Advisory Engagement Self-Interest Conflict Disclosure Engineer A City B
Engineer A provided an advisory recommendation to a non-engineer City Administrator recommending Progressive-Design-Build, a delivery method under which Engineer A's firm is qualified to provide services, without disclosing this commercial interest. Engineer A also attached firm experience summaries and references for Progressive-Design-Build projects.
Advisory Engagement Self-Interest Conflict Disclosure Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to disclose to City B's City Administrator that Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk — and therefore had a commercial interest in the outcome of the recommendation — before or contemporaneously with delivering the advisory recommendation.
Engineer A is qualified to provide construction services under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk delivery methods
Prior to or contemporaneously with delivering the advisory memo to City B Administrator
Accompanying the recommendation, Engineer A provided a summary of the firm's experience with Progressive-Design-Build projects and references from past projects
Engineer A recommended Progressive Design Build.
Appending Firm Experience and References
BER Case 95-5 addressed integrity and completeness in preparing reports.
The engineer in question rendered an opinion that, based upon test pile, the project's installed piles did not meet the design safety factor. However, the engineer failed to include in the report...
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information (as in 95-5 and 99-8)
Cited as precedent for integrity and completeness in preparing engineering reports, and for the ethical obligation to avoid incomplete and self-serving information; analogized to Engineer A's partial comparative evaluation
BER Case 99-8 was relatively analogous. Engineer A bid and won a design contract to provide a complete set of plans and specifications. However, Engineer A submitted plans that were lacking much of the design detail in both drawings and specifications.
Cited as relatively analogous precedent involving submission of incomplete design plans and specifications without disclosure of incompleteness, analogized to Engineer A's partial and self-serving recommendation
CausalLink_Appending Firm Experience and
CausalLink_Decision to Respond with Forma
CausalLink_Failure to Correct or Disclose
CausalLink_Informal Solicitation of Priva
CausalLink_Omission of Two Delivery Metho
CausalLink_Self-Serving Delivery Method R
City Administrator Non-Engineer Advisory Vulnerability
Non-Engineer Public Infrastructure Client
City B's City Administrator, as a non-engineer public official, lacked the technical capability to independently evaluate the completeness or objectivity of Engineer A's advisory memo, making the City Administrator particularly vulnerable to the self-serving omissions and selective analysis provided by Engineer A.
City B's City Administrator solicited advisory input from Engineer A on project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project, relying on Engineer A's professional integrity to provide complete and objective analysis
Solicitation of engineering advisory services from Engineer A without apparent awareness that the solicitation might result in a self-serving partial analysis, and without independent means to verify the completeness of the delivery method analysis received
City Administrator solicited services from Engineer A.
It is not clear whether City Administrator knowingly solicited a donation of services.
City Administrator Public Official Engineering Services Solicitor
{'license': 'None (administrative official)', 'awareness': 'Unclear whether knowingly solicited a donation of services'}
Solicited engineering advisory services from Engineer A regarding project delivery methodologies, potentially without awareness that the solicitation would trigger professional ethics obligations regarding completeness, objectivity, and prohibition against inducements.
{'type': 'solicited_services_from', 'target': 'Engineer A'}
City Administrator solicited services from Engineer A
It is not clear whether City Administrator knowingly solicited a donation of services
City Administrator's request for recommendation before Engineer A's preparation of summary memo
City B Administrator Non-Engineer Client Informed Decision Making
Informed Decision-Making Process Facilitation Capability
City B's City Administrator, as a non-engineer public official, lacked the domain-specific technical capability to independently verify whether Engineer A's advisory memo presented a complete and unbiased comparative analysis of all available project delivery methods, making the administrator dependent on Engineer A's professional integrity for informed decision-making.
Non-engineer public official soliciting engineering advisory services on project delivery method selection for a publicly funded wastewater infrastructure project.
City B's City Administrator solicited an engineering advisory recommendation without awareness that the solicitation might yield a selective, self-serving analysis, and without the technical background to independently assess the completeness of the delivery method options presented.
City Administrator is not a licensed professional engineer.
City B's City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation on project delivery methods for their upcoming wastewater system improvements project using a specific funding source.
City B Administrator Non-Engineer Public Infrastructure Client
{'license': 'Not a licensed professional engineer', 'authority': 'City Administrator with decision-making authority over project delivery method selection', 'vulnerability': "Non-technical official relying on engineer's completeness and objectivity"}
City B's City Administrator solicited a recommendation from Engineer A on project delivery methods for an upcoming wastewater system improvements project funded by a specific funding source with four approved delivery methods. The Administrator is not a licensed professional engineer and relied on Engineer A's advisory expertise.
{'type': 'client_of', 'target': 'Engineer A Project Delivery Method Advisor'}
{'type': 'representative_of', 'target': 'City B'}
City B's City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation on project delivery methods for their upcoming wastewater system improvements project
City Administrator is not a licensed professional engineer
{'jurisdiction': 'Large metropolitan area', 'project': 'Wastewater system improvements', 'funding_constraints': 'Specific funding source with four approved delivery methods: Design-Bid-Build, Construction-Management-at-Risk, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and Progressive-Design-Build', 'regulatory_constraint': 'If CM-at-Risk selected, funding agency requires CM-at-Risk firm and Engineer of Record to be distinct entities'}
City B is the public owner of the upcoming wastewater system improvements project, subject to funding agency requirements specifying four approved project delivery methods, and bearing ultimate authority over delivery method selection and stewardship of public resources.
{'type': 'advised_by', 'target': 'Engineer A Project Delivery Method Advisor'}
{'type': 'represented_by', 'target': 'City B Administrator Non-Engineer Public Infrastructure Client'}
City B is a large metropolitan area and all forms of contracting are available
City B's City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation on project delivery methods for their upcoming wastewater system improvements project using a specific funding source
Engineer A currently has no contractual relationship with City B
Complete Comparative Advisory Analysis Engineer A City B Wastewater
Engineer A was asked by City B's non-engineer City Administrator for a recommendation on project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project. Four delivery methods were approved under the proposed funding source. Engineer A omitted Construction-Manager-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build from the advisory memo.
Complete Comparative Advisory Analysis Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to present all four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods — Design-Bid-Build, Construction-Management-at-Risk, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and Progressive-Design-Build — completely and objectively in the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator, rather than selectively presenting only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build.
Under the proposed funding source, there are four approved project delivery methods: Design-Bid-Build, Construction-Management-at-Risk, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and Progressive-Design-Build.
At the time of preparing and delivering the advisory memo to City B Administrator
Engineer A prepared a summary memo to City B Administrator and only identified Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable project delivery options.
Complete Comparative Advisory Analysis Engineer A Four Methodologies
Engineer A provided a partial delivery method analysis to City Administrator covering only Design-Bid-Build and Design-Build, omitting Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk, which were also approved by the funding agency.
Engineer A was obligated, upon undertaking to provide an advisory recommendation on project delivery methods to City B's non-engineer City Administrator, to present all four funding-agency-approved delivery methodologies completely and objectively — including methodologies Engineer A's firm was not positioned to deliver — rather than limiting the analysis to the two methodologies from which Engineer A's firm could commercially benefit.
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information
At the time of preparing and delivering the advisory memo in response to City Administrator's solicitation
Engineer A could have provided a complete analysis of the four methodologies, with all the pros and cons by compiling properly referenced resources from others
Completeness Non-Selectivity Advisory Opinions Violated By Engineer A
Advisory memo on project delivery methods for wastewater system improvements project
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits
Engineer A provided City B Administrator with an advisory memo that omitted Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk from the comparative analysis, presenting only the two methods under which Engineer A's firm could serve as lead contractor, thereby depriving the non-engineer client of the information necessary to make an informed project delivery method selection
The completeness obligation is particularly strong when the client is a non-engineer who cannot independently identify the omission; City B Administrator lacked the technical background to recognize that two approved methods had been excluded from the analysis
Engineer A Self-Serving Partial Analysis Engineer
Completeness and Non-Selectivity in Professional Advisory Opinions
The faithful agent obligation does not permit selective presentation of options that serves the agent's commercial interests at the expense of the principal's informed decision-making; completeness is required even when the client did not explicitly request a comprehensive analysis
Completeness and Non-Selectivity Violated by Engineer A Partial Delivery Method Analysis
City B wastewater system improvements project delivery method recommendation
Engineer A provided City Administrator with a partial comparative evaluation of project delivery methodologies that omitted material options, presented no genuine analysis, and was structured to favor Engineer A's own competitive interests rather than to inform City B's decision-making
In this context, the completeness obligation required Engineer A to present all four approved delivery methodologies with genuine comparative analysis of pros and cons, rather than a selective presentation that omitted options disfavored by Engineer A's commercial interests; the non-engineer client's inability to independently assess the completeness of the advice heightened this obligation
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information (as in 95-5 and 99-8) and the extension of free services
No genuine tension exists — the completeness obligation and client loyalty both point toward a complete analysis; the only competing interest is Engineer A's own commercial interest, which is not a legitimate basis for incomplete advice
BER Case 95-5 addressed integrity and completeness in preparing reports
the cited sections of the NSPE Code of Ethics provide appropriate guidance: 'objective and truthful,' 'include all relevant and pertinent information'
the engineer failed to include in the report that the initial log indicated that several of the piles were driven to essential refusal (intentional disregard of other information); that the test equipment had failed (selective use of information)
It was unethical for Engineer A to leave out relevant and pertinent information from the analysis/ recommendation.
