staff layoffs — the very self-interest that drove the decision to accept the contract — ultimately produced the most severe possible violation of client loyalty by delivering deficient work that burdened County staff, frustrated the County, and damaged the professional relationship. This dynamic illustrates that the principles of Client Loyalty and Public Welfare Paramount are not genuinely in tension here — they converge on the same conclusion. A truly client-loyal engineer would have declined work they could not perform competently, because accepting such work and delivering deficient results is the most profound betrayal of client trust available to a professional. The apparent tension dissolves upon analysis: Engineer B's self-interest was dressed in the language of client service and staff welfare, but the actual effect was to subordinate both client welfare and public safety to the firm's short-term financial survival. The Code's structure — placing public welfare paramount above client loyalty — reflects the recognition that when engineers genuinely face a conflict between the two, public welfare must prevail. But this case does not even present a genuine conflict: competent performance would have served both the client and the public simultaneously.
The principle tension between Honesty in Professional Representations and Professional Reputation and Honor resolves against Engineer B in a self-defeating manner: the misrepresentation of competence that Engineer B deployed to win the contract and preserve the firm's reputation produced precisely the reputational harm that the lobbying and false assurances were presumably designed to avoid. By winning a contract through misrepresentation and then delivering deficient work, Engineer B transformed a temporary business downturn — which carries no inherent reputational stigma — into a documented record of incompetent performance, client frustration, and ethical violation. A firm that honestly declines work outside its competence and refers clients to more qualified engineers builds a reputation for integrity and professional self-awareness. A firm that accepts such work through misrepresentation and delivers deficient results builds a reputation for dishonesty and incompetence. The long-term reputational calculus therefore strongly favored honest disclosure and declination, and Engineer B's choice to prioritize short-term contract acquisition over honest representation was not only ethically wrong but strategically self-defeating. This analysis reinforces the Board's conclusion by demonstrating that the ethical path and the self-interested path converged — Engineer B's violation was not even necessary to achieve the firm's legitimate interest in preserving its professional standing.
The most fundamental principle tension in this case — between Client Loyalty and Public Welfare Paramount — was not genuinely resolved by Engineer B but was instead collapsed into a single failure: the decision to accept the contract. Engineer B's stated motivation for pursuing the rural roadway contract was firm survival and staff retention, which superficially resembles client loyalty but is more accurately characterized as self-interest. Paradoxically, the act of accepting work outside competence to preserve the client relationship ultimately destroyed that relationship, as County A grew increasingly frustrated with the deficient design. This case teaches that Client Loyalty and Public Welfare Paramount are not genuinely in tension when the client's actual interest — receiving competent engineering services — aligns with the public's interest in safe infrastructure. The apparent tension dissolves upon closer examination: a truly client-loyal engineer would have declined the contract or disclosed the competence gap, because only a competent design serves the client's real interest. Engineer B's framing of the dilemma as loyalty versus welfare was therefore a false construction that obscured the underlying self-interest driving the decision.
The principle of Honesty in Professional Representations and the principle of Professional Reputation and Honor are revealed by this case to be mutually reinforcing rather than genuinely in tension, yet Engineer B treated them as if they were separable. Engineer B's lobbying of the County Commission and false assurances of competence were presumably motivated by a desire to protect the firm's reputation and financial standing — the very goods that Professional Reputation and Honor are meant to preserve. However, the case demonstrates that misrepresenting competence to win a contract is self-defeating from a reputational standpoint: the subsequent construction failures, County frustration, and eventual admission of incompetence caused precisely the reputational harm that the misrepresentation was intended to prevent. This case teaches that Honesty in Professional Representations is not merely a deontological constraint imposed on engineers from outside but is constitutive of the professional reputation that engineers seek to protect. An engineer cannot simultaneously violate the former while preserving the latter. The Board's conclusion of unethical conduct is therefore reinforced by the recognition that Engineer B's self-interested strategy was not only ethically wrong but instrumentally irrational.
The partial satisfaction of Professional Accountability through Engineer B's eventual admission of incompetence during the construction meeting carries insufficient ethical weight to mitigate the prior violations of Public Welfare Paramount and Competence Assurance, and this case establishes a clear principle-prioritization hierarchy: prospective obligations to avoid harm outrank retrospective obligations to acknowledge it. Professional Accountability, when exercised only after harm has materialized, functions as a post-hoc confession rather than a genuine ethical safeguard. The admission did not prevent the field revisions, the miscalculated quantities, the excessive burden on County staff, or the public safety risk created by the deficient design. This case teaches that the ethical weight of accountability disclosures is inversely proportional to the delay between the moment the engineer knew or should have known of the deficiency and the moment of disclosure. Because Engineer B knew before contract acceptance that the firm lacked rural roadway design competence, the obligation to disclose arose at the bidding stage — not during a construction meeting after problems had already emerged. The Fairness in Professional Competition principle, implicated by County A's local-only advertisement policy, further compounds this analysis: a procurement structure that restricts the competitive pool does not transfer ethical responsibility from Engineer B to County A, because the obligation to self-assess and honestly represent competence is non-delegable and attaches to the individual engineer regardless of how the procurement is structured.
Engineer B transitions from candidate to engineer of record; legal and professional obligations to deliver competent roadway design are now binding; County has transferred design responsibility to an incompetent party
Following lobbying and assurances; conclusion of procurement process
County A formally awarded Engineer B a single roadway design project contract, making Engineer B the engineer of record despite the firm's lack of rural roadway design experience.
County A Local Advertisement Policy Competitive Procurement Constraint
County A published its advertisement for rural roadway design consulting services only locally, resulting in all local firms responding and receiving work regardless of domain-specific competence in rural roadway design.
Competitive Procurement Fairness Constraint
County A's policy of advertising consulting engineering services only locally constrained the agency from accessing the full pool of qualified engineering firms, potentially resulting in contract awards to firms lacking domain-specific competence when no locally qualified firm existed for the required specialty.
NSPE Code of Ethics and public procurement fairness principles; competitive qualification-based selection standards
It had been a policy of the County to utilize local design services whenever possible in these cases.
Procurement phase for rural roadway design consulting services
All local engineering firms responded to the advertisement.
Subsequently, the advertisement was published only locally.
There was enough design work available that each of the local firms could receive one or more design projects.
County A Local Procurement Policy Competitive Fairness Assessment
Local Procurement Policy Competitive Fairness Assessment Capability
County A was obligated to assess whether its local-only advertisement policy for consulting engineering services provided fair and open competitive opportunity to all qualified firms and complied with QBS procurement law requirements, rather than restricting competition to local firms regardless of their domain-specific competence.
County A's local preference procurement policy restricted competition in a manner that contributed to the award of a rural roadway design contract to an incompetent firm, raising questions about the policy's compliance with QBS procurement law and professional ethics.
County A's policy of advertising consulting engineering services only locally, which resulted in the award of a rural roadway design contract to a local water and wastewater engineering firm lacking domain-specific competence in rural roadway design.
County A was obligated to evaluate whether its policy of advertising consulting engineering services only locally — thereby restricting competition to local firms — provided fair and open competitive opportunity to all qualified firms.
County A Local Procurement Policy Competitive Fairness Assessment Deficit
County A failed to exercise the capability to evaluate whether its local-only advertisement policy for consulting engineering services provided fair and open competitive opportunity and served the public interest in obtaining the most competent available engineering services.
County A's procurement policy decision to advertise consulting engineering services only locally
Absence demonstrated by County A's continuation of a local-only advertisement policy that resulted in award of a rural roadway design contract to a firm without rural roadway design competence, when broader advertisement might have identified more qualified firms.
County A Resource Constrained - Insufficient Engineering Staff
From the period preceding the advertisement through the construction season
County A was expecting a significant amount of rural roadway construction in the upcoming construction season.
County A's internal engineering staffing capacity relative to expected rural roadway construction workload
Engagement of consulting firms to supplement County engineering capacity
County A did not have enough engineering staff to handle the design effort required for the expected workload.
Therefore, the County decided to advertise for consulting services to accomplish the needed design.
Significant rural roadway construction workload anticipated for the upcoming construction season exceeding County's internal engineering staff capacity
County A Staff Construction Period Services Execution Rural Roadway
Rural Roadway Design Technical Competence
County A staff engineers demonstrated sufficient technical capability to manage construction period services for the rural roadway project, resolving field revisions and quantity discrepancies sufficiently to keep the project within budget despite the design deficiencies.
County A staff's performance of construction administration and field engineering services in lieu of the design engineer
Demonstrated by County A staff's successful management of construction period services, resolving significant field revisions and quantity discrepancies while keeping the project within budget.
The County, in this case, decided to utilize their own staff for construction period services.
A significant number of field revisions were necessary and estimated quantities of work had been miscalculated, resulting in excessive time and effort for the County to resolve.
Through the efforts of the County staff, the project was able to remain within its budget.
County A Staff County Construction Period Services Staff Engineer
{'entity_type': 'County government staff engineers', 'service_type': 'Construction period administration and field revision management', 'outcome': 'Project maintained within budget despite design deficiencies'}
County engineering staff who performed construction administration and field engineering services in lieu of the design engineer during construction, managing numerous field revisions and resolving quantity miscalculation issues caused by Engineer B's deficient design, ultimately keeping the project within budget.
{'type': 'employed_by', 'target': 'County A'}
{'type': 'remediated_work_of', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
County Construction Period Services Staff Engineer
the County decided to utilize their own staff for construction period services
A significant number of field revisions were necessary
Through the efforts of the County staff, the project was able to remain within its budget
resulting in excessive time and effort for the County to resolve
County advertisement for consulting services before all local firms responding
The County decided to advertise for consulting services... Subsequently, the advertisement was published only locally. All local engineering firms responded to the advertisement.
County advertisement for consulting services
County bidding the project before construction phase
Engineer B completed the design project, the County bid the project and then proceeded into construction.
County staff resolving construction issues during construction phase
County staff resolving construction issues
Entity1 occurs entirely within the duration of Entity2
Should Engineer B have accepted the rural roadway design contract by asserting competence and lobbying the County Commission, given the firm's lack of demonstrated experience in rural highway design and the economic pressure to retain staff?
Engineer B's decision to respond to County A's advertisement, lobby the County Commission, and provide affirmative assurances of competence in rural roadway design — a domain outside the firm's established water and wastewater expertise — in order to secure the contract during a business downturn.
Decline to respond to the advertisement, disclose the firm's lack of rural roadway design experience to County A, and refer the County to a firm with demonstrated highway design competence
Respond to the advertisement, lobby the County Commission, and provide affirmative assurances of adequate performance in rural roadway design to secure the contract
Was Engineer B obligated to refrain from sealing the completed roadway design documents and to proactively disclose design deficiencies to County A at the earliest moment those deficiencies became apparent during construction, rather than waiting for a County-convened meeting to acknowledge the firm's competence limitations?