Beyond the Board's finding that omitting relevant information was unethical, the omission of Construction Manager at Risk was particularly egregious because it was not merely an incomplete comparative analysis — it was a structurally self-serving omission. Engineer A was qualified to provide services under Construction Manager at Risk, yet omitted it from the memo entirely. The most plausible explanation consistent with the facts is that the funding agency's distinct-entity requirement would have prevented Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record under that method, making it commercially unattractive even though Engineer A was technically qualified to perform the construction management role. By omitting this method without explanation, Engineer A concealed a binding regulatory constraint that was directly material to City B's decision-making. This transforms the omission from a mere analytical gap into a material misrepresentation: City B was not simply given an incomplete picture of available options, but was denied information that would have revealed a structural reason why one of those options was disadvantageous to Engineer A. The ethical violation is therefore compounded — it encompasses both the failure of completeness and an implicit deception about the regulatory landscape governing the funding source.
The Board's conclusion that omitting relevant information was unethical applies with full force regardless of the informal nature of the solicitation. Engineer A's ethical obligations under the NSPE Code are not contingent on the existence of a formal contractual relationship with City B. When a licensed professional engineer responds to a request for professional advice — even informally — by preparing and transmitting a written memo that purports to analyze project delivery options, that engineer has voluntarily assumed the role of professional advisor and is bound by the same standards of objectivity, completeness, and truthfulness that govern any formal professional report. The absence of a contract does not create a reduced-duty zone in which selective or self-serving analysis is permissible. If anything, the informal context heightens the ethical obligation because City B had no contractual mechanism to demand completeness, no scope-of-work document defining what was owed, and no recourse if the advice was deficient. Engineer A's decision to respond with a formal written memo rather than declining or referring the matter to a neutral party was itself a professional act that triggered full professional accountability.
The Board's finding of unethical conduct for omitting relevant information should be understood as establishing a proportionality principle: the more a client lacks technical sophistication, the more complete and explicit the engineer's advisory obligation becomes. City B's Administrator is not a licensed professional engineer and therefore lacked the independent capacity to identify which delivery methods had been omitted, to recognize the significance of the funding agency's distinct-entity requirement, or to evaluate whether the two methods presented were a representative sample of available options. This informational asymmetry — inherent in any relationship between a licensed professional and a non-engineer public official — is precisely the vulnerability that professional ethics rules are designed to protect against. Engineer A's selective presentation exploited this asymmetry by presenting a curated subset of options to a client who had no basis to know the analysis was incomplete. Had City B's Administrator been a licensed engineer familiar with federal funding constraints and delivery method structures, the omission might still have been unethical, but its practical harm would have been substantially reduced. The non-engineer status of the client therefore amplifies both the severity of the breach and the degree of Engineer A's culpability.
The Board's conclusion that recommending Progressive-Design-Build is ethical when the recommendation is objective, described, valid, and compared against all available methods implicitly establishes a procedural precondition: the ethical permissibility of the recommendation is entirely dependent on the integrity of the analytical process that precedes it. This means that Engineer A's recommendation of Progressive-Design-Build was not rendered unethical merely because Engineer A could financially benefit from that selection — self-interest in the outcome of an advisory recommendation does not automatically invalidate the recommendation. What renders the recommendation ethically suspect in this case is the failure to satisfy the procedural preconditions the Board identified. Had Engineer A conducted and disclosed a complete four-method comparative analysis, explicitly acknowledged the conflict of interest arising from their firm's qualifications, and still arrived at Progressive-Design-Build as the superior option on documented merit, the recommendation would have been defensible. The ethical failure is therefore located in the process, not the conclusion. This distinction is important because it avoids the perverse outcome of requiring engineers to recommend methods for which they cannot provide services simply to demonstrate objectivity.
The Board's conclusion that recommending a method from which Engineer A could benefit is ethical, provided the recommendation is objective and complete, does not resolve the deeper question of whether Engineer A had an affirmative duty to disclose the conflict of interest at the outset of the memo — independent of whether the analysis was ultimately complete. Even in a scenario where Engineer A had provided a full four-method comparative analysis and arrived at Progressive-Design-Build on documented merit, the failure to disclose that Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services under that specific method would have remained a separate and distinct ethical deficiency. The faithful agent obligation requires not only that the advice be sound, but that the client be positioned to evaluate the advice with full knowledge of the advisor's interests. City B's Administrator, as a non-engineer public official, could not be expected to independently know that Engineer A had a financial stake in the recommended outcome. Disclosure of this conflict was therefore not optional or merely best practice — it was a prerequisite to the ethical delivery of the recommendation.
The Board's finding that including marketing materials was not unethical must be understood as conditional rather than absolute. The Board's reasoning implicitly treats the ethical permissibility of appending firm experience summaries and project references as dependent on whether the underlying advisory analysis satisfies the standards of objectivity and completeness. When the advisory memo is complete, objective, and accompanied by appropriate conflict-of-interest disclosure, appending qualifications and references is a transparent and legitimate form of professional self-presentation — it informs the client of the advisor's relevant experience without distorting the advice itself. However, when the underlying analysis is selectively constructed to favor a method from which the advisor benefits, the appended marketing materials are no longer merely informational — they become instruments of a commercially motivated presentation strategy. In that context, the marketing materials do not stand alone as ethically neutral; they are integrated into a memo that is itself ethically deficient, and their presence reinforces the commercial purpose that appears to have driven the selective analysis. The Board's approval of marketing materials should therefore be read as contingent on the prior condition of analytical completeness, and not as a freestanding endorsement of appending promotional content to any advisory memo regardless of its integrity.
The Board's approval of including marketing materials, read alongside its finding that omitting relevant information was unethical, creates an important structural principle: the ethical boundary between legitimate professional self-promotion and disguised commercial solicitation is not determined by the content of the marketing materials themselves, but by the integrity of the analytical context in which they appear. Engineer A's appending of firm experience summaries and project references to an incomplete and self-serving memo effectively converted what might otherwise have been a permissible disclosure of qualifications into a component of a commercially motivated influence strategy. The memo as a whole — selective analysis, favorable recommendation, and supporting credentials — functioned as a unified solicitation document rather than an objective advisory report with an appended qualifications statement. This commingling of advisory and promotional content, when the advisory content is itself compromised by self-interest, constitutes a form of disguised commercial solicitation that the Code's provisions on objectivity and truthfulness are designed to prohibit. The ethical analysis of the marketing materials therefore cannot be conducted in isolation from the ethical analysis of the memo's analytical completeness.
It was ethical for Engineer A to recommend progressive design build is the best choice, as long as reasons are objective, described, valid, and compared against all available and appropriate delivery methods.
In response to Q101: The informal nature of City Administrator's solicitation did not diminish Engineer A's ethical obligations in any respect. Professional ethics attach to the act of rendering a professional judgment, not to the existence of a formal contract. When Engineer A chose to respond with a written memo presenting delivery method options and a recommendation, Engineer A voluntarily assumed the role of a professional advisor and thereby accepted the full weight of obligations that role carries — including objectivity, completeness, and candor. The absence of a contractual relationship may affect legal liability, but it has no bearing on ethical duty. An engineer who provides selective or misleading professional guidance to a public official is no less culpable because no retainer was signed. If anything, the informal context heightens the risk of harm, because the recipient has no contractual recourse and may be entirely unaware that the analysis they received was incomplete.
In response to Q102: The omission of the Construction Manager at Risk method was not merely an incomplete comparative analysis — it was a materially significant omission that concealed a regulatory constraint directly bearing on Engineer A's own disqualification. Under the funding agency's rules, the Construction Manager at Risk method requires the Construction Manager and the Engineer of Record to be distinct entities. Because Engineer A is qualified to provide services under Construction Manager at Risk, Engineer A would have been structurally barred from serving as Engineer of Record under that method. By omitting Construction Manager at Risk from the memo entirely, Engineer A simultaneously withheld a viable delivery option from City B and concealed the regulatory reason why that option was inconvenient to Engineer A's commercial interests. This compounded omission — hiding both the method and the constraint that would have excluded Engineer A from it — constitutes a materially more serious breach than a simple failure to enumerate all options. It crosses from incompleteness into a form of affirmative concealment, particularly given that City Administrator, as a non-engineer, had no independent basis to recognize the gap.
In response to Q103: City Administrator's status as a non-licensed professional engineer is ethically significant and amplifies the severity of Engineer A's selective presentation. The NSPE Code's objectivity and truthfulness obligations exist in part to protect clients and the public from the informational asymmetry that is inherent in the engineer-client relationship. When the recipient of professional advice lacks the technical background to independently evaluate the completeness or accuracy of that advice, the engineer's duty of candor is correspondingly heightened. City Administrator had no means to know that four delivery methods were approved under the funding source, that two had been omitted, or that the omitted methods included one under which Engineer A could not serve as Engineer of Record. This informational asymmetry placed City Administrator in a position of complete dependence on Engineer A's good faith. Exploiting that dependence — even passively, through omission rather than active misrepresentation — is inconsistent with the role of a trusted professional advisor and represents a failure of the faithful agent obligation Engineer A owed to City B.
In response to Q104: While the Board did not explicitly require Engineer A to decline the engagement, the logic of the Board's conclusions strongly implies that referral to a neutral third party was the most ethically defensible course of action available to Engineer A at the outset. Engineer A's conflict of interest — being qualified to provide services under one of the methods being evaluated — was not merely a disclosure problem; it was a structural impediment to providing genuinely objective advice. A conflict that cannot be fully mitigated through disclosure alone ordinarily triggers a duty to recuse. Because Engineer A's financial interest in Progressive-Design-Build was irreconcilable with the obligation to evaluate all four methods with equal rigor, the cleanest ethical resolution would have been to refer City Administrator to an independent engineering consultant with no stake in the outcome. The Board's acknowledgment of this referral pathway, even as an alternative rather than a mandate, suggests that when a conflict of interest is both material and unavoidable, referral is not merely permissible but may be affirmatively required to satisfy the faithful agent obligation.
In response to Q201: The tension between the Faithful Agent Obligation and the Conflict of Interest Disclosure principle is real but not irresolvable in theory — though it proved irresolvable in practice given how Engineer A handled the situation. A faithful agent acting within ethical limits would have recognized that serving City B's best interests required presenting all four delivery methods with equal rigor, even if that analysis led to a recommendation of Design-Bid-Build or Construction Manager at Risk — methods under which Engineer A could not serve as Engineer of Record. The fact that such a recommendation would have been commercially adverse to Engineer A is precisely what makes the conflict of interest material and what makes full disclosure mandatory. Engineer A's failure to disclose the conflict and to present a complete analysis meant that the faithful agent obligation was subordinated to self-interest, which is the paradigmatic ethical violation the conflict of interest rules are designed to prevent. The two principles do not conflict when properly applied; they converge on the same requirement: disclose the conflict, provide the complete analysis, and let City B decide.
In response to Q202: The Board's finding that including marketing materials was not unethical must be understood as conditionally permissible rather than categorically permissible. The ethical acceptability of appending firm experience summaries and project references depends entirely on whether the underlying advisory analysis was itself complete, objective, and free of self-serving distortion. When marketing materials accompany a genuinely complete and objective analysis, they function as transparent disclosure of qualifications — information that is relevant and useful to the client. When, however, marketing materials accompany a selectively constructed recommendation that has already been shaped by the engineer's commercial interest, the marketing materials become an instrument of the deception rather than a neutral supplement to it. In Engineer A's case, the appended experience summaries and references reinforced a recommendation that was itself the product of a compromised analysis, thereby compounding the ethical violation. The Board's approval of marketing materials in the abstract should not be read to immunize the specific use of those materials in this case, where they served to amplify a self-serving and incomplete recommendation.
In response to Q203: The apparent alignment between Engineer A's self-interest and City B's public benefit — both pointing toward Progressive-Design-Build — does not resolve the ethical problem; it merely makes the problem harder to detect. The ethical violation lies not in the recommendation itself but in the process by which it was reached and presented. Even if Progressive-Design-Build is genuinely the optimal delivery method for City B's wastewater project, Engineer A's failure to conduct and present a complete comparative analysis means that City B has no basis to verify that conclusion independently. A recommendation that happens to be correct but was reached through a compromised process does not satisfy the engineer's ethical obligations, because the client's right to informed decision-making is violated regardless of whether the recommended outcome is substantively sound. The principle of objectivity requires not just a correct answer but a demonstrably unbiased process. Engineer A's selective analysis denied City B the ability to confirm that the recommendation was driven by merit rather than self-interest, which is itself a harm to City B's decision-making autonomy and to public trust in the engineering profession.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer A failed to fulfill the categorical duty of objectivity and completeness. Deontological ethics holds that the rightness of an action is determined by adherence to duty, not by outcomes or circumstances. Engineer A's duty to issue professional statements in an objective and truthful manner is not contingent on the existence of a formal contract, the sophistication of the client, or the engineer's sincere belief in the superiority of the recommended method. The duty applies categorically whenever an engineer renders a professional judgment. By omitting two of the four approved delivery methods and failing to disclose the conflict of interest that motivated the omission, Engineer A acted on a maxim — 'present only the options that serve my commercial interests when advising a non-engineer client' — that could not be universalized without destroying the foundation of trust on which professional engineering advice depends. The deontological analysis therefore supports and strengthens the Board's conclusion that the omission was unethical, independent of any assessment of whether the recommended outcome was substantively correct.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, Engineer A's selective presentation created a meaningful risk of downstream harm to City B's public infrastructure decision-making that outweighs any efficiency benefit from narrowing the analysis. City B is a large metropolitan area undertaking a wastewater system improvement project — a public infrastructure investment with long-term consequences for ratepayers and public health. By receiving an analysis that omitted two of four approved delivery methods, City B's Administrator was deprived of the information necessary to make a fully informed procurement decision. The harm is not merely hypothetical: if Design-Bid-Build or Construction Manager at Risk would have been more cost-effective or better suited to City B's project conditions, the selective analysis foreclosed City B's ability to discover that. Additionally, the omission of the Construction Manager at Risk method concealed a regulatory constraint — the distinct-entity requirement — that would have been material to City B's evaluation of that option. The aggregate consequentialist harm includes not only the risk of a suboptimal procurement outcome but also the erosion of public trust in engineering advisors who serve public clients, a systemic harm that extends beyond City B.
In response to Q303: From a virtue ethics perspective, the commingling of advisory and promotional content in Engineer A's memo reveals a disposition that is incompatible with the role of a trusted engineering advisor. A virtuous professional advisor — one possessing the character traits of honesty, integrity, and practical wisdom — would recognize that appending firm experience summaries and project references to an advisory memo creates an appearance of self-promotion that undermines the memo's credibility as an objective analysis. The virtuous engineer would either provide a genuinely complete and objective analysis and separately, transparently offer qualifications if asked, or would decline the engagement entirely given the irreconcilable conflict of interest. The fact that Engineer A chose to combine a selectively constructed recommendation with promotional materials in a single document suggests a disposition oriented toward securing business rather than serving City B's interests. This is not merely a procedural violation; it reflects a character orientation that prioritizes commercial advantage over the professional virtues of candor and faithful service that define the trusted advisor role.
In response to Q401: Explicit disclosure of Engineer A's qualification gap at the outset of the memo would have been a necessary but not sufficient condition for ethical defensibility. Had Engineer A stated clearly that the firm was qualified to provide services only under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction Manager at Risk, and that this limitation influenced the scope of the analysis, City Administrator would at least have been on notice that the memo was not a complete independent evaluation. This disclosure would have partially mitigated the conflict of interest problem by enabling City B to seek supplementary analysis of the omitted methods. However, such a disclosure would not have fully satisfied Engineer A's ethical obligations, because the duty to provide a complete comparative analysis is not discharged merely by acknowledging that the analysis is incomplete. The appropriate remedy was to either provide the complete analysis — including objective evaluations of Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build — or to refer City Administrator to a neutral resource. Disclosure of the limitation, without remedying it, would have been an improvement over the actual conduct but would not have constituted full ethical compliance.
In response to Q402: Referral to a neutral third-party resource or independent engineering consultant would have been the most ethically sound course of action available to Engineer A, and the Board's acknowledgment of this pathway carries normative weight beyond mere suggestion. When a conflict of interest is structural — meaning it cannot be eliminated through disclosure alone because the engineer's financial interest is directly tied to the outcome of the analysis being requested — the ethical obligation to recuse becomes affirmative rather than optional. Engineer A's situation was precisely this kind: any analysis Engineer A provided would be shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by the knowledge that recommending Progressive-Design-Build would create a business opportunity while recommending Design-Bid-Build or Fixed-Price-Design-Build would not. The only way to fully protect City B's interest in receiving objective advice was to refer City Administrator to an advisor without that conflict. The Board's implicit endorsement of this referral pathway suggests that when a conflict of interest cannot be fully mitigated, referral is not merely a permissible alternative but may represent the minimum standard of ethical conduct required by the faithful agent obligation.
In response to Q403: Had Engineer A provided a genuinely complete comparative analysis of all four approved delivery methods and still recommended Progressive-Design-Build on documented merit, the inclusion of firm experience summaries and references would have remained ethically permissible — and the Board's conclusion on this point supports that reading. The ethical permissibility of marketing materials is not absolute; it is conditioned on the integrity of the underlying analysis. When the advisory memo is complete, objective, and transparent about the engineer's conflict of interest, appending qualifications and references functions as a legitimate and transparent disclosure of the engineer's capacity to deliver the recommended method. It allows City B to evaluate both the recommendation and the recommender on their merits. The problem in Engineer A's actual case is that the marketing materials were appended to a compromised analysis, transforming them from a transparent disclosure into a reinforcement of a self-serving and incomplete recommendation. The Board's approval of marketing materials should therefore be understood as contingent on the prior satisfaction of the completeness and objectivity obligations, not as a freestanding permission that survives the failure of those obligations.
In response to Q404: Engineer A's selective presentation of delivery methods would constitute an ethical violation regardless of the client's technical sophistication, because the duty of completeness and objectivity is not calibrated to the client's ability to detect deficiencies. However, the vulnerability of City Administrator as a non-engineer public official does amplify the practical severity of the breach in two distinct ways. First, a technically sophisticated engineering client would likely have recognized that the memo omitted two of the four funding-approved delivery methods and would have sought clarification or supplementary analysis, thereby partially self-correcting for Engineer A's omission. City Administrator had no such capacity. Second, the informational asymmetry between a licensed professional engineer and a non-engineer public official is precisely the asymmetry that the NSPE Code's objectivity and truthfulness provisions are designed to protect against. When an engineer exploits that asymmetry — even passively, through omission — the harm to the client is greater and the ethical breach is more serious in its practical consequences, even if the formal ethical violation is identical in both scenarios. The non-engineer status of City Administrator therefore functions as an aggravating factor in the ethical analysis, not as a threshold condition for the violation itself.
It was not unethical to include marketing materials that display Engineer A’s firm’s qualifications.