Engineer B's decision to complete the rural roadway design, affix a professional seal to the design documents, and proceed without disclosing design deficiencies to County A — followed by a delayed admission of incompetence only after construction problems emerged and County A convened a formal meeting.
Refrain from sealing the design documents, proactively disclose competence limitations and design deficiencies to County A at the earliest opportunity, and recommend engagement of qualified highway engineering expertise to remediate the design before construction proceeds
Affix the professional seal to the completed design documents, allow construction to proceed without disclosing known competence limitations, and admit design deficiencies only after County A convenes a formal construction meeting
Did County A bear a degree of shared institutional responsibility for the outcome by restricting its advertisement to local firms, accepting Engineer B's competence assurances without independent verification, and excluding the design engineer from construction period services — and should County A have implemented qualification verification and broader advertisement practices to safeguard procurement integrity?
County A's institutional decisions — advertising engineering services only locally, accepting Engineer B's assurances of competence without independent qualification verification, and excluding Engineer B from construction period services — and whether those decisions constitute shared institutional responsibility for the harm that materialized.
Require applicants to demonstrate relevant domain-specific experience through project references and personnel qualifications before award, advertise beyond local firms when local competence in the required domain cannot be confirmed, and include the design engineer in construction period services to enable early detection and correction of design deficiencies
Award the contract based solely on engineer-provided assurances of competence without independent qualification verification, restrict advertisement to local firms regardless of domain-specific competence availability, and exclude the design engineer from construction period services
Should Engineer B accept the rural roadway design contract by lobbying the County Commission and asserting competence, given that the firm's established expertise is in water and wastewater engineering and not rural roadway design?
Engineer B's decision to respond to the rural roadway advertisement, lobby the County Commission, and assert competence in a domain outside the firm's established expertise in water and wastewater engineering, under economic pressure from a business downturn
Lobby the County Commission, assert competence in rural roadway design, and accept the contract
Decline to accept the rural roadway contract and refer County A to a firm with demonstrated highway design competence
Respond to the advertisement while disclosing the firm's competence limitations and proposing engagement of a qualified rural roadway subconsultant as a condition of award
Engineer B Rural Roadway Design Engineer
Should Engineer B affix a professional seal to the completed rural roadway design documents and, once construction problems emerge, proactively disclose the design deficiencies to County A at the earliest moment rather than waiting for a formal County-initiated meeting?
Engineer B's completion and sealing of the rural roadway design documents, and the subsequent obligation to proactively disclose design deficiencies to County A once construction problems emerged, rather than waiting for a County-convened meeting
Affix the professional seal to the completed roadway design documents and wait for County A to convene a formal meeting before acknowledging design deficiencies
Refuse to affix the professional seal to design documents produced outside the firm's domain competence and immediately disclose the competence limitation to County A
Affix the professional seal but proactively disclose emerging construction deficiencies to County A at the earliest moment problems become apparent, without waiting for a County-initiated meeting
Should Engineer B lobby the County Commission and assert adequate competence in rural roadway design when the firm's established expertise is limited to water and wastewater engineering and the firm faces economic pressure?
Engineer B's decision to lobby the County Commission and assert competence in rural roadway design despite lacking domain expertise, in response to a public advertisement during a business downturn
Lobby the County Commission and assert adequate competence in rural roadway design to secure the contract
Decline to pursue the rural roadway contract and refer County A to a firm with demonstrated highway design competence
Respond to the advertisement while honestly disclosing the firm's lack of rural roadway experience and proposing a qualified subconsultant arrangement as a condition of award
Should Engineer B affix a professional seal to completed rural roadway design documents and withhold disclosure of design deficiencies until a County-convened construction meeting, given that the firm lacked domain competence and construction problems were immediately apparent?
Engineer B's act of completing and affixing a professional seal to rural roadway design documents in a domain where the firm lacked requisite competence, and the subsequent delayed admission of design deficiencies only after construction problems emerged
Affix the professional seal to the completed roadway design documents and withhold disclosure of emerging construction problems until a County-convened meeting
Refuse to affix the professional seal to the roadway design documents and immediately notify County A of the firm's competence limitations before finalizing the design
Affix the professional seal but proactively disclose design deficiencies to County A at the earliest moment construction problems become apparent, and recommend engagement of qualified highway engineering expertise
Flawed design documents now exist as the official basis for construction; errors are locked into the contract documents; downstream construction problems are now structurally inevitable
Following contract award; prior to County bidding the project
Engineer B completed and signed the rural roadway design, producing a set of construction documents that would later prove to contain significant errors in field conditions, quantities, and design details attributable to the firm's lack of roadway expertise.
Engineer B Competence Standard BER 02-5 Distinguishing Constraint
The BER distinguished Engineer B's situation from BER Case 02-5, where the engineer was competent in the field but unfamiliar with recently proposed parameters not yet adopted as standards. Engineer B's deficit was not unfamiliarity with emerging standards but rather fundamental lack of competence in the domain, making the constraint absolute rather than subject to the emerging-standards exception.
Unlike the engineer in BER Case 02-5 — who was competent in severe weather structural engineering but merely unfamiliar with recently proposed (not yet standardized) design parameters — Engineer B was constrained by a more fundamental competence deficit: the absence of demonstrated competence in the specific technical domain of rural roadway design itself, not merely unfamiliarity with emerging standards within a domain of established competence.
NSPE Code of Ethics II.2.a; II.2.b; BER Case 02-5 (distinguished); BER Case 98-8 (analogous)
In BER Case 02-5, the Board studied a situation in which a structural engineer, competent in severe weather structural engineering, designed a building that had a structural failure from a severe weather condition.
Throughout the project from bid through construction
In Case 02-5, the engineer was considered competent in all other respects, it was just that the engineer was not familiar with the recently proposed design parameters.
In the present case, the question is whether Engineer B is competent.
The Board concluded that it was not unethical for the engineer to fail to follow the most recent design parameters for structural design in severe weather areas published in the most recent technical literature, because those recently proposed design parameters had not yet become standards.
Engineer B Construction Period Services Advisory Deficit County A
Construction Period Services Scope Advisory Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to advise County A about the risks of proceeding with construction without the design engineer's involvement in construction period services, particularly given the firm's known competence limitations in rural roadway design.
Engineer B's failure to advise County A about construction period services risks before construction commenced
Absence demonstrated by County A's decision to use its own staff for construction period services without apparent advisory input from Engineer B about the risks of this arrangement, and the subsequent construction problems that resulted.
During the construction phase, problems and issues began occurring immediately.
Engineer B Design Deficiency Causal Attribution Admission Construction Meeting
Design Deficiency Causal Attribution Capability
Engineer B demonstrated partial capability to attribute design deficiencies to the firm's own competence limitations, admitting during a construction meeting that problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design — though this attribution came late, after construction problems had already materialized.
Engineer B's admission during a meeting with County A as construction problems occurred
Demonstrated (belatedly) by Engineer B's admission during a construction meeting that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design and could have been avoided if understood.
If understood by Engineer B, the issues could have been avoided.
Engineer B Design Deficiency Causal Attribution Rural Roadway Construction
Engineer B was obligated to identify and accurately attribute the root causes of the rural roadway design deficiencies — including acknowledging that deficiencies arose from the firm's lack of domain competence — and to communicate this causal attribution honestly to County A during and after construction.
Engineer B's design deficiencies during County A's rural roadway construction required honest causal attribution to the firm's competence limitations, consistent with professional accountability obligations.
Design deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and construction problems that required field revisions, attributable to Engineer B's lack of rural roadway design competence.
The problems that occurred during construction would have been avoided if the design met standards.
it is clear that Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer without identified significant roadway design skills, did not possess the competence to perform the rural highway design services.
Engineer B Design Deficiency Early Disclosure Deficit County A
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to disclose design deficiencies early — before or at the onset of construction — instead waiting until problems had already materialized during construction before acknowledging competence limitations.
Engineer B's failure to disclose design deficiencies to County A before construction commenced
Absence of early disclosure demonstrated by the fact that problems began occurring immediately during construction before Engineer B acknowledged the deficiencies, rather than proactively disclosing known competence limitations before construction commenced.
Engineer B Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Recognition Rural Roadway
Domain-Specific Competence Boundary Recognition Capability
Engineer B failed to correctly recognize and apply the boundary between the firm's established water and wastewater engineering competence and the distinct technical domain of rural roadway design, incorrectly treating general civil engineering qualification as sufficient for rural roadway design work.
Engineer B's failure to recognize the competence boundary between water/wastewater engineering and rural roadway design led to acceptance of an out-of-competence contract and production of a deficient design.
Accepting a rural roadway design contract and performing the design despite the firm's lack of domain-specific competence, resulting in design deficiencies that would have been avoided if the design met standards.
II.2.a. states that 'Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.'
Education provides scientific and technical knowledge which are a necessary foundation for professional competence, but it is also the experiences of working within the technical fields that build competence.
Engineer B Domain Expertise Water Wastewater Engineering
Engineer B possessed domain expertise as an experienced water and wastewater engineer, but this expertise did not extend to rural roadway design, creating a competence gap when accepting the County A contract.
Engineer B's established professional domain as a water and wastewater engineer, contrasted with the rural roadway design domain of the County A contract
Established by case description identifying Engineer B as an experienced water and wastewater engineer, with the competence gap demonstrated by subsequent design deficiencies in the rural roadway domain.
One local engineering firm owner, Engineer B (an experienced water and wastewater engineer) was experiencing a downturn in committed work
Engineer B Economic Pressure Resistance Deficit Rural Roadway Contract
Economic Pressure Resistance in Contract Acceptance Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to resist economic pressure when accepting the rural roadway design contract, allowing the firm's revenue downturn and staff retention concerns to override professional competence standards.
Engineer B's decision to accept County A's rural roadway design contract despite competence limitations, driven by economic self-interest
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's acceptance of an out-of-competence contract explicitly motivated by the firm's revenue downturn and risk of staff layoffs.
Engineer B (an experienced water and wastewater engineer) was experiencing a downturn in committed work which would have affected the bottom line of the firm and could have resulted in layoffs of its staff.
Engineer B Economic Pressure Resistance Rural Roadway Contract Acceptance
Engineer B failed to resist economic pressure — including revenue and staff retention considerations — when accepting the rural roadway design contract outside the firm's competence domain, subordinating professional competence standards to financial self-interest.