The tension between the Faithful Agent Obligation and the Conflict of Interest Disclosure principle was not resolved in this case — it was evaded. A faithful agent serving City B's interests would have surfaced all four delivery methods, including Construction Manager at Risk, even though that method's distinct-entity requirement would have structurally excluded Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record. By omitting both Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and by failing to disclose the regulatory constraint that would have barred Engineer A from the Construction Manager at Risk role, Engineer A subordinated the faithful agent duty to self-interest rather than reconciling the two. The case teaches that when these two principles collide, the Conflict of Interest Disclosure principle functions as a threshold condition: an engineer cannot claim to be acting as a faithful agent while simultaneously concealing the very conflict that corrupts the advice being given. Faithful agency, in other words, presupposes disclosed and managed conflicts — it cannot coexist with undisclosed ones.
The Board's finding that appending marketing materials was not inherently unethical must be understood as conditional rather than categorical, and this case reveals that the Prohibition on Disguised Commercial Solicitation and the Completeness and Non-Selectivity principle are not independent — they are sequentially dependent. Marketing materials appended to a complete, objective, and fully disclosed advisory memo occupy a different ethical category than the same materials appended to a selectively constructed memo designed to foreclose consideration of delivery methods under which Engineer A could not profit. In the latter scenario, the marketing materials do not merely accompany a flawed analysis; they consummate it, converting what was nominally an advisory memo into a disguised solicitation. The case therefore teaches that the ethical permissibility of promotional content is derivative: it inherits the ethical character of the underlying analysis. Where the analysis violates Completeness and Non-Selectivity, appended qualifications and references retroactively become instruments of commercial deception, regardless of whether they would have been permissible in isolation.
This case exposes a structural vulnerability in the principle of Public Welfare Paramount when an engineer's sincere belief in the superiority of a recommended method coincides with that method being the one from which the engineer would financially benefit. The principle of Public Welfare Paramount cannot serve as a self-validating justification for selective analysis: an engineer who genuinely believes Progressive-Design-Build is the best option for City B is not thereby relieved of the obligation to demonstrate that conclusion through a complete comparative analysis of all available methods. The alignment of self-interest and public benefit, rather than dissolving the conflict, actually intensifies the obligation of transparency, because the engineer's subjective conviction of correctness is precisely the condition under which motivated reasoning is most likely and least detectable. The case teaches that Objectivity and Completeness and Non-Selectivity function as procedural safeguards that must be honored even — and especially — when the engineer is confident the outcome would survive scrutiny. A correct conclusion reached through an incomplete process remains an ethical violation.
Conflict Of Interest Disclosure Advisory Engagements Violated By Engineer A
Advisory recommendation on project delivery methods and accompanying firm experience materials
Engineer A provided a project delivery method recommendation to City B without disclosing that Engineer A's firm stood to benefit commercially from the recommended method (Progressive-Design-Build), that Engineer A was not qualified to serve as Engineer of Record under Construction-Manager-at-Risk (creating a financial disincentive to recommend that method), and that the accompanying firm experience summary was effectively a marketing document embedded in an ostensibly objective advisory product
The conflict of interest here is structural: Engineer A was simultaneously acting as an objective advisor and as a prospective competitor for the subsequent contract; this dual role required explicit disclosure so City B could assess the objectivity of the advice
Conflict of Interest Disclosure in Advisory Engagements
Engineer A recommended Progressive Design Build. Accompanying the recommendation, Engineer A provided a summary of the firm's experience with Progressive-Design-Build projects and references from past projects
Disclosure of the conflict does not necessarily require withdrawal from the advisory role, but it is a prerequisite for the advisory relationship to remain ethically sound; without disclosure, the client cannot make an informed judgment about the reliability of the recommendation
Additionally, if Construction Manager at Risk is selected by the owner, City B, the funding agency requires the Construction Manager at Risk firm and the Engineer of Record be two distinct entities.
Engineer A currently has no contractual relationship with City B.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure Engineer A City B Delivery Method Advisory
Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and stood to benefit financially from City B selecting that delivery method. Engineer A provided an advisory memo recommending Progressive-Design-Build without disclosing this financial interest to City B's City Administrator, constituting an undisclosed conflict of interest that tainted the objectivity of the advisory recommendation.
Conflict of Interest Avoidance (Constraint)
Engineer A was constrained by the conflict of interest arising from Engineer A's firm's qualification and competitive interest in Progressive-Design-Build from providing an advisory recommendation to City B without first disclosing that conflict of interest to City B's City Administrator, and was prohibited from allowing that undisclosed conflict to shape the content, scope, and recommendation of the advisory memo.
NSPE Code of Ethics — conflict of interest avoidance provisions; Section II.4
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit
From the moment of informal solicitation receipt through advisory memo submission
Both aspects of the conduct were unethical in the view of the BER
not offer any gift or other valuable consideration in order to secure work
Conflict of Interest Disclosure Violated by Engineer A Self-Serving Recommendation
Engineer A provided a project delivery method recommendation to City Administrator without disclosing that the recommendation was structured to favor the delivery method under which Engineer A's firm would be eligible to compete, creating an undisclosed conflict between Engineer A's advisory role and Engineer A's commercial interest in the outcome
The conflict of interest disclosure obligation required Engineer A to affirmatively inform City Administrator that Engineer A's firm had a commercial stake in the delivery method recommendation, so that City Administrator could seek independent verification or weigh the advice accordingly
Disclosure of the conflict would have enabled City Administrator to make an informed decision about whether to rely on Engineer A's advice; the failure to disclose compounded the incompleteness violation by depriving the client of the ability to assess the objectivity of the recommendation
Construction Manager at Risk Distinct Entity Requirement
Federal or state funding agency governing City B's wastewater project funding source
Funding Agency Requirement: CM-at-Risk Firm and Engineer of Record Must Be Distinct Entities
if Construction Manager at Risk is selected by the owner, City B, the funding agency requires the Construction Manager at Risk firm and the Engineer of Record be two distinct entities
City B Administrator and Engineer A in evaluating delivery method options
Establishes a regulatory constraint that, if CM-at-Risk is selected, the CM-at-Risk firm and Engineer of Record must be two distinct entities — a requirement that may explain why Engineer A omitted CM-at-Risk from the recommendation memo, raising questions about whether the omission was motivated by self-interest rather than genuine inapplicability
Current (as applicable to City B's wastewater project funding source)
Should Engineer A have presented all four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods completely and objectively in the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator, rather than selectively presenting only the two methods from which Engineer A's firm could commercially benefit?
Engineer A's decision to present only two of four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods in the advisory memo to City B's non-engineer City Administrator, omitting Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build entirely and failing to disclose the regulatory distinct-entity constraint that would have barred Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record under Construction Manager at Risk.
Provide advisory memo presenting only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build while omitting Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction Manager at Risk, and without disclosing the funding agency's distinct-entity constraint
Present all four funding-agency-approved delivery methods completely and objectively in the advisory memo, including accurate representation of the distinct-entity regulatory constraint applicable to Construction Manager at Risk
Decline to provide the advisory memo and refer City Administrator to a neutral third-party resource or independent engineering consultant with no commercial stake in the outcome
Engineer A Project Delivery Method Advisor
Should Engineer A have proactively disclosed to City B's City Administrator the conflict of interest arising from Engineer A's firm's qualification and commercial interest in providing services under the recommended Progressive-Design-Build delivery method, before or contemporaneously with delivering the advisory recommendation?
Engineer A's failure to disclose to City B's City Administrator that Engineer A's firm held a direct commercial interest in the outcome of the advisory recommendation — specifically, that the firm was qualified to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build, the method Engineer A recommended — before or contemporaneously with delivering the recommendation.
Deliver the advisory recommendation and appended firm experience summaries without disclosing Engineer A's firm's commercial interest in the recommended Progressive-Design-Build delivery method
Disclose at the outset of the advisory memo that Engineer A's firm is qualified to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and therefore holds a commercial interest in the outcome of the recommendation, enabling City Administrator to weigh the advice accordingly
Decline the advisory engagement and refer City Administrator to an independent engineering consultant with no financial stake in any of the four delivery methods
Should Engineer A have refrained from appending firm experience summaries and project references to the advisory memo, or at minimum clearly separated and disclosed the self-promotional nature of those materials, so that City Administrator was not misled about the objective character of the advisory opinion?
Engineer A's decision to append firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build to the same document as the advisory recommendation to City B, commingling self-promotional marketing materials with ostensibly objective advisory analysis in a communication provided as a free service to a non-engineer public client.
Append firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build to the advisory memo without disclosing the promotional nature of those materials or separating them from the objective advisory analysis
Provide a complete and objective four-method comparative analysis and, only after satisfying completeness and conflict-of-interest disclosure obligations, append clearly demarcated firm qualifications with explicit disclosure of their promotional nature
Omit firm experience summaries and project references from the advisory memo entirely, and separately offer qualifications only if City Administrator explicitly requests them after receiving the complete objective analysis
Should Engineer A provide a complete comparative analysis of all four approved delivery methods — including Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build — rather than selectively presenting only the two methods under which Engineer A's firm could provide services?
Engineer A: Completeness and Objectivity Obligation in Advisory Memo to City B
Provide a selective advisory memo presenting only the two delivery methods under which Engineer A's firm can provide services, omitting Design-Bid-Build, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and the funding agency's distinct-entity constraint
Provide a complete comparative analysis of all four funding-approved delivery methods, including objective evaluation of Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and disclose the funding agency's distinct-entity requirement for Construction Manager at Risk
Should Engineer A disclose to City B's Administrator that Engineer A's firm has a direct financial interest in the recommended delivery method — and either provide a complete conflict-disclosed analysis or refer City Administrator to a neutral third-party advisor — rather than proceeding with an undisclosed self-serving recommendation?
Engineer A: Conflict of Interest Disclosure and Faithful Agency Obligation to City B
Proceed with providing the advisory memo without disclosing Engineer A's financial interest in the recommended delivery method or Engineer A's qualification limitations
Disclose at the outset of the memo that Engineer A's firm is qualified to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and has a financial interest in that recommendation, and provide a complete conflict-disclosed comparative analysis of all four delivery methods
Decline to provide the advisory memo and refer City Administrator to a neutral independent engineering consultant with no financial stake in any of the delivery method outcomes
Should Engineer A refrain from appending firm experience summaries and project references to an advisory memo whose underlying analysis was selectively constructed to favor the delivery method from which Engineer A would financially benefit, given that such commingling converts the memo from a professional advisory document into a disguised commercial solicitation?
Engineer A Project Delivery Method Advisor: Prohibition on Disguised Commercial Solicitation Through Free Advisory Services
Append firm experience summaries and project references to an advisory memo whose underlying analysis selectively omits delivery methods unfavorable to Engineer A's commercial interests
Provide a complete and objective comparative analysis of all four delivery methods and, only after satisfying the completeness obligation, append firm qualifications and references in a clearly demarcated section that transparently identifies the document's dual advisory and promotional character
Should Engineer A provide a complete comparative analysis of all four funding-approved delivery methods — including Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build — rather than presenting only the two methods under which Engineer A's firm could provide services?
Engineer A's obligation to provide a complete and objective comparative analysis of all four approved delivery methods when responding to City B's informal solicitation
Omit two delivery methods from the advisory memo and present only the methods under which Engineer A's firm can provide services
Provide a complete comparative analysis of all four funding-approved delivery methods, including objective evaluation of Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build alongside the two methods Engineer A can service, and disclose the regulatory constraint that would bar Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record under Construction Manager at Risk
Should Engineer A disclose the conflict of interest created by the firm's qualification to provide services under the recommended delivery method, and refrain from appending firm experience summaries and project references to what is presented as an objective advisory memo?
Engineer A's obligation to disclose the conflict of interest arising from the firm's financial stake in the recommended delivery method and to refrain from exploiting the free advisory engagement as a vehicle for disguised commercial solicitation
Append firm experience summaries and project references to the advisory memo without disclosing the conflict of interest created by the firm's qualification to provide services under the recommended method
Disclose at the outset of the memo that the firm is qualified to provide services under the recommended delivery method and that this creates a financial interest in the outcome, and either omit promotional materials entirely or append them only after providing a complete and objective comparative analysis of all four methods
Given that Engineer A's financial interest in Progressive-Design-Build created a structural conflict irreconcilable through disclosure alone, should Engineer A have declined to provide the advisory memo and instead referred City Administrator to a neutral independent consultant — and having already provided the incomplete memo, should Engineer A correct or disclose the omissions rather than allow City B to rely on a deficient analysis?
Engineer A's obligation to either correct the omissions in the advisory memo or refer City B's Administrator to a neutral third-party resource, given that the conflict of interest was structural and could not be fully mitigated through disclosure alone
Allow City B to rely on the incomplete advisory memo without correcting the omissions or disclosing the structural conflict of interest that shaped the analysis
Decline to provide the advisory memo and refer City Administrator to a neutral independent engineering consultant with no financial stake in the delivery method outcome
Supplement or correct the advisory memo to include a complete comparative analysis of all four approved delivery methods and explicitly disclose the structural conflict of interest before City B relies on the analysis for procurement decisions
Disclosure Obligation Engineer A Conflict of Interest City B
Engineer A recommended Progressive-Design-Build — a method under which Engineer A's firm is qualified to provide services — to a non-engineer City Administrator without disclosing this conflict of interest, while simultaneously providing self-promotional firm experience materials.
Engineer A was obligated to disclose to City B's City Administrator the conflict of interest arising from Engineer A's firm's qualification and commercial interest in providing services under the recommended Progressive-Design-Build delivery method, so that City B could appropriately evaluate the advisory recommendation.
Prior to or contemporaneously with delivering the advisory recommendation
Engineer A Advisory Self-Interest Conflict Identification Deficit
Advisory Self-Interest Conflict Identification and Disclosure Capability
Engineer A failed to recognize and disclose that Engineer A's firm's qualification to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build created a conflict of interest that required disclosure to City B's City Administrator before or contemporaneously with delivering the advisory recommendation favoring that delivery method.
Engineer A provided a self-serving advisory recommendation to City B without disclosing the commercial conflict of interest arising from the firm's qualification to perform services under the recommended delivery method
Provision of an advisory memo recommending Progressive-Design-Build without disclosing that Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services under that method and stood to benefit commercially from the recommendation
Both aspects of the conduct were unethical in the view of the BER.
Engineer A Advisory Self-Interest Conflict Identification and Disclosure
Engineer A possessed the capability to recognize that the firm's qualification to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk created a conflict of interest in the advisory engagement, but failed to disclose this conflict to City B's City Administrator before or with the advisory recommendation.
Advisory engagement in which Engineer A recommended a project delivery method under which the firm was commercially qualified to provide services, without disclosing this conflict to the client.
Engineer A recommended Progressive-Design-Build — a delivery method under which the firm was qualified to provide services — without disclosing the firm's commercial interest in that recommendation to the non-engineer City Administrator.
Engineer A Conflict of Interest Recognition and Recusal City B Advisory
Conflict of Interest Recognition and Recusal Capability
Engineer A failed to recognize or act on the conflict of interest created by the firm's commercial qualification to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build when providing an ostensibly objective advisory recommendation to City B's City Administrator on project delivery method selection.
Advisory engagement where Engineer A's firm held commercial qualifications under one of the delivery methods being evaluated and recommended.
Engineer A recommended Progressive-Design-Build — a method under which the firm was commercially qualified — without disclosing the conflict or taking any remedial action such as recusal from the advisory engagement or explicit conflict disclosure.
Engineer A Conflict of Interest in Delivery Method Recommendation
From the moment Engineer A was asked for a recommendation through the delivery of the recommendation memo and accompanying firm experience summary
City B's City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation on project delivery methods
Engineer A's financial interest in Progressive-Design-Build conflicting with obligation to provide objective advisory recommendation to City B
Not resolved in the facts presented; would terminate upon full disclosure of conflict or recusal from recommendation role
Engineer A provided a summary of the firm's experience with Progressive-Design-Build projects and references from past projects
Engineer A recommended Progressive Design Build
City B City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation on project delivery methods for the wastewater system improvements project
Engineer A Free Service Business Development Boundary Deficit
Free Service Business Development Boundary Capability
Engineer A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that providing a free partial advisory memo structured to favor Engineer A's firm's preferred delivery method constituted an impermissible offer of valuable consideration to secure work, and failed to identify the ethically permissible alternatives of referring City Administrator to neutral resources or providing a complete compiled analysis without self-promotional content.
City B's City Administrator informally solicited advisory input from Engineer A on project delivery methods; Engineer A responded with a self-serving partial analysis rather than a neutral referral or complete objective analysis
Provision of a free advisory memo to City B's City Administrator that omitted competing methodologies and included firm experience summaries for Progressive-Design-Build, rather than referring the City Administrator to neutral resources or providing a complete objective analysis
Engineer A could have referred City Administrator to resources (whether library, free, or subscription) that provided complete analyses of the various methodologies. That would be a completely ethical informal response to an informal solicitation, involving no provision of engineering services.
the extension of free services. Both aspects of the conduct were unethical in the view of the BER.
From Engineer A's provision of free partial evaluation through BER determination
Engineer A's provision of free partial engineering evaluation as implicit inducement to secure work
Not resolved within the text; BER found conduct unethical
Engineer A provided free engineering services (partial methodology evaluation and recommendation) in response to City Administrator's informal solicitation, constituting an implicit offer of valuable consideration to secure work
Engineer A Funding Agency Regulatory Constraint Knowledge
Funding Agency Regulatory Constraint Knowledge Capability
Engineer A possessed knowledge of the funding agency's regulatory constraints — including the four approved delivery methods and the CM-at-Risk entity separation requirement — but failed to accurately and completely represent these constraints in the advisory memo, omitting two approved delivery methods and potentially misrepresenting the CM-at-Risk constraint.
Advisory memo regarding project delivery methods for a wastewater project subject to specific funding agency requirements including four approved delivery methods and a CM-at-Risk entity separation condition.
Engineer A's omission of Construction-Management-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build from the advisory memo despite their approval under the funding source, and failure to fully represent the CM-at-Risk entity separation requirement as a constraint rather than a disqualifying factor.
From submission of incomplete design documents through acknowledgment of incompleteness
Engineer A submitted plans that were lacking much of the design detail in both drawings and specifications
Selective Information Omission in Professional Report State
Engineer A's submission of incomplete plans and specifications
Engineer A's acknowledgment of incompleteness (post-submission)
Engineer A acknowledge that fact, but even acknowledged that certain parts of the project were arguably unbuildable
Engineer A did not inform anyone as to the incompleteness at the time of submission
the incomplete submission was clearly unethical
Engineer A submitted plans lacking much of the design detail in both drawings and specifications, including portions that were arguably unbuildable, without informing anyone of the incompleteness at time of submission
Engineer A Incomplete Options Presentation to City Administrator
From Engineer A's response to City Administrator's solicitation through BER review
Engineer A's partial presentation of four delivery methodologies to City Administrator
Engineer A could have provided a complete analysis of the four methodologies, with all the pros and cons
Engineer A presented only a partial comparative evaluation of the four methodologies without complete analysis of pros and cons, omitting information that would have enabled City Administrator to make a fully informed decision
Engineer A Informed Decision Making Facilitation City B
Engineer A failed to structure and present the advisory analysis in a manner that facilitated a genuinely informed decision by City B's City Administrator, omitting two of four approved delivery methods and failing to present complete comparative information about all available options.