Engineer B's acceptance of the out-of-competence rural roadway design contract reflects failure to resist economic pressure, consistent with the pattern identified in the Economic Pressure Non-Subordination of Competence Obligation.
Accepting the rural roadway design contract despite lacking domain competence, in a context where the firm's revenue needs and desire to retain staff created pressure to accept available work regardless of competence fit.
Engineer B did not meet this standard when bidding and accepting a contract involving work for which the firm did not have adequate competence.
I.6 indicates that engineers shall conduct themselves in a way so to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession. Engineer B did not meet this standard when bidding and accepting a contract involving work for which the firm did not have adequate competence.
Engineer B Ethical Perception Deficit Competence Boundary Recognition
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to recognize the ethically salient features of the situation — specifically, that accepting a contract outside the firm's competence domain, motivated by economic self-interest, and supported by political lobbying rather than technical qualification, raised significant professional ethics concerns.
Engineer B's failure to recognize the ethical dimensions of accepting an out-of-competence contract under economic pressure
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's acceptance of the contract, provision of false assurances, and political lobbying, without apparent recognition of the ethical dimensions of these actions until construction problems forced acknowledgment.
They also lobbied the County Commission in their favor.
Engineer B Honest Competence Representation Deficit County A Procurement
AI Disclosure and Transparency Capability
Engineer B failed to honestly represent the firm's competence limitations to County A during the procurement process, providing false assurances of adequacy rather than accurately disclosing the firm's lack of rural roadway design experience.
Engineer B's representations to County A during the consulting services procurement process
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's provision of assurances of adequate performance to County A despite having no rural roadway design experience, and subsequent admission of competence limitations only after construction problems emerged.
Engineer B Political Lobbying Non-Substitution County Commission Contract
Political Influence Non-Substitution Capability
Engineer B failed to maintain the boundary between legitimate technical qualification-based competition and improper political lobbying, directly lobbying the County Commission in favor of receiving the rural roadway design contract rather than competing solely on demonstrated technical competence.
Engineer B's direct lobbying of the County Commission to obtain the rural roadway design contract constituted substitution of political influence for technical qualification, in violation of professional ethics obligations.
Directly lobbying the County Commission to receive the rural roadway design contract award, substituting political influence for technical qualification in the procurement process.
I.6 indicates that engineers shall conduct themselves in a way so to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.
Engineer B Political Lobbying Non-Substitution Deficit County Commission
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to refrain from substituting political lobbying for technical qualification, instead lobbying the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the contract award.
Engineer B's conduct during the County A rural roadway design procurement process
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's direct lobbying of the County Commission in favor of receiving the contract award, rather than competing solely on the basis of technical qualifications.
Engineer B Post-Award Competence Remediation Constraint Rural Roadway
Engineer B accepted the contract, completed the design without associating with competent rural roadway design professionals or disclosing the competence gap, and submitted a deficient design that caused immediate and significant construction problems.
Post-Award Competence Remediation Constraint
After accepting the rural roadway design contract, Engineer B was constrained from proceeding through design completion without either associating with a competent rural roadway design engineer, obtaining adequate technical guidance, or disclosing the competence gap to County A — the firm's failure to remediate the competence gap before completing the design directly caused the construction deficiencies.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Cases 98-8 and 94-8 establishing that engineers must not perform work outside their competence without remediation
Post-award design phase through design completion
Engineer B Post-Award Competence Remediation Rural Roadway Design
Engineer B accepted the rural roadway design contract and proceeded through design completion and sealing without obtaining qualified assistance or disclosing the competence gap to County A, resulting in design deficiencies that required field revisions during construction.
After accepting the rural roadway design contract, Engineer B was constrained to immediately obtain qualified assistance, associate with competent professionals in rural highway design, or disclose the competence gap to County A before proceeding with design work — and was prohibited from proceeding through design completion and sealing without either acquiring the requisite competence or disclosing the limitation.
NSPE Code of Ethics II.2.a; II.2.b; BER Case 98-8
In this case, it is clear that Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer without identified significant roadway design skills, did not possess the competence to perform the rural highway design services.
From contract award through design completion and plan sealing
In BER Case 98-8, a professional engineer in civil engineering was asked to certify certain arms storage rooms and racks for the Army. This engineer had no significant training or knowledge in that area, although the engineer was considered a qualified engineer. The Board concluded that, because the engineer lacked competence in the specific area, it would not be ethical for the engineer to certify the arms storage rooms and arms storage racks.
Engineer B Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Deficit Rural Roadway
Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Capability
Engineer B lacked or failed to exercise the capability to conduct an honest self-assessment of the firm's competence in rural roadway design before accepting County A's contract, instead providing assurances of adequacy despite having no experience in the domain.
Engineer B's pre-contract acceptance decision regarding County A's rural roadway design solicitation
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's acceptance of the rural roadway design contract despite being an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no rural roadway design experience, and subsequent admission during construction that problems were outside the firm's understanding.
Engineer B Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Rural Roadway Contract
Engineer B failed to conduct an honest and rigorous self-assessment of the firm's competence in rural roadway design before accepting County A's contract, failing to identify the gap between the firm's water and wastewater expertise and the rural roadway design requirements.
Engineer B's failure to conduct adequate pre-acceptance competence self-assessment resulted in acceptance of an out-of-competence contract and production of a deficient rural roadway design for County A.
Accepting the rural roadway design contract despite being a water and wastewater engineering firm without identified significant roadway design skills, and subsequently producing a design with significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities.
Engineer B Precedent-Based Competence Ethical Reasoning Rural Roadway
Precedent-Based Ethical Reasoning Capability
Engineer B lacked or failed to apply the capability to use BER precedent cases — particularly BER 98-8 and BER 94-8 — to correctly assess whether accepting and performing rural roadway design work outside the firm's competence domain constituted an ethical violation.
Had Engineer B applied BER precedent reasoning, the firm would have recognized that accepting a rural roadway design contract without domain-specific competence was analogous to the ethical violations found in BER Cases 98-8 and 94-8.
Failure to recognize the analogy between the firm's situation and BER Case 98-8 (engineer certifying arms storage without domain competence) and BER Case 94-8 (chemical engineer performing foundation design), which would have indicated that accepting the rural roadway design contract was ethically impermissible.
In BER Case 98-8, a professional engineer in civil engineering was asked to certify certain arms storage rooms and racks for the Army... The Board concluded that, because the engineer lacked competence in the specific area, it would not be ethical for the engineer to certify the arms storage rooms and arms storage racks. That case is analogous to the present case.
In both instances, while competent in some areas, the engineer in question may not have been competent in the specific areas of practice in question, in which case, the engineer acted unethically.
Engineer B Professional Honor Non-Degradation Bidding Rural Roadway
Engineer B's decision to bid on and accept a rural highway design contract despite lacking competence in that domain was found by the BER to violate the I.6 standard requiring engineers to conduct themselves so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.
Professional Honor Non-Degradation Through Incompetent Bidding Constraint
Engineer B was constrained by NSPE Code I.6 from bidding on and accepting the rural roadway design contract, because doing so — given the firm's lack of competence in that domain — constituted conduct that degraded rather than enhanced the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession.
Finally, I.6 indicates that engineers shall conduct themselves in a way so to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.
At the time of bid submission and contract acceptance
Engineer B Professional Seal Affixation Competence Verification Rural Roadway
Professional Seal Affixation Competence Verification Capability
Engineer B lacked the capability to correctly verify domain-specific competence before affixing their professional seal to the rural roadway design plans, sealing documents in a technical domain — rural roadway design — outside the firm's established water and wastewater engineering competence.
Engineer B, a water and wastewater engineer, accepted and sealed rural roadway design plans for County A despite lacking domain-specific competence, in violation of NSPE Code II.2.b.
Affixing professional signature and seal to rural roadway design plans despite lacking competence in rural roadway design, resulting in design deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and significant field revisions during construction.
The Code of Ethics specifically states Engineers shall not affix their signature to any plans dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence.
II.2.b. indicates further that Engineers shall not affix their signatures to any plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence.
Engineer B Project Non-Success Advisory Deficit Rural Roadway
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to advise County A that the project was likely to encounter significant problems due to the firm's competence limitations, either before accepting the contract, during design, or before construction commenced.
Engineer B's failure to advise County A of project risk before construction problems emerged
Absence demonstrated by Engineer B's failure to proactively advise County A of the risk of project problems arising from competence limitations, with acknowledgment of those limitations coming only after construction problems had already materialized.
Engineer B Public Safety Paramount Constraint Deficient Roadway Design
Engineer B's acceptance and completion of a rural roadway design project outside the firm's competence domain created foreseeable public safety risks through deficient design, which materialized as significant construction problems requiring extensive field revisions.
Engineer B was constrained by the paramount public safety obligation from accepting and completing a rural roadway design project outside the firm's competence domain, as the foreseeable consequence of incompetent design — deficient roadway construction affecting public users — constituted an unmitigated risk to public welfare.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I.1 — engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public
Pre-acceptance through design completion and construction
A significant number of field revisions were necessary and estimated quantities of work had been miscalculated
Engineer B Quantity Estimation Accuracy Deficit Rural Roadway
Engineer B lacked the technical capability to accurately estimate construction quantities for the rural roadway design project, resulting in miscalculated quantities that caused excessive time and effort for the County to resolve during construction.
Engineer B's preparation of construction bid documents for County A's rural roadway project
Absence demonstrated by miscalculated estimated quantities of work that required significant County staff effort to resolve during construction.
estimated quantities of work had been miscalculated, resulting in excessive time and effort for the County to resolve
Engineer B Quantity Estimation Accuracy Rural Roadway Design
Engineer B lacked sufficient quantity estimation accuracy capability for rural roadway design, producing miscalculated quantity estimates that contributed to construction budget overruns and required significant field revisions.
Engineer B's deficient quantity estimation in the rural roadway design was a direct consequence of the firm's lack of domain-specific competence in rural roadway design.
Miscalculated quantities in the rural roadway design that were identified during construction and required field revisions, contributing to project cost overruns.
Engineer B Rural Roadway Design Technical Competence Deficiency
Engineer B lacked the technical competence required to design rural roadway infrastructure in accordance with applicable geometric design standards, quantity estimation methods, and drainage requirements, as evidenced by significant design deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and the need for substantial field revisions during construction.
Engineer B, a water and wastewater engineering firm, lacked the domain-specific technical competence to perform rural roadway design for County A, resulting in a deficient design that caused construction problems.
Production of a rural roadway design with significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and design problems that required substantial field revisions during construction and resulted in budget overruns.
Engineer B Rural Roadway Design Technical Competence Deficit
Engineer B lacked the technical competence required to design rural roadway infrastructure, including geometric design, quantity estimation, and construction administration, resulting in significant design deficiencies during construction.