Advisory memo to a non-engineer public official regarding project delivery method selection for a publicly funded wastewater infrastructure project.
The advisory memo presented only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build, depriving City B's non-engineer City Administrator of the complete information needed to make an informed choice among all four funding-agency-approved delivery methods.
Engineer A Material Omission Recognition Advisory Memo
Material Omission Recognition in Professional Reports Capability
Engineer A failed to recognize that omitting two of four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods from the advisory memo constituted a material omission that deprived City B's City Administrator of information necessary to make an informed decision, violating professional obligations to issue statements in an objective and truthful manner.
Advisory memo to City B City Administrator on project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project with four funding-agency-approved delivery options.
The advisory memo omitted Construction-Management-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build from the comparative analysis, presenting only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable options despite all four being approved under the funding source.
Engineer A No Contractual Relationship with City B
At the time of the City Administrator's request and through delivery of the recommendation memo
Absence of a formal contractual client relationship between Engineer A and City B at the time of the recommendation request
Would terminate upon execution of a formal contract between Engineer A and City B
City Administrator asked Engineer A for a recommendation despite no existing contractual relationship
Engineer A Objective Advisory Report Integrity
Objective Advisory Report Integrity Capability
Engineer A failed to maintain the integrity and objectivity of the advisory memo by including firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build in the same communication as the ostensibly objective advisory recommendation, commingling self-promotional content with professional advice.
Advisory memo to City B City Administrator that included both a project delivery method recommendation and firm self-promotional materials for the recommended delivery method.
Inclusion of a summary of the firm's experience with Progressive-Design-Build projects and references from past projects in the same memo as the advisory recommendation to City B's City Administrator.
Engineer A Objective Advisory Report Integrity Deficit
Engineer A failed to maintain the integrity and objectivity of the advisory communication by commingling firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build with the ostensibly objective analysis, and by structuring the advisory memo in a manner that a reasonable client would recognize as a sales pitch rather than independent professional advice.
Engineer A's advisory memo to City B's City Administrator commingled self-promotional content with ostensibly objective technical analysis, violating the professional obligation to be objective and truthful
Inclusion of firm experience summaries and capability statements for Progressive-Design-Build in the same communication as the advisory recommendation, without equivalent treatment of competing methodologies
Engineer A Precedent-Based Report Completeness Standard Application Deficit
Precedent-Based Ethical Reasoning Capability
Engineer A failed to apply the professional report completeness standard established by BER Cases 95-5 and 99-8 — which prohibit intentional disregard of contrary information and selective use of data — to the advisory memo provided to City B's City Administrator, resulting in an incomplete and self-serving communication that violated the objective and truthful reporting standard.
Engineer A's advisory memo to City B failed to meet the completeness standard established by BER precedent on integrity and completeness in preparing reports
Provision of a partial comparative analysis that omitted three of four approved delivery methodologies and included self-promotional content, conduct directly analogous to the incomplete and selective reporting condemned in BER Cases 95-5 and 99-8
{'license': 'Licensed Professional Engineer in State C', 'specialty': 'Construction services including Progressive-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk', 'contractual_status': 'No existing contractual relationship with City B at time of recommendation', 'conflict_of_interest': 'Eligible to perform work under Progressive-Design-Build (recommended) and Construction-Manager-at-Risk (omitted); omitted CM-at-Risk without disclosure'}
Engineer A was asked by City B's City Administrator to recommend project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project. Engineer A prepared a memo identifying only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable options, omitting Construction-Manager-at-Risk (under which Engineer A is also qualified to provide services), and recommended Progressive-Design-Build while providing the firm's own experience summary and references for that method.
{'type': 'advisor_to', 'target': 'City B Administrator Non-Engineer Public Infrastructure Client'}
{'type': 'potential_provider_to', 'target': 'City B'}
Project Delivery Method Advisor Engineer
Engineer A provides construction services in the community of City B and is a licensed professional engineer in State C
Engineer A prepared a summary memo to City B Administrator and only identified Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable project delivery options
Engineer A Project Delivery Method Comparative Analysis
Project Delivery Method Comparative Analysis Capability
Engineer A possessed the technical knowledge to identify and analyze all four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods but failed to exercise this capability fully, presenting only two of the four approved methods in the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator.
Advisory memo provided to City B City Administrator regarding project delivery methods for wastewater system improvements project funded by a specific funding source with four approved delivery methods.
Engineer A's preparation of a summary memo that identified only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable options, omitting Construction-Management-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build, despite all four being approved under the funding source.
Engineer A Qualified for Subset of Delivery Methods
Persistent professional competence state at the time of the recommendation
Engineer A's competence status — qualified to provide construction services under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk, but not identified as qualified under Fixed-Price-Design-Build
Not applicable; competence state is inertial
Engineer A's established qualifications and service capabilities in specific delivery method domains
Engineer A Selective Information Omission Recognition Deficit
Engineer A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that providing only a partial comparative evaluation of project delivery methodologies — omitting Design-Bid-Build, CM-at-Risk, and Fixed-Price-Design-Build from analysis — constituted an impermissible omission of material information from a professional advisory communication, analogous to the omissions condemned in BER Cases 95-5 and 99-8.
Engineer A provided an advisory memo on project delivery methods for City B's wastewater system improvements project that omitted three of four approved methodologies and included self-promotional firm materials
Failure to include all four funding-agency-approved delivery methods in the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator, providing only analysis favorable to Progressive-Design-Build in which Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services
include all relevant and pertinent information
Engineer A Self-Interested Delivery Method Recommendation
From preparation of the summary memo through its delivery to City Administrator; persists until corrected
Engineer A only identified Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable project delivery options
Self-Interested Delivery Method Recommendation State
Engineer A's recommendation to City B that omitted two of four approved delivery methods and recommended the method under which Engineer A stands to gain work
Not resolved in the facts presented; would terminate upon disclosure and correction
Engineer A prepared and delivered a summary memo identifying only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable options and recommending Progressive-Design-Build, while omitting Construction-Management-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'conduct': 'Selective omission of unfavorable information, self-serving recommendation, extension of free services'}
Provided a partial, incomplete comparative evaluation of project delivery methodologies to City Administrator, omitting material information, presenting no complete analysis, and making a recommendation that favored Engineer A's own business interests, while also extending free services as an implicit inducement to secure work.
{'type': 'service_provider_to', 'target': 'City Administrator'}
{'type': 'subject_of_ethics_review', 'target': 'Board of Ethical Review'}
the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information
Engineer A Self-Serving Partial Methodology Recommendation
From receipt of City Administrator's informal solicitation through Engineer A's provision of partial self-serving recommendation
Engineer A's response to City Administrator's informal solicitation for delivery methodology analysis
City Administrator informally solicited Engineer A's opinion on project delivery methodologies; Engineer A provided only a partial comparative evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation favoring the methodology under which Engineer A would benefit commercially
Engineer A Trustee Advisory Role Faithful Execution
Trustee-Agent Role Distinction Capability
Engineer A failed to correctly execute the trustee advisory role when asked by City B's City Administrator for an objective recommendation on project delivery methods, instead providing a selective, self-serving analysis that favored the delivery method under which the firm was commercially qualified to provide services.
Advisory engagement in which Engineer A was asked to provide an objective recommendation on project delivery methods for City B's wastewater system improvements project.
Engineer A's selective presentation of only two of four approved delivery methods, recommendation of Progressive-Design-Build in which the firm was qualified, and inclusion of firm self-promotional materials — all of which subordinated client advisory obligations to firm commercial interests.
Engineer A Trustee Advisory Role Faithful Execution Deficit
Trustee Advisory Role Faithful Execution Capability
Engineer A failed to execute the trustee advisory role faithfully by subordinating firm self-interest to City B's need for complete, objective, and unbiased professional advice on project delivery methods, instead providing a selective analysis structured to favor the delivery method under which Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide services.
Engineer A was solicited by City B's City Administrator for advisory input on project delivery methods and failed to fulfill the trustee obligation to provide complete, objective, and unbiased professional advice
Provision of a partial, self-serving advisory memo that omitted three of four approved delivery methodologies and included self-promotional firm materials, rather than providing the complete and objective analysis required of a faithful trustee
Alternatively, Engineer A could have provided a complete analysis of the four methodologies, with all the pros and cons by compiling properly referenced resources from others, involving no provision of engineering services and thus not unethical.
Engineer A having no contractual relationship with City B before City Administrator's solicitation of Engineer A
Engineer A winning design contract before Engineer A submitting incomplete plans
Engineer A's provision of firm experience and references equals Engineer A's recommendation of Progressive-Design-Build
Engineer A's recommendation of Progressive-Design-Build meets Engineer A providing firm's experience and references
Engineer A's summary memo before upcoming wastewater system improvements project
From submission of incomplete pile report through discovery of omissions
Public relying on pile safety determination
the engineer failed to include in the report that the initial log indicated that several of the piles were driven to essential refusal
Engineer's report on installed pile safety factor
Not specified in text; presumably upon BER review and case adjudication
that following cure, the test hammer was dropped several times before the count began
that the test equipment had failed (selective use of information)
that the test piles were not driven to the same depth as the installed piles, that a different installation technique was used
the predicted increase in strength after cure was confirmed
Engineer submitted report concluding installed piles did not meet design safety factor while omitting material contradictory data including refusal logs, equipment failure, depth differences, installation technique differences, and cure strength confirmation
Ethical Conduct Obligation Engineer A Advisory Memo Selectivity
Engineer A's selective presentation of delivery methods and inclusion of self-promotional materials in an advisory memo to a non-engineer public client constitutes a failure of ethical conduct in professional advisory services.
Engineer A was obligated to conduct themselves ethically in providing the advisory recommendation to City B, including refraining from selectively presenting only those project delivery methods from which the firm could commercially benefit and from using an ostensibly objective advisory engagement as an undisclosed business development opportunity.
Throughout the advisory engagement with City B
Failure to Correct or Disclose Omissions
Failure to Correct or Disclose Omissions (Action 6) → Ethics Violation Finding Issued (Event 6)
Faithful Agent Obligation Engineer A City B Advisory
City B's City Administrator solicited Engineer A's professional advisory opinion on project delivery methods. The faithful agent duty required Engineer A to serve City B's informational and decision-making interests, not to use the advisory engagement as a vehicle for business development.
Engineer A was obligated to act as a faithful agent and trustee for City B in providing the advisory recommendation on project delivery methods, serving City B's interests by providing complete and objective analysis of all available options — not Engineer A's firm's commercial interests — within the bounds of professional ethics.
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits Invoked Engineer A City B
Advisory engagement with City B on project delivery method selection
Engineer A was asked by City B's City Administrator to provide a recommendation on project delivery methods; the faithful agent obligation required Engineer A to execute this advisory assignment diligently and in City B's interest, but the ethical limits of that obligation required that the advisory product be complete, objective, and free from self-interested distortion — conditions that Engineer A's selective memo failed to satisfy
The faithful agent obligation is bounded by ethical duties; an engineer cannot invoke the faithful agent role to justify providing only the information that serves the engineer's commercial interests while omitting information that would serve the client's decision-making needs
The faithful agent obligation, properly understood, requires serving the client's actual interests — which include receiving complete and objective advisory information — not the engineer's commercial interests dressed up as client service
Free Services Non-Exploitation Engineer A City B Advisory Memo
City B's City Administrator informally solicited a recommendation from Engineer A on project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project. Engineer A provided a free advisory memo covering only two of four funding-agency-approved delivery methods, accompanied by firm experience summaries, structured to favor the methodology under which Engineer A's firm could perform the work.
Free Services Non-exploitation for Business Development Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from providing free advisory services to City B's City Administrator in a form structured to favor Engineer A's commercial interests — specifically, by delivering only a partial comparative evaluation of project delivery methods that omitted two funding-agency-approved methodologies and accompanied the recommendation with firm experience summaries — rather than either referring the Administrator to complete resources or providing a genuinely complete and objective analysis.
At the time of preparing and delivering the advisory memo in response to City Administrator's informal solicitation
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information and the extension of free services
Free Services as Contract Inducement Engineer A City B Advisory
Engineer A had no existing contractual relationship with City B and provided the advisory memo without compensation, while simultaneously recommending the delivery method under which Engineer A's firm was positioned to provide construction services and appending firm experience summaries to the recommendation.
Free Services as Contract Inducement Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from providing a free, uncompensated advisory analysis of project delivery methods to City B's City Administrator when that analysis was structured — through selective presentation and accompanying self-promotional material — to position Engineer A's firm for a subsequent Progressive-Design-Build contract award, constituting an improper use of free professional services as an implicit inducement to secure future work.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.5.b; NSPE Code Section III.2.b
At the time of the informal solicitation and preparation of the advisory memo
Funding Agency Approved Project Delivery Methods Specification
Approved Project Delivery Methods Under Proposed Funding Source
Under the proposed funding source, there are four approved project delivery methods: Design-Bid-Build, Construction-Management-at-Risk, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and Progressive-Design-Build
City B Administrator in evaluating project delivery options; Engineer A in preparing recommendation memo
Establishes the four approved delivery methods available to City B — Design-Bid-Build, Construction-Management-at-Risk, Fixed-Price-Design-Build, and Progressive-Design-Build — against which Engineer A's selective presentation of only two options must be evaluated for completeness and professional integrity
Current (as applicable to City B's wastewater project funding)
Honesty In Professional Representations Violated By Engineer A Self-Promotional Memo
Summary memo and accompanying firm experience materials provided to City B Administrator
Engineer A's memo, by presenting only two of four approved delivery methods and accompanying the recommendation with firm experience summaries and references, implicitly represented to City B Administrator that the recommendation was a complete and objective professional advisory product, when in fact it was a selectively constructed document designed to position Engineer A's firm for subsequent engagement
Honesty in professional representations extends beyond explicit false statements to include implicit misrepresentations created by selective omission; presenting a partial analysis as a professional recommendation without disclosing its incompleteness is a form of professional dishonesty
Honesty obligations are not balanced against commercial interests; the engineer's duty to represent the advisory product honestly is not diminished by the desire to obtain subsequent work
Honesty in Professional Representations Invoked Against Engineer A Selective Analysis
Engineer A's partial and selective delivery method analysis — presented without disclosure of its incompleteness or of Engineer A's commercial interest in the outcome — constituted a form of dishonest professional representation, implying a completeness and objectivity that the analysis did not possess
Honesty in professional representations extends beyond affirmative false statements to encompass misleading presentations achieved through selective omission; presenting a partial analysis as if it were a complete evaluation is a form of professional misrepresentation
By their very words, the cited sections of the NSPE Code of Ethics provide appropriate guidance: 'objective and truthful,' 'include all relevant and pertinent information'
Honesty required Engineer A to either present a complete analysis or to explicitly characterize the analysis as partial and disclose the commercial interest motivating the selection of options presented
Incomplete Options Presentation to City B
From delivery of the summary memo to City Administrator; persists until City B is informed of all four approved options
City B's decision-making context, in which the City Administrator received a recommendation memo presenting only two of four approved delivery methods as viable, without disclosure of the omission
Not resolved in the facts presented; would terminate upon City B receiving complete options analysis
Engineer A delivered a memo identifying only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build as viable, omitting Construction-Management-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build without explanation
Incomplete Plans Submission Engineer A BER 99-8
Engineer A bid and won a design contract to provide a complete set of plans and specifications but submitted plans lacking much design detail in both drawings and specifications, acknowledged certain parts were arguably unbuildable, and did not inform anyone of the incompleteness at the time of submission.
Engineer A was prohibited from submitting plans and specifications that were incomplete — including unbuildable sections — without disclosing the incompleteness to the client at the time of submission, and was required to provide a complete set of design drawings and specifications as contracted.
Engineer A had a clear obligation to provide a complete set of design drawings and specifications on the project in which Engineer A was engaged, and the incomplete submission was clearly unethical
Furthermore, Engineer A did not inform anyone as to the incompleteness at the time of submission
Informal Advisory Referral Alternative Engineer A City Administrator
City Administrator solicited services from Engineer A informally. Engineer A had multiple compliant options available, including referral to library or subscription resources, but chose to provide a partial self-serving memo instead.
Informal Advisory Referral Alternative Obligation
When City B's City Administrator informally solicited advisory input on project delivery methods, Engineer A had the option — and arguably the obligation — to either refer the Administrator to complete authoritative resources covering all four approved methodologies, or to provide a complete and objective analysis of all four methodologies; Engineer A instead chose neither compliant path, providing instead a partial and self-serving analysis.
Upon receipt of City Administrator's informal solicitation, before preparing and delivering the advisory memo
However, by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information
Informal Solicitation Formal Ethics Applicability Engineer A City B
Engineer A had no existing contractual relationship with City B, which might have been interpreted as limiting the scope of ethical obligations. The Code of Ethics applies regardless of the formal or informal nature of the professional engagement.
Code of Ethics Universal Applicability Constraint
Engineer A was constrained by the full scope of the NSPE Code of Ethics in preparing and submitting the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator, notwithstanding the absence of a formal contractual relationship between Engineer A and City B at the time of the solicitation — establishing that the ethical obligations of objectivity, completeness, conflict of interest disclosure, and non-deception apply to informal professional advisory engagements as fully as to formal contractual engagements.
NSPE Code of Ethics — Preamble and Fundamental Canons; NSPE Code Section III.2.b
From the moment Engineer A accepted the informal advisory request from City B's City Administrator
Informal Solicitation of Private Firm (Action 1) → Free Services Rendered to Public Client (Event 4)
NSPE Code of Ethics - Fundamental Canons and Rules of Practice
National Society of Professional Engineers
Engineer A in preparing project delivery method recommendation
Primary normative authority governing Engineer A's obligation to provide complete, unbiased professional advice to City B Administrator, disclose self-interest in the recommended delivery method, and avoid misrepresentation by omission of viable alternatives
NSPE Code of Ethics - Objectivity and Truthfulness Provisions
By their very words, the cited sections of the NSPE Code of Ethics provide appropriate guidance: 'objective and truthful,' 'include all relevant and pertinent information,' 'not offer any gift or other valuable consideration in order to secure work.'
Cited directly as providing guidance on objectivity, truthfulness, inclusion of all relevant and pertinent information, and prohibition on offering gifts or valuable consideration to secure work
Non-Deception Objective Advisory Engineer A City B Delivery Method Memo
City B's City Administrator, who is not a licensed professional engineer, relied on Engineer A's advisory memo as a complete and objective analysis of available delivery methods. Engineer A's selective presentation created a materially false impression of the available options.
Engineer A was prohibited from presenting a selectively incomplete advisory memo to City B's City Administrator — omitting two of four approved delivery methods and recommending the method under which Engineer A stood to benefit financially — in a manner that created a false impression that the two presented methods were the only viable options, constituting deceptive professional conduct through selective omission.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.2.b; NSPE Code Section II.3.a; BER Case 95-5
At the time of preparation and submission of the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator
Objective Complete Reporting Engineer A Advisory Memo City B
Engineer A's advisory memo to City B omitted two of four funding-agency-approved delivery methods and recommended the method under which Engineer A's firm could commercially benefit, without disclosing that omission or the commercial interest.