Engineer B's performance of rural roadway design services for County A
Absence demonstrated by significant field revisions, miscalculated quantities, and Engineer B's own admission that problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design.
Engineer B Scope of Practice Constraint Rural Highway Domain
Engineer B held licensure as a water and wastewater engineer and lacked the domain-specific competence required for rural roadway design, placing the firm outside its legitimate scope of practice when it accepted and performed the County A roadway design contract.
Engineer B's professional scope of practice — defined by demonstrated competence in water and wastewater engineering — constrained the firm from practicing in the rural roadway design domain without supplemental qualification, association with competent professionals, or client disclosure.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a and II.2.b; BER Cases 98-8 and 94-8
Throughout the procurement, design, and construction phases
Engineer B lobbying County Commission before contract award to Engineer B
They also lobbied the County Commission in their favor. Engineer B received an award from the County for a single roadway design project.
Engineer B's admission of incompetence during construction phase
During a meeting with the County as these problems occurred, Engineer B did admit that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design.
Engineer B's assurances of competence before contract award to Engineer B
Engineer B gave assurances to the County that they could perform the services adequately... Engineer B received an award from the County for a single roadway design project.
Engineer B's business downturn overlaps County advertisement for consulting services
Engineer B was experiencing a downturn in committed work... While not experienced in rural roadway design, Engineer B gave assurances to the County that they could perform the services adequately.
Entity1 starts before Entity2 and ends during Entity2
Excluding Engineer B from Construction Services
County Commission / County Engineering Staff
County staff would bear full burden of resolving design errors without recourse to the designing engineer
Loss of continuity between design intent and construction oversight
Fiscal responsibility in managing public project costs
Use of available in-house technical resources
Continuity of engineering responsibility through construction
Reduce consulting costs by using in-house staff for construction administration and inspection
Construction administration and inspection for rural roadway projects
Coordination between design intent and field conditions
Field revision authority and quantity adjustment
Pre-construction phase, after design completion and before construction contract award
Arguably, obligation to ensure adequate engineering oversight continuity between design and construction phases
Responsibility to structure project delivery to protect public investment and infrastructure quality
County A made the deliberate decision to use its own staff for construction-period engineering services rather than retaining Engineer B or another consultant, effectively removing the designing engineer from the construction oversight role. This decision, while administratively and financially motivated, contributed to the burden placed on County staff when design deficiencies emerged.
Excluding Engineer B from Construction Services → Absorbing Construction Burden Internally
County A made the deliberate decision to use its own staff for construction-period engineering services, directly transferring the burden of managing design deficiencies to an already capacity-constrained internal team
Had County A retained Engineer B or another qualified engineer for construction-period services, field revisions would have been managed by the responsible designer, reducing burden on County staff
County A's deliberate exclusion of Engineer B from construction oversight
Design deficiencies requiring active field management
No alternative external construction-phase engineering resource retained
Pre-existing Staff Capacity Shortfall Confirmed
Exclusion of designer + overburdened staff + deficient design requiring frequent field revisions = internal staff absorbing excessive and unmanageable workload
Construction project enters crisis mode; County staff resources diverted to design problem resolution; project timeline and budget placed at risk; Engineer B's incompetence becomes operationally manifest
Immediately upon construction start; early construction phase
Problems appeared immediately upon construction commencement, including numerous field revisions required, miscalculated quantities, and excessive burden placed on County staff to resolve design deficiencies in real time.
Lobbying Commission and Asserting Competence
Principal/Owner, water/wastewater consulting firm
County would rely on false or overstated assurances in making award decision
Engineer B would be professionally and legally exposed if design failed
Public infrastructure could be compromised by incompetent design
Honesty and integrity in representations to clients
Persuade County Commission to award the contract to Engineer B's firm
Accurate self-assessment of competence relative to project scope
Honest representation of qualifications and limitations
Rural roadway design expertise to substantiate assurances given
Pre-award phase, after responding to advertisement and before contract award
Duty of honesty to prospective client (County A)
NSPE Code Section I. Paramount obligation to public safety undermined by misleading a public client
NSPE Code Section II.2. Competence obligation violated by affirmatively claiming competence one does not possess
NSPE Code Section II.5.a, Engineers shall not falsify or misrepresent qualifications
NSPE Code Section III.2. Engineers shall be objective and truthful in professional reports and statements
None, lobbying and asserting unwarranted competence does not fulfill professional obligations
Engineer B actively lobbied the County Commission and provided explicit assurances of competence to secure the roadway design contract, despite knowing they lacked experience in rural roadway design. This constitutes a deliberate misrepresentation or at minimum an overstatement of qualifications to a public client.
Lobbying Commission and Asserting Competence → Awarding Contract Based on Assurances
Engineer B actively lobbied the County Commission and provided explicit assurances of competence, which directly induced the Commission to award the contract in reliance on those representations
Without Engineer B's active lobbying and false assurances, the Commission would have lacked the basis to award the contract; independent verification would have revealed the competence gap
Absence of independent competency verification by County A
Commission's reasonable reliance on professional assurances
Engineer B's affirmative misrepresentation of competence
Limited local alternatives due to geographic restriction
Engineer B (primary); County A Commission (secondary)
Active lobbying + explicit competence assurances + Commission's reliance + no independent verification = contract award to unqualified engineer
County Commission / Procurement Authority
Potential selection of a firm lacking specific competence in rural roadway design
Procedural compliance with locally-restricted procurement policy
Responsiveness to local community economic interests
Support local economy and retain local firms for publicly funded infrastructure work
Assessment of engineering competence requirements for advertised scope
Pre-construction season, before advertisement was issued
Obligation to protect public safety and welfare by ensuring qualified professionals are engaged
Obligation to secure competent engineering services for public infrastructure (NSPE Code Section III.2, public client duty)
County A chose to restrict its advertisement for consulting engineering services exclusively to local firms, intentionally limiting the competitive pool of qualified candidates. This decision prioritized local economic support over the broadest possible access to competent engineering talent.
Local-Only Advertisement Decision → All Local Firms Responded
County A chose to restrict its advertisement for consulting engineering services exclusively to local firms, which directly constrained the pool of eligible respondents to only those firms within the locality
Without the local-only restriction, a broader pool of qualified firms would have responded, likely including firms with rural roadway design experience, reducing reliance on Engineer B
Finite number of local engineering firms
Geographic restriction embedded in advertisement
Restriction to local firms + limited local market = exhaustive response from all eligible firms
National Society of Professional Engineers
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers - Fundamental Canon I.6
Board of Ethical Review in evaluating Engineer B's professional conduct
Cited to establish that engineers shall conduct themselves so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession, which Engineer B violated by bidding and accepting work beyond the firm's competence
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers - Rule of Practice II.2.a
Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer B's competence
Cited to establish that engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers - Rule of Practice II.2.b
Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer B's signing of rural highway design documents
Cited to establish that engineers shall not affix their signatures to plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence
Engineer B; County A; ethical reviewers analyzing the case
Primary normative authority governing Engineer B's obligations regarding competence, honest representation of qualifications, and responsibility to the public and client (County A). Relevant canons include practicing only in areas of competence and acting with honesty and integrity.
Admission confirmed what County staff already knew and constituted evidence of prior incompetence
Could expose Engineer B to professional discipline or civil liability
Did not undo the harm already caused by the deficient design
Basic professional honesty when directly confronted with evidence of design failure
NSPE Code Section II.3. Engineers shall be objective and truthful; admission was honest
Acknowledge the source of construction problems honestly when directly confronted or in a professional meeting context
Honest self-assessment and professional accountability
Willingness to acknowledge professional limitations
During construction, at a meeting held after problems had already emerged and been largely resolved by County staff
The admission itself fulfilled a minimal honesty obligation, but it came too late to fulfill the prior obligations under NSPE Code II.2 and II.2.b
The timing of honesty, after harm was done, does not cure the earlier violations of competence and misrepresentation obligations
During a construction-phase meeting, Engineer B made the deliberate choice to openly admit that the design problems stemmed from gaps in the firm's understanding of proper roadway design, acknowledging incompetence after the fact. While this admission was honest, it came only after the deficient design had already caused significant harm to the project and County staff.
Post-Hoc Admission of Incompetence → Immediate Construction Problems Emerged (confirmed causal link)
During a construction-phase meeting, Engineer B made the deliberate choice to openly admit that the design was outside their competence, retroactively confirming that the construction problems were a direct and foreseeable consequence of the original competence misrepresentation
Had Engineer B disclosed incompetence before contract award or before sealing the design, County A could have sought qualified assistance, preventing the construction problems entirely
Immediate Construction Problems Emerged (confirmed causal link)
Construction commencement based on deficient documents
Design deficiencies embedded in sealed construction documents
Engineer B's original lack of competence in rural roadway design
Engineer B's prior misrepresentation of competence to secure the contract
Original incompetence + misrepresentation + sealed deficient design + construction commencement = construction problems that the admission confirms were inevitable
NSPE and state engineering licensure frameworks
Professional Competence and Scope-of-Practice Standard for Engineering Practice
Engineer B did admit that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design. If understood by Engineer B, the issues could have been avoided.
Engineer B when accepting the roadway design project
Governs Engineer B's obligation to practice only within demonstrated areas of competence (water/wastewater engineering) and to disclose lack of experience in rural roadway design before accepting the County's project
Professional Competence Violated By Engineer B Rural Roadway Design
County A as client and the traveling public
Engineer B lacked the professional competence required to perform rural roadway design, as evidenced by the significant design deficiencies, miscalculated quantities, and the engineer's own admission that the problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design
Professional competence requires engineers to possess and apply the technical knowledge, skills, and judgment necessary to perform the specific type of engineering work they undertake; accepting work in an unfamiliar domain without adequate preparation or collaboration violates this principle
Professional competence obligation was violated — Engineer B lacked the domain-specific competence required for rural roadway design and failed to remedy this deficiency before or during project execution
One local engineering firm owner, Engineer B (an experienced water and wastewater engineer) was experiencing a downturn in committed work which would have affected the bottom line of the firm and could have resulted in layoffs of its staff.
Public funds committed; construction contract executed; errors in design documents now have direct financial and schedule consequences; opportunity to correct design before construction effectively closed
Following design completion; prior to construction commencement
County A completed the bidding process and awarded a construction contract based on Engineer B's sealed design documents, committing public funds to a project built on a flawed foundation.
NSPE Code of Ethics and state engineering licensure boards
Standard for Honest Representation of Engineering Qualifications in Procurement
Engineer B during solicitation and lobbying of County Commission
Governs Engineer B's conduct in asserting competence to the County and lobbying the County Commission, establishing the professional norm against misrepresenting qualifications to secure a contract
Risk Assessment Framework for Evaluating Competence Gaps in Engineering Project Acceptance
Engineer B (should have applied prior to accepting project); County A in evaluating qualifications
Provides a structured methodology for assessing the likelihood and magnitude of harm when an engineer accepts a project outside their area of expertise, applicable to evaluating Engineer B's decision to accept rural roadway design work
Was it ethical for Engineer B to accept the rural roadway design contract under these circumstances?
Did Engineer B's act of lobbying the County Commission — separate from responding to the advertisement — constitute an improper substitution of political influence for merit-based selection, and does that lobbying itself represent an independent ethical violation beyond the competence question?
Once construction problems began emerging, did Engineer B have an affirmative obligation to immediately disclose the design deficiencies to County A rather than waiting until a formal meeting, and does the delayed admission compound the original ethical violation?
Does County A bear any shared ethical or institutional responsibility for awarding the contract to Engineer B given that the County accepted assurances of competence without independently verifying Engineer B's qualifications in rural roadway design?
Was it ethically permissible for Engineer B to seal and sign the completed roadway design documents given the firm's acknowledged lack of competence in rural roadway design, and does affixing a professional seal under those circumstances constitute a separate and distinct ethical violation?
Does the principle of Professional Accountability — partially satisfied by Engineer B's eventual admission of incompetence during the construction meeting — meaningfully mitigate the prior violation of Public Welfare Paramount, or does a post-hoc acknowledgment of failure carry insufficient ethical weight when harm has already materialized?
How should the principle of Fairness in Professional Competition — implicated by County A's local-only advertisement policy — be weighed against the principle of Competence Assurance, when a procurement structure that intentionally limits the competitive pool increases the probability that an incompetent firm will receive an award?
Does the principle of Client Loyalty — violated by Engineer B's deficient design delivery — come into direct tension with the principle of Public Welfare Paramount, in the sense that Engineer B's motivation to preserve the client relationship and avoid layoffs actually drove the decision that ultimately harmed both the client and the public?
Does the principle of Honesty in Professional Representations — violated by Engineer B's false assurances of competence during bidding — conflict with the principle of Professional Reputation and Honor, in that the very act of misrepresenting competence to win a contract causes the long-term reputational and honorific harm that Engineer B's self-interested lobbying was presumably intended to avoid?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer B fulfill their duty of honest competence representation to County A by giving assurances of adequate performance in rural roadway design, a domain outside their established expertise in water and wastewater engineering?
From a consequentialist perspective, did the aggregate harm produced by Engineer B's acceptance of the rural roadway contract — including field revisions, miscalculated quantities, excessive County staff burden, and public safety risk — outweigh the benefit of preserving Engineer B's firm and preventing staff layoffs?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer B demonstrate professional integrity and honesty when they lobbied the County Commission and provided assurances of competence in rural roadway design, knowing their firm's expertise was limited to water and wastewater engineering?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer B violate their categorical duty to protect public welfare by affixing their professional seal to rural roadway design documents in a domain where they lacked the requisite education and experience, regardless of whether the project ultimately remained within budget?
Would the construction problems and County staff burden have been avoided or substantially reduced if Engineer B had declined the rural roadway contract and instead referred County A to a firm with demonstrated highway design competence?
If Engineer B had disclosed their lack of rural roadway design experience to County A before contract award rather than providing assurances of adequate performance, would County A have had the opportunity to engage a more qualified firm or arrange for Engineer B to collaborate with a competent highway engineer?
If Engineer B had engaged a qualified rural roadway design subconsultant or sought mentorship from an experienced highway engineer before beginning design work, would the ethical violation of accepting work outside their competence have been sufficiently remediated, or would the initial misrepresentation to County A still constitute an independent ethical breach?
If County A had included Engineer B in construction period services rather than relying solely on County staff, would Engineer B's earlier admission of incompetence during construction have triggered a professional obligation to withdraw from the project or to immediately bring in qualified highway engineering expertise?
Responding to Advertisement Despite Inexperience
Potential harm to public infrastructure and safety
Reputational risk if incompetence is revealed
Risk of producing substandard roadway design
Honesty and transparency with prospective clients
Secure new revenue to offset business downturn and retain staff
NSPE Code Section II.2.b. Engineers shall not affix signature to plans outside their competence
None identified, response to advertisement does not itself fulfill a professional obligation
Construction document preparation for highway/road projects
Earthwork and quantity calculation for roadway construction
Knowledge of applicable roadway design standards (e.g., AASHTO)
Advertisement phase, after County A issued the locally-restricted solicitation
Engineer B made a deliberate decision to respond to County A's advertisement for rural roadway design consulting services despite having no experience in that specific discipline. This volitional choice initiated Engineer B's pursuit of work outside their established area of competence.
Responding to Advertisement Despite Inexperience → Contract Awarded to Engineer B
Engineer B made a deliberate decision to respond to County A's advertisement for rural roadway design despite lacking relevant experience, initiating the sequence that led to the contract award
Had Engineer B declined to respond, or had a more qualified local firm been available, the contract would not have been awarded to an inexperienced party
Absence of other more qualified local competitors
Business Downturn Affecting Engineer B creating financial motivation
Engineer B's decision to submit a response
Engineer B's willingness to represent competence in an unfamiliar domain
Financial pressure on Engineer B + geographic restriction limiting competition + Engineer B's active lobbying = contract award to unqualified engineer
County transitions from self-sufficient engineering posture to dependency on external consulting; procurement process becomes necessary
Pre-advertisement period; before procurement process began
County A experienced an anticipated surge in rural roadway construction demand that exceeded its internal engineering capacity, creating a structural gap between available expertise and project needs.
County formally enters external procurement mode; responsibility for consultant competence vetting becomes active obligation
Immediately prior to advertisement issuance
County A's internal engineering staff capacity was formally recognized as insufficient to handle the anticipated roadway construction workload, making external consulting engagement a practical necessity rather than a preference.
construction phase start meets problems and issues emerging
Entity1 ends exactly when Entity2 begins
Defeasibility edge from tensionresolution
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.88
The local-only advertisement policy prioritized local economic preference over competitive fairness and ultimately over competence, contributing to the award of a contract to an incompetent firm
Fairness in competition and qualification-based selection should prevail over local preference policies that compromise technical quality and public welfare
Defeasibility edge from constraintstatement
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.95
Engineer B's lack of experience and competence in rural roadway design constrained the firm from ethically accepting, performing, or certifying rural roadway design work without either associating with a competent engineer or disclosing the limitation to County A.
Engineer B was constrained from accepting the rural roadway design contract because neither the firm's general engineering education nor its domain experience in water and wastewater engineering satisfied the competence threshold for rural highway design — a specific technical field requiring both foundational knowledge and practical experience in that domain.
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.88
When County A elected to use internal staff rather than Engineer B for construction period services, Engineer B was constrained from passively accepting that decision without affirmatively communicating to the County the heightened risks of proceeding without design engineer oversight — particularly given the firm's known competence limitations in rural roadway design.
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.87
Accountability obligation was partially satisfied through belated admission but was substantially violated by the prior false assurances and failure to disclose limitations before accepting the contract
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.92
Engineer B was constrained from withholding or delaying disclosure of known design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of rural roadway design competence once those deficiencies became apparent during construction, and was obligated to promptly disclose those deficiencies to County A.
Engineer B was constrained to affirmatively communicate to County A the risks arising from the design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of rural roadway design competence, particularly during the construction period when those deficiencies materialized as problems requiring field revisions — and was prohibited from passively accepting the construction problems without disclosing their root cause in the firm's competence limitations.
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.95
Competence obligation was violated — Engineer B accepted work outside their domain of expertise due to economic pressure without taking adequate steps to ensure competent delivery
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.89
Public welfare obligation was violated — Engineer B subordinated public welfare to personal economic interests by accepting work outside competence and providing false assurances of capability
Competence obligation is non-negotiable and overrides business development interests; the engineer should have declined the contract or associated with a competent roadway engineer
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.92
Client loyalty obligation was violated — Engineer B's acceptance of work outside their competence domain and delivery of a deficient design product failed to serve County A's interests faithfully
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.93
Honesty obligation was violated — Engineer B's assurances of competence were false and misleading, enabling the County to make a contract award decision based on inaccurate information
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.9
Procurement integrity was compromised — Engineer B used political lobbying rather than technical qualifications to secure the contract award, and the County's local preference policy created conditions that made such lobbying effective
Professional reputation obligation overrides short-term business interests; the reputational harm to the profession from incompetent work products is a recognized ethical violation under Canon I.6
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.93
Engineer B's financial self-interest in securing the rural roadway contract to avoid staff layoffs created a conflict of interest that constrained the firm from allowing economic pressure to override the professional obligation to decline work outside demonstrated competence.
Engineer B was constrained from allowing the firm's financial pressure — specifically the risk of staff layoffs from a downturn in committed work — to override the professional obligation to decline work outside demonstrated competence, as economic self-interest cannot justify acceptance of contracts that create foreseeable public safety risks.
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.94
Engineer B was constrained from providing false or misleading assurances to County A regarding the firm's ability to perform rural roadway design services adequately, as such assurances constituted deceptive misrepresentation of professional qualifications.
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.94
Honesty obligation prohibits false assurances regardless of business incentives; Engineer B should have disclosed the firm's water/wastewater specialization and lack of roadway experience
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.9
Engineer B was constrained from substituting political lobbying of the County Commission for demonstrated technical qualification in rural roadway design, as such lobbying improperly influenced a public contract award through means other than merit-based qualification.
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.85
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.91
Engineer B was constrained from affixing a professional seal to the rural roadway design documents without having exercised genuine responsible charge — including substantive technical review and direction — over work product in a domain where the firm lacked competence, as sealing such documents without adequate understanding constituted a violation of the responsible charge requirement.
Engineer B was prohibited from affixing their professional signature and seal to the rural highway design plans because Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer, lacked competence in rural roadway design — a specific technical domain distinct from the engineer's demonstrated area of expertise.