Objective and Complete Reporting Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to be objective and truthful in the advisory memo provided to City B's City Administrator, including all relevant and pertinent information about all four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods, rather than presenting a selective analysis that omitted two approved options.
Objective and Complete Reporting Engineer A Partial Delivery Method Memo
Engineer A provided City B's City Administrator with a partial comparative evaluation of project delivery methods covering only two of four funding-agency-approved methodologies, omitting Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk, and accompanied the memo with firm experience summaries.
Engineer A was obligated to be objective and truthful in the advisory memo provided to City B's City Administrator and to include all relevant and pertinent information — including analysis of all four funding-agency-approved project delivery methodologies — rather than selectively presenting only two methodologies that favored Engineer A's commercial interests.
objective and truthful, include all relevant and pertinent information
At the time of preparing and delivering the advisory memo to City Administrator
Objectivity Principle Violated by Engineer A Self-Serving Recommendation
Engineer A failed to maintain objectivity in the delivery method recommendation by structuring the analysis to favor the methodology under which Engineer A's firm would be eligible to compete, allowing commercial self-interest to distort the professional advisory product
Objectivity in advisory engagements requires that the engineer's analysis and recommendations reflect genuine professional assessment of the client's interests rather than the engineer's own commercial interests; the objectivity obligation is heightened when the client lacks independent capacity to evaluate the completeness or bias of the advice
Objectivity and client loyalty are not in tension here — both require a complete, unbiased analysis; the only competing interest is Engineer A's commercial self-interest, which cannot override the objectivity obligation
Objectivity Violated By Engineer A Selective Memo
Summary memo on project delivery methods provided to City B Administrator
Engineer A failed to maintain objectivity by preparing an advisory memo that omitted two of the four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods, presenting only the two methods under which Engineer A's firm could perform work, and recommending the method most commercially advantageous to Engineer A's firm
Objectivity requires that advisory recommendations not be structured to favor the engineer's commercial interests; the selective presentation of only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build while omitting Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk constitutes a failure of professional objectivity
Objectivity is not balanced away by client loyalty or faithful agent obligations; those obligations require serving the client's actual interests, which are best served by objective and complete analysis
Omission of Two Delivery Methods (Action 3) → Incomplete Memo Received by Client (Event 3)
Professional Accountability Invoked Against Engineer A Failure to Disclose Incompleteness
Engineer A failed to take professional accountability for the incompleteness of the delivery method analysis by not informing City Administrator of its partial character at the time of submission, mirroring the BER Case 99-8 precedent in which an engineer submitted incomplete design documents without disclosing their incompleteness
Professional accountability requires engineers to affirmatively disclose known deficiencies in their work products rather than allowing clients to rely on those products without awareness of their limitations; the obligation to disclose incompleteness is independent of and in addition to the obligation to provide complete work
Engineer A did not inform anyone as to the incompleteness at the time of submission. Engineer A had a clear obligation to provide a complete set of design drawings and specifications on the project in which Engineer A was engaged, and the incomplete submission was clearly unethical.
Accountability and client loyalty both require disclosure of incompleteness; the failure to disclose compounds the original incompleteness violation by depriving the client of the ability to seek supplementary information
Not only did Engineer A acknowledge that fact, but even acknowledged that certain parts of the project were arguably unbuildable
Professional Accountability Invoked Engineer A Partial Analysis
Advisory memo and accompanying firm experience materials provided to City B Administrator
Engineer A bears professional accountability for the selective and incomplete advisory memo provided to City B, including accountability for the omission of two approved project delivery methods, the failure to disclose the commercial conflict of interest, and the embedding of self-promotional marketing materials in an ostensibly objective professional advisory product
Professional accountability requires that Engineer A acknowledge the deficiencies in the advisory product and not rationalize the omissions as reasonable simplification or appropriate scope limitation
Professional accountability is not diminished by the absence of a formal contractual relationship or by the fact that the advisory engagement was informal; the engineer's professional obligations attach to the advisory role regardless of contractual formality
Professional Report Integrity Standard - Completeness and Non-Omission Obligation
NSPE and professional engineering ethics community
Engineer A in preparing project delivery method recommendation memo to City B Administrator
Governs Engineer A's obligation to present all four funding-approved delivery methods in the recommendation memo rather than selectively presenting only two, particularly given Engineer A's financial interest in the recommended Progressive-Design-Build method
Prohibition on Disguised Commercial Solicitation Violated by Engineer A Free Services Extension
Engineer A provided free engineering advisory services to City Administrator in the form of a partial delivery method analysis structured to favor Engineer A's competitive position, constituting an improper extension of valuable consideration to secure future work in violation of the NSPE Code prohibition on offering gifts or valuable consideration to secure work
The prohibition on improper inducements required Engineer A either to charge appropriately for substantive advisory work or to limit the response to genuinely informal referrals to publicly available resources; by providing substantive (if incomplete) engineering analysis for free as a competitive tactic, Engineer A converted the advisory engagement into an improper inducement
Prohibition on Disguised Commercial Solicitation Through Free Services
by providing only a partial, comparative engineering evaluation with no analysis and a recommendation to Engineer A's benefit, the conduct constituted both incomplete and self-serving information (as in 95-5 and 99-8) and the extension of free services. Both aspects of the conduct were unethical in the view of the BER
The BER identified the free services extension as a distinct and independent ethical violation from the incompleteness violation; the permissible alternatives identified by the BER (referral to resources, or complete analysis compiled from referenced sources) both avoid the improper inducement problem while still serving the client
Engineer A could have referred City Administrator to resources (whether library, free, or subscription) that provided complete analyses of the various methodologies. That would be a completely ethical informal response to an informal solicitation, involving no provision of engineering services
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked By Engineer A Advisory Role
Wastewater system improvements project delivery method recommendation to City B
Engineer A's advisory recommendation to a public agency on wastewater infrastructure project delivery methods implicates public welfare because the delivery method selected affects the quality, cost, and timeliness of public infrastructure serving City B's residents; providing a self-serving incomplete analysis risks directing public resources toward a suboptimal delivery method
Public welfare in this context requires that advisory engineering services provided to a public agency be complete, objective, and free from self-interested distortion, because the public bears the consequences of infrastructure procurement decisions made on the basis of the engineer's advice
Public welfare obligation requires completeness and objectivity in advisory recommendations even when this conflicts with the engineer's commercial interest in being selected for subsequent work
Qualification Representation Standard - Engineer A's Experience Disclosure
Engineer A in accompanying the delivery method recommendation with firm experience summary
Governs the ethical permissibility of Engineer A appending firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build alongside the recommendation, raising questions about whether this constitutes appropriate qualification disclosure or improper self-promotion that compromises the objectivity of the advisory recommendation
Was it ethical for Engineer A to provide a recommendation on project delivery methods that only included two of the possible methods, without providing the complete analysis and the reasoning behind recommending the two selected methods over others?
Given that Engineer A had no contractual relationship with City B at the time of the request, did the informal nature of the solicitation diminish or eliminate Engineer A's ethical obligations to provide a complete and objective analysis, or do professional ethics apply with equal force regardless of whether a formal engagement exists?
Was Engineer A's omission of the Construction Manager at Risk method particularly significant given that the funding agency imposes a distinct-entity requirement for that method — a constraint that would have directly prevented Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record under that delivery method — and did failing to disclose this regulatory nuance constitute a material misrepresentation to a non-engineer client?
Because City B's Administrator is not a licensed professional engineer, does Engineer A bear a heightened duty of candor and completeness compared to what might be owed to a technically sophisticated client, and how should the vulnerability of a non-engineer public official factor into the ethical evaluation of selective information presentation?
Should Engineer A have declined to provide the advisory memo entirely and instead referred City Administrator to a neutral third-party resource or independent consultant, given that Engineer A's financial interest in one of the delivery methods created an irreconcilable conflict at the outset of the engagement?
Was it ethical for Engineer A to recommend the method for which they could provide services?
Does the Faithful Agent Obligation — requiring Engineer A to serve City B's interests — come into direct conflict with the Conflict of Interest Disclosure principle when Engineer A's most faithful service to City B might have been to recommend a delivery method (such as Design-Bid-Build or Construction Manager at Risk) for which Engineer A could not provide services, thereby acting against Engineer A's own commercial interests?
How should the tension between the Prohibition on Disguised Commercial Solicitation and the Board's finding that including marketing materials was not unethical be resolved — does the ethical permissibility of appending qualifications and references depend entirely on whether the underlying advisory analysis was itself complete and objective, such that marketing materials become impermissible only when they accompany a selectively constructed recommendation?
Does the principle of Public Welfare Paramount conflict with the principle of Completeness and Non-Selectivity when a genuinely superior delivery method for public infrastructure — one that Engineer A sincerely believes is best for City B — happens to be the same method from which Engineer A would financially benefit, and if so, how should an engineer navigate a situation where self-interest and public benefit appear to align?
Is there an irresolvable tension between the principle of Professional Accountability — which holds Engineer A responsible for the completeness of professional representations — and the Regulatory and Funding Constraint Completeness principle, in that Engineer A's selective omission of the Construction Manager at Risk method not only misled City B but also obscured a binding regulatory requirement of the funding agency, compounding a single act of omission into simultaneous violations of both professional and regulatory transparency obligations?
Was it ethical for Engineer A to include project summaries and references to encourage selection of their firm for the recommended method for project delivery?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A fulfill their categorical duty of objectivity and completeness when responding to City Administrator's informal solicitation, given that the duty to provide truthful professional reports applies regardless of whether a formal contractual relationship exists