Engineer B was constrained from remaining silent about the firm's known competence limitations and the resulting likelihood of design deficiencies once construction problems began materializing, and was obligated to promptly advise County A that the project was proceeding on the basis of a design produced outside the firm's competence domain.
design project completion before County bidding the project
field revisions and quantity miscalculations during construction phase
field revisions and quantity miscalculations
meeting between Engineer B and County during construction phase
Engineer B Out-of-Competence Engineering Contractor
Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer without significant roadway design skills, accepted a rural highway design contract outside their domain of competence, producing a design with significant deficiencies including miscalculated
Engineer B provided assurances of competence when bidding on the rural roadway design contract despite lacking the requisite skills, constituting a misrepresentation of qualifications to County A that induced the award of a contract the fir
Engineer B provided affirmative assurances to County A that the firm could adequately perform rural roadway design services, despite knowing or having reason to know that the firm lacked experience in that domain, thereby misleading the Cou
Engineer B, whose professional expertise was in water and wastewater engineering, accepted a rural roadway design contract in a domain outside their competence without taking steps to verify their adequacy for the work or associating with a
Engineer B lobbied the County Commission directly in favor of receiving a contract award, substituting political influence for technical qualification as a basis for contract award in a public engineering procurement
Engineer B's act of bidding on and accepting a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's water and wastewater competence domain, resulting in a deficient design with construction problems, failed to enhance the honor, reputation, and
Engineer B's incompetent roadway design produced deficiencies that caused problems during construction, implicating the public welfare obligation to ensure that engineering designs meet applicable standards and protect those who will use an
Engineer B, an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no rural roadway design experience, accepted a roadway design contract and provided false assurances of competence, resulting in a deficient design with miscalculated quantities
Engineer B failed to faithfully serve County A's interests by delivering a deficient roadway design with miscalculated quantities and significant errors, requiring extensive field revisions and County staff effort to resolve, despite having
Engineer B admitted during a meeting with the County, after construction problems had already materialized, that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design — a belated but partial acknowledgment of profe
County A published its advertisement for consulting engineering services only locally, pursuant to a policy of utilizing local design services whenever possible, which restricted competition to local firms regardless of whether those firms
County A's application of a local preference procurement policy restricted competition to geographically limited pools, enabling the award of the roadway design contract to Engineer B — a locally based but domain-incompetent firm — rather t
Engineer B failed to take responsibility for the firm's competence limitations before accepting the roadway design contract, and the resulting design deficiencies — including miscalculated quantities — reflect a failure of professional acco
Engineer B was obligated to conduct an honest self-assessment of the firm's competence in rural roadway design before accepting County A's contract, and to decline the engagement given the firm's lack of experience in that domain.
Engineer B was obligated to represent the firm's qualifications and competence honestly when bidding on the rural roadway design contract, including refraining from providing assurances of adequacy in rural highway design where the firm lac
Engineer B was obligated to promptly disclose to County A any design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of rural roadway design competence, and to take affirmative remediation steps before or at the onset of construction rather th
Engineer B was obligated to promptly disclose to County A the design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of competence in rural roadway design — including miscalculated quantities and significant errors — before or upon discovery d
Engineer B was obligated to communicate to County A the risks of proceeding without the design engineer's involvement in construction period services, particularly given the firm's known competence limitations in rural roadway design, and t
Engineer B was obligated to take full professional accountability for the design deficiencies, including acknowledging the competence limitations that caused them and cooperating with County A to remediate the problems — an obligation parti
Engineer B was obligated to advise County A when the engineer believed — or should have believed — that the project would not be successful due to the firm's lack of competence in rural roadway design, including advising the County before o
Engineer B was obligated to act as a faithful agent and trustee for County A, serving the County's interests by delivering a competent and accurate rural roadway design — an obligation violated by delivering a deficient design with miscalcu
County A was obligated to evaluate whether its policy of advertising consulting engineering services only locally — thereby restricting competition to local firms — was consistent with applicable procurement fairness requirements and qualif
Engineer B was obligated to represent the firm's qualifications honestly to County A during the procurement process, including refraining from providing affirmative assurances of adequacy in rural roadway design when the firm lacked demonst
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from lobbying the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the roadway design contract award, and to compete for the contract solely on the basis of demonstrated technical qualifications rather th
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from lobbying the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the contract award, and to compete for the contract solely on the basis of demonstrated technical qualifications rather than political ad
Engineer B was obligated to verify, before accepting the rural roadway design contract from County A, that the firm possessed domain-specific competence in rural highway design established by education or experience in that specific technic
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from accepting the rural roadway design contract based on economic self-interest — specifically the firm's revenue downturn and risk of staff layoffs — when the firm lacked the technical competence to per
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from affixing their professional signature and seal to the rural roadway design plans, given that Engineer B was a water and wastewater engineer without significant roadway design skills and therefore lac
Engineer B was obligated under NSPE I.6 to conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession, including by refraining from bidding on and accepting a rural roadway design contra
Engineer B was obligated to perform rural roadway design services only if the firm possessed the requisite competence in that domain, and was obligated to decline or withdraw from the engagement upon recognizing that the firm lacked the nec
Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning about competence standards
Referenced to establish that an engineer competent in a field but unfamiliar with recently proposed (not yet standardized) design parameters was not acting unethically, distinguishing the threshold between competence and currency with emerging literature
In BER Case 98-8, a professional engineer in civil engineering was asked to certify certain arms storage rooms and racks for the Army. This engineer had no significant training or knowledge in that area, although the engineer was considered a qualified engineer.
That case is analogous to the present case.
The Board concluded that, because the engineer lacked competence in the specific area, it would not be ethical for the engineer to certify the arms storage rooms and arms storage racks.
Board of Ethical Review for analogical reasoning about Engineer B's situation
Referenced as directly analogous precedent: a civil engineer lacking competence in arms storage certification acted unethically by certifying work outside their area of expertise, paralleling Engineer B's lack of competence in roadway design
Engineer B Construction Period Services Withdrawal Risk Constraint County A
County A decided to use its own staff for construction period services rather than retaining Engineer B. Given Engineer B's competence limitations in rural roadway design, the absence of design engineer oversight during construction compounded the risk of design deficiencies going undetected and unresolved.
Construction Period Services Withdrawal Risk Constraint
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.1.b — engineers shall advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful; Section II.1.c
Transition from design completion to construction phase
Engineer B Deficient Design Disclosure Construction Period Rural Roadway
Design deficiencies attributable to Engineer B's lack of competence in rural roadway design materialized during construction, requiring field revisions. Engineer B was constrained to disclose the competence-based origin of those deficiencies to County A rather than treating them as ordinary construction-phase adjustments.
NSPE Code of Ethics II.2.a; II.2.b; I.6; BER Case 98-8
During construction period when design deficiencies materialized
Engineer B Design Deficiency Early Disclosure Constraint Construction Phase
During construction, significant problems emerged from Engineer B's deficient rural roadway design, including miscalculated quantities and field revision requirements. Engineer B eventually admitted the problems were outside the firm's understanding but only after the County grew increasingly frustrated.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.1.c — engineers shall not reveal facts, data, or information without the prior consent of the client or employer except as authorized or required by law or this Code; Section III.1.b — engineers shall advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful
Construction phase when design problems began occurring
Engineer B Domain-Specific Incompetence Seal Prohibition Rural Roadway
Engineer B, a water and wastewater engineer, accepted and performed rural highway design services for County A despite lacking competence in that domain, and sealed the resulting plans, which contained deficiencies that required field revisions during construction.
Domain-Specific Incompetence Seal Prohibition Constraint
NSPE Code of Ethics II.2.b; BER Case 98-8; BER Case 94-8
At the time of plan completion and sealing, and throughout the design phase
Engineer B Domain Competence Constraint Rural Roadway Design
Engineer B was an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no experience in rural roadway design who nonetheless accepted, performed, and certified a rural roadway design project for County A, resulting in significant construction deficiencies.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a — engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved
From pre-acceptance through design completion and construction
Engineer B Economic Pressure Non-Subordination Constraint Highway Contract
Engineer B was experiencing a downturn in committed work that threatened staff layoffs, creating financial pressure that drove the decision to pursue and accept a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's competence domain.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Case precedent on competence and self-interest
Engineer B Education-Experience Competence Threshold Rural Roadway Contract
Engineer B's firm had experience in water and wastewater engineering but lacked demonstrated competence in rural roadway design. The disjunctive 'education or experience' standard in II.2.a did not authorize acceptance because neither prong was satisfied for the specific technical domain involved.
Education-Experience Competence Threshold Constraint
NSPE Code of Ethics II.2.a; BER Case 98-8
II.2.a., alone does not settle the ethical questions of this case since it allows for the undertaking of assignments when engineers are qualified by education 'or' experience.
Engineer B Financial Pressure Non-Subordination Constraint Roadway Contract
Engineer B was experiencing a downturn in committed work that threatened staff layoffs, and this financial pressure drove the decision to pursue and accept a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's competence domain despite the foreseeable risk of deficient design.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; BER Case precedent establishing that economic pressure does not justify scope overreach
Engineer B Political Lobbying Non-Substitution Constraint County Commission
Engineer B lobbied the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the rural roadway design contract award, substituting political influence for technical qualification in a domain where the firm lacked demonstrated competence.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.5.b — engineers shall not attempt to injure, maliciously or falsely, directly or indirectly, the professional reputation, prospects, practice, or employment of other engineers; Section III.10 — engineers shall not attempt to obtain employment or advancement through political activities
Procurement phase prior to contract award
Engineer B received an award from the County for a single roadway design project.
Engineer B Project Success Notification Constraint Rural Roadway Construction
Engineer B eventually admitted at a meeting that the construction problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design, but this admission came only after the County grew increasingly frustrated — suggesting the disclosure was reactive rather than proactive as required.
Project Success Adverse Notification Constraint
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.1.b — engineers shall advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful
Construction phase when problems began occurring immediately
The County grew increasingly frustrated with the quality of work provided by Engineer B.
Engineer B Responsible Charge Verification Constraint Roadway Design Seal
Engineer B completed and presumably sealed the rural roadway design despite lacking competence in that domain, resulting in a deficient design that caused significant construction problems — demonstrating that the firm could not have exercised genuine responsible charge over the work product.
Responsible Charge Verification Constraint
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.b — engineers shall not affix their signatures to any plans or documents dealing with subject matter in which they lack competence
Design completion and document submission phase
Conflict of Interest - Engineer B Self-Interest vs. Public Welfare
From the decision to respond to the advertisement through project completion
Engineer B was experiencing a downturn in committed work which would have affected the bottom line of the firm and could have resulted in layoffs of its staff.
Engineer B's competing interests between firm financial survival and professional obligation to decline work outside competence
Not formally resolved — conflict persisted through project and was only acknowledged post-hoc
Financial pressure creating personal/firm interest in securing the contract that competed directly with professional obligation to decline work outside competence
Engineer B Competence Misrepresentation - Highway Contract
Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer without identified significant roadway design skills, did not possess the competence to perform the rural highway design services
Competence Misrepresentation to Client State
Engineer B's representation of capability to perform rural highway design services
Construction problems revealed actual competence deficiency
Engineer B did not meet this standard when bidding and accepting a contract involving work for which the firm did not have adequate competence
Engineer B bid on and accepted rural highway design contract implicitly representing competence in roadway design
Engineer B Competence Misrepresentation to County A
From Engineer B's response to the advertisement and lobbying of the County Commission through the acknowledgment of deficiencies during construction
Engineer B's representations to County A regarding capability to perform rural roadway design
Engineer B's admission during construction meeting that problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design
Engineer B providing affirmative assurances of adequate performance capability to County A despite lacking rural roadway design experience, and lobbying the County Commission in their favor
Engineer B Financial Pressure Scope Overreach - Highway Contract
From period of financial pressure through acceptance of highway design contract
Financial Pressure Driving Scope Overreach State
Engineer B's firm decision to bid on rural highway contract outside competence domain
Financial pressures on Engineer B's firm leading to pursuit of contract outside established competence
Engineer B Non-Deception Constraint Competence Assurance County A
Engineer B affirmatively assured County A of the firm's ability to perform rural roadway design services adequately despite lacking experience in that domain, constituting a deceptive misrepresentation of qualifications during the procurement process.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.5.a — engineers shall not falsify or permit misrepresentation of their qualifications; Section III.2.b
Public Safety at Risk - Deficient Roadway Design
From construction commencement through resolution of field design issues
Rural roadway project with design deficiencies requiring field revisions during construction
Resolution of field issues through County staff intervention
A significant number of field revisions were necessary and estimated quantities of work had been miscalculated.
Immediate construction problems revealing design deficiencies in a public roadway infrastructure project
County A Municipal Infrastructure Client
{'entity_type': 'County government', 'procurement_policy': 'Local design services preference', 'advertisement_scope': 'Local only', 'construction_services': 'In-house county staff'}
County government that advertised for consulting engineering services for rural roadway design, applied a local preference procurement policy, awarded a design contract to Engineer B, chose to use own staff for construction-period services, and managed significant construction problems resulting from the deficient design while maintaining project budget.
{'type': 'client_of', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'employer_of', 'target': 'County Construction Period Staff'}
County A was expecting a significant amount of rural roadway construction
It had been a policy of the County to utilize local design services whenever possible
The County grew increasingly frustrated with the quality of work provided by Engineer B
the County decided to advertise for consulting services
the advertisement was published only locally
Deficient Design Harm Materialized During Construction
From the start of construction through resolution of field issues by County staff
Deficient Design Harm Materialized State
County A's rural roadway construction project experiencing active harm from Engineer B's competence-deficient design
County staff efforts bringing project within budget despite excessive remediation burden
Construction commencement revealing immediate problems attributable to Engineer B's lack of rural roadway design competence
Engineer B Construction Period Services Continuity County A Roadway
County A elected to use its own staff for construction period services rather than retaining Engineer B, and construction problems began immediately — problems that Engineer B later admitted were attributable to design deficiencies within the firm's competence limitations.
Construction Period Services Continuity Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to communicate to County A the risks of proceeding without the design engineer's involvement in construction period services, particularly given the firm's known competence limitations in rural roadway design, and to remain available to address design deficiencies during construction.
At the time County A decided to use its own staff for construction period services, and throughout the construction phase
Engineer B Deficient Design Harm Materialized - Highway
From construction commencement through identification of design-caused problems
The problems that occurred during construction would have been avoided if the design met standards
Engineer B's rural highway design and resulting construction problems
Not specified; construction problems ongoing at time of case analysis
Rural highway design produced by Engineer B (lacking roadway competence) entered construction and produced concrete adverse consequences
Engineer B Design Deficiency Early Disclosure County A Construction
Engineer B admitted during a meeting with County A — only after construction problems had already materialized — that the problems were outside the firm's understanding of proper design, when earlier disclosure could have prevented the construction difficulties.
Design Deficiency Early Disclosure Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to promptly disclose to County A any design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of rural roadway design competence, and to take affirmative remediation steps before or at the onset of construction rather than waiting until construction problems materialized.
Upon recognition of design deficiencies, prior to or at the onset of construction
Engineer B Political Lobbying Non-Substitution County Commission
Engineer B lobbied the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the rural roadway design contract award, substituting political advocacy to elected officials for technical qualification-based selection, in a domain where the firm lacked the requisite competence.
Political Lobbying Non-Substitution for Technical Qualification Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from lobbying the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the roadway design contract award, and to compete for the contract solely on the basis of demonstrated technical qualifications rather than substituting political influence for the qualification-based selection process.
During the procurement process for the rural roadway design contract
Engineer B Project Success Notification Obligation Rural Roadway
Engineer B completed the rural roadway design despite lacking competence in the domain, and only admitted the competence limitations after construction problems had already materialized, when earlier notification could have allowed the County to engage a qualified firm.
Engineer B was obligated to advise County A when the engineer believed — or should have believed — that the project would not be successful due to the firm's lack of competence in rural roadway design, including advising the County before or during design that the firm's limitations created material risk of design deficiencies.
Upon recognition that the firm's competence limitations created material risk of project failure, prior to or during the design phase
Public Welfare Paramount — Design Deficiencies Affecting Construction Safety
Construction-phase problems arising from design deficiencies
Engineer B's incompetent roadway design produced deficiencies that caused problems during construction, implicating the public welfare obligation to ensure that engineering designs meet applicable standards and protect those who will use and be affected by the constructed infrastructure
Public welfare paramount requires that engineers not accept design commissions they cannot competently execute, because incompetent design directly threatens the safety and welfare of the public who will use the resulting infrastructure
Public welfare obligation is paramount and cannot be subordinated to business interests; the deficient design that caused construction problems is a concrete manifestation of the harm that results when this principle is violated
Engineer B Competence Obligation Rural Roadway Design Performance
Engineer B performed rural roadway design for County A despite lacking experience in that domain, resulting in significant design deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and errors requiring extensive field revisions during construction.
Engineer B was obligated to perform rural roadway design services only if the firm possessed the requisite competence in that domain, and was obligated to decline or withdraw from the engagement upon recognizing that the firm lacked the necessary expertise to perform the work adequately.
Throughout the design phase and upon recognition of competence limitations
Engineer B Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Rural Roadway
Engineer B, an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no rural roadway design experience, responded to County A's advertisement for consulting engineering services for rural roadway design.
Pre-Acceptance Competence Self-Assessment Obligation
Prior to submitting a response to County A's advertisement and prior to accepting the contract award
Engineer B Professional Accountability Admission Construction Meeting
Engineer B admitted during a construction-phase meeting with County A that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design, representing a partial fulfillment of the accountability obligation after the harm had already occurred.
Engineer B was obligated to take full professional accountability for the design deficiencies, including acknowledging the competence limitations that caused them and cooperating with County A to remediate the problems — an obligation partially satisfied by the admission during the construction meeting but violated by the failure to disclose earlier.
Upon recognition of design deficiencies and throughout the construction problem resolution period
Engineer B Professional Seal Affixation Rural Roadway Design
Engineer B, a water and wastewater engineer, accepted and completed a rural roadway design contract for County A despite lacking competence in rural highway design, and affixed their professional seal to the resulting plans, which contained significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities that caused problems during construction.
Professional Seal Affixation Competence Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from affixing their professional signature and seal to the rural roadway design plans, given that Engineer B was a water and wastewater engineer without significant roadway design skills and therefore lacked competence in the specific technical domain of rural highway design.
At the time of sealing and delivering the rural roadway design plans to County A
Public Welfare Paramount Violated By Engineer B Accepting Out-of-Competence Roadway Contract
Traveling public who would use the designed roadway
Engineer B, an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no rural roadway design experience, accepted a roadway design contract and provided false assurances of competence, resulting in a deficient design with miscalculated quantities and significant field revision requirements that imposed costs and risks on the public infrastructure project
Public welfare requires that engineers decline work outside their competence domain because deficient designs on public infrastructure directly threaten the safety, reliability, and fiscal integrity of public assets serving the community
Engineer B Financial Pressure Driving Scope Overreach
From the period of work downturn through the decision to respond to the County advertisement and accept the contract
Engineer B's financial condition and its influence on the decision to pursue rural roadway design work
Award of contract to Engineer B (financial pressure partially relieved by contract award, though competence consequences persisted)
Downturn in committed work threatening firm bottom line and potential staff layoffs, coinciding with County advertisement for roadway design services
Engineer B Honest Competence Representation Rural Roadway Bidding
Engineer B provided assurances of competence when bidding on the rural roadway design contract despite the firm's expertise being limited to water and wastewater engineering, and despite lacking significant roadway design skills.
Honest Competence Representation in Procurement Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to represent the firm's qualifications and competence honestly when bidding on the rural roadway design contract, including refraining from providing assurances of adequacy in rural highway design where the firm lacked demonstrated experience in that specific technical domain.
During the bidding and procurement process for the rural roadway design contract
Engineer B Outside Area of Competence - Rural Roadway Design
From the time Engineer B considered responding to the advertisement through project completion and construction
One local engineering firm owner, Engineer B (an experienced water and wastewater engineer)
Engineer B's professional competence relative to rural roadway design
Not terminated — competence gap persisted through project completion and was acknowledged during construction
County advertisement for rural roadway design consulting services responded to by Engineer B, an experienced water and wastewater engineer with no rural roadway design experience
Engineer B Rural Highway Design Domain Incompetence
From bidding on the rural highway contract through construction problems materializing
Engineer B's competence relative to rural highway design services
Construction problems confirmed competence deficiency; ethical determination by Board
Engineer B, a water and wastewater engineer, bid on and accepted a rural highway design contract without possessing roadway design competence
Fairness in Professional Competition Implicated By County A Local-Only Advertisement
Engineering services procurement process
Non-local qualified roadway design firms excluded from competition
County A published its advertisement for consulting engineering services only locally, pursuant to a policy of utilizing local design services whenever possible, which restricted competition to local firms regardless of whether those firms possessed adequate competence for rural roadway design
Fairness in professional competition requires that procurement processes not artificially restrict the competitive pool in ways that systematically exclude more qualified firms, particularly when the local pool may lack the specialized competence required for the project
Fairness in Professional Competition — Local Preference Policy Enabling Incompetent Award
Award of contract to Engineer B over potentially more qualified competitors
Rural roadway design procurement process
County A's application of a local preference procurement policy restricted competition to geographically limited pools, enabling the award of the roadway design contract to Engineer B — a locally based but domain-incompetent firm — rather than to more qualified non-local competitors, thereby undermining fair competitive access and resulting in a deficient design
Fairness in professional competition requires that procurement processes not restrict competition in ways that result in contracts being awarded to less qualified firms; local preference policies that produce this outcome violate the principle even when applied with non-discriminatory intent
Client Loyalty Violated By Engineer B Deficient Design Delivery
Engineer B failed to faithfully serve County A's interests by delivering a deficient roadway design with miscalculated quantities and significant errors, requiring extensive field revisions and County staff effort to resolve, despite having contractually committed to provide adequate design services
Client loyalty requires engineers to execute contracted work competently and diligently; accepting a contract one cannot competently perform is itself a violation of client loyalty because it deprives the client of the faithful service they contracted for
Engineer B Design Deficiency Early Disclosure Construction Problems
Engineer B admitted during a meeting with the County, after construction problems had already materialized, that the problems encountered were outside the firm's expertise — a disclosure that came too late to prevent the construction difficulties that resulted from the deficient design.
Engineer B was obligated to promptly disclose to County A the design deficiencies attributable to the firm's lack of competence in rural roadway design — including miscalculated quantities and significant errors — before or upon discovery during construction, rather than waiting until construction problems had already materialized before acknowledging the limitations.
Upon Engineer B's recognition during design or early construction that the design contained deficiencies attributable to lack of competence in rural roadway design
Engineer B Faithful Agent Obligation County A Roadway Design
Engineer B delivered a rural roadway design to County A that contained significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities, requiring extensive field revisions during construction and causing the County significant time and effort to resolve.
Engineer B was obligated to act as a faithful agent and trustee for County A, serving the County's interests by delivering a competent and accurate rural roadway design — an obligation violated by delivering a deficient design with miscalculated quantities and significant errors.
Throughout the design engagement and delivery of the design product
Engineer B Professional Honor Reputation Preservation Rural Roadway Bidding
Engineer B bid on and accepted a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's water and wastewater competence domain, resulting in a deficient design and construction problems, thereby failing to conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the honor and reputation of the engineering profession.
Professional Honor and Reputation Preservation in Competence Decisions Obligation
Engineer B was obligated under NSPE I.6 to conduct themselves in a manner that enhances the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession, including by refraining from bidding on and accepting a rural roadway design contract for which the firm lacked adequate competence.
During the bidding process and upon acceptance of the rural roadway design contract
Honesty in Professional Representations — Engineer B Bidding Assurances
Contract acceptance for rural roadway design
Procurement bid representations to County A
Engineer B provided assurances of competence when bidding on the rural roadway design contract despite lacking the requisite skills, constituting a misrepresentation of qualifications to County A that induced the award of a contract the firm could not adequately perform
Honesty in professional representations requires that engineers accurately disclose their actual competence domain when bidding, and prohibits assurances of capability that are not grounded in genuine education or experience in the specific technical field
Professional Accountability Partially Satisfied By Engineer B Admission During Construction
Construction period design deficiency resolution
Engineer B admitted during a meeting with the County, after construction problems had already materialized, that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design — a belated but partial acknowledgment of professional failure
Professional accountability requires engineers to acknowledge errors and limitations; Engineer B's admission during the construction meeting represents a partial satisfaction of this obligation, though it came after the harm had already materialized rather than before accepting the contract or at the outset of identified problems
Professional Reputation and Honor — Engineer B Bidding Outside Competence Domain
Professional reputation of the engineering discipline
Engineer B's act of bidding on and accepting a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's water and wastewater competence domain, resulting in a deficient design with construction problems, failed to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the engineering profession as required by NSPE Canon I.6
The obligation to enhance professional honor and reputation operates as a constraint on business development conduct, prohibiting engineers from pursuing contracts that, by virtue of the engineer's incompetence, will foreseeably result in deficient work that discredits the profession
Professional Reputation and Honor Obligation
Engineer B Honest Competence Representation County A Procurement
Engineer B responded to County A's advertisement for rural roadway design consulting services and provided affirmative assurances of adequacy despite having no rural roadway design experience.
Engineer B was obligated to represent the firm's qualifications honestly to County A during the procurement process, including refraining from providing affirmative assurances of adequacy in rural roadway design when the firm lacked demonstrated experience in that domain.
During the procurement response and contract negotiation phase
Honesty Violated By Engineer B False Assurances of Competence
Engineer B provided affirmative assurances to County A that the firm could adequately perform rural roadway design services, despite knowing or having reason to know that the firm lacked experience in that domain, thereby misleading the County into awarding a contract to an incompetent firm
Honesty in professional representations prohibits engineers from making affirmative false statements about their qualifications and capabilities to prospective clients, even when economic pressure creates strong incentives to do so
Professional Accountability — Engineer B Failure to Acknowledge Competence Limits
Design deficiencies and construction-phase problems
Failure to acknowledge domain incompetence prior to contract acceptance
Engineer B failed to take responsibility for the firm's competence limitations before accepting the roadway design contract, and the resulting design deficiencies — including miscalculated quantities — reflect a failure of professional accountability that caused downstream harm during construction
Professional accountability requires engineers to honestly assess and acknowledge their own limitations before undertaking work, not merely after errors have caused harm; accepting work outside one's competence and producing deficient results without acknowledgment is a failure of this principle
Accountability obligation requires proactive acknowledgment of limitations; economic pressure to win contracts does not excuse accepting work the engineer cannot competently perform
Competence Assurance — Engineer B Roadway Design Acceptance
Affixing signature to deficient roadway design plans
Rural roadway design contract acceptance
Engineer B, as a water and wastewater engineer without significant roadway design skills, accepted a rural highway design contract outside their domain of competence, producing a design with significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities, in violation of the principle requiring engineers to ensure sufficient competence before undertaking professional work
In this context, competence assurance requires that an engineer not accept or sign plans for a technical domain — rural highway design — in which they lack education or experience, regardless of general licensure status. The principle is violated at the point of contract acceptance, not merely at the point of design execution.
Competence Assurance Under Novel Tool Adoption
Engineer B Political Lobbying County Commission Rural Roadway Contract
Engineer B lobbied the County Commission directly in their favor during the procurement process for the rural roadway design contract.
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from lobbying the County Commission directly in favor of receiving the contract award, and to compete for the contract solely on the basis of demonstrated technical qualifications rather than political advocacy.
During the procurement and contract award phase
Procurement Integrity Implicated By Engineer B Lobbying County Commission
County A engineering services procurement
County Commission contract award decision
Procurement integrity requires that public engineering contracts be awarded based on qualifications and merit, not political lobbying; Engineer B's lobbying of the County Commission undermined the integrity of the qualification-based selection process
Procurement Integrity in Public Engineering
County A Competitive Procurement Fairness Local Advertisement Policy
County A published its advertisement for rural roadway design consulting services only locally pursuant to a local preference policy, which resulted in the contract being awarded to a local firm that lacked competence in rural roadway design.
Competitive Procurement Fairness Obligation
County A was obligated to evaluate whether its policy of advertising consulting engineering services only locally — thereby restricting competition to local firms — was consistent with applicable procurement fairness requirements and qualification-based selection principles, particularly when local firms may lack competence in the required domain.
At the time of establishing and implementing the local-only advertisement policy
Competence Assurance Violated By Engineer B Accepting Roadway Design Contract
Engineer B, whose professional expertise was in water and wastewater engineering, accepted a rural roadway design contract in a domain outside their competence without taking steps to verify their adequacy for the work or associating with a competent roadway design engineer, resulting in a deficient design product
Competence assurance requires engineers to honestly evaluate whether their training and experience are adequate for a specific project scope before accepting the engagement, and to decline or associate with specialists when they are not — economic pressure does not justify accepting work one cannot competently perform
{'license': 'Professional Engineer (implied)', 'design_domain': 'Rural roadway (outside primary expertise)', 'design_outcome': 'Deficient — multiple field revisions, quantity miscalculations'}
Performed the rural roadway design for County A's project, producing a design with significant deficiencies including miscalculated quantities and issues that required numerous field revisions during construction, ultimately admitting the problems stemmed from lack of domain knowledge.
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'County A'}
{'type': 'same_person_as', 'target': 'Engineer B Out-of-Competence Engineering Contractor'}
Engineer B completed the design project, the County bid the project and then proceeded into construction
Engineer B did admit that the problems encountered were outside the firm's understanding of proper design
If understood by Engineer B, the issues could have been avoided
Engineer B Domain-Specific Competence Verification Rural Roadway Contract
Engineer B, whose professional expertise was in water and wastewater engineering, accepted a rural roadway design contract from County A despite lacking demonstrated competence in rural highway design, analogous to BER Cases 98-8 and 94-8 where engineers competent in one domain were found to have acted unethically by undertaking work in a different domain outside their competence.
Domain-Specific Competence Verification Before Assignment Acceptance Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to verify, before accepting the rural roadway design contract from County A, that the firm possessed domain-specific competence in rural highway design established by education or experience in that specific technical field — and to decline the contract upon determining that the firm's water and wastewater expertise did not constitute competence in rural roadway design.
Prior to accepting the rural roadway design contract from County A
In BER Case 98-8, a professional engineer in civil engineering was asked to certify certain arms storage rooms and racks for the Army. This engineer had no significant training or knowledge in that area, although the engineer was considered a qualified engineer. The Board concluded that, because the engineer lacked competence in the specific area, it would not be ethical for the engineer to certify the arms storage rooms and arms storage racks. That case is analogous to the present case.
{'license': 'Professional Engineer (implied)', 'specialty': 'Water and wastewater engineering', 'firm_role': 'Owner', 'competence_gap': 'Rural roadway design', 'business_motivation': 'Downturn in committed work, risk of staff layoffs'}
Owner of a local water and wastewater engineering firm who accepted a rural roadway design contract outside their competence domain, provided assurances of adequacy to secure the award, lobbied the County Commission, produced a deficient design resulting in numerous field revisions and quantity miscalculations, and ultimately admitted the problems were outside the firm's understanding.
{'type': 'contractor', 'target': 'County A County Engineering Client'}
Out-of-Competence Engineering Contractor
Engineer B received an award from the County for a single roadway design project
They also lobbied the County Commission in their favor
While not experienced in rural roadway design, Engineer B gave assurances to the County that they could perform the services adequately
Engineer B Economic Pressure Non-Subordination Rural Roadway Contract
Engineer B was experiencing a business downturn that threatened staff layoffs, and accepted a rural roadway design contract outside the firm's competence domain to address the economic shortfall.
Economic Pressure Non-Subordination of Competence Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from accepting the rural roadway design contract based on economic self-interest — specifically the firm's revenue downturn and risk of staff layoffs — when the firm lacked the technical competence to perform the work adequately.
At the time of deciding whether to respond to County A's advertisement and accept the contract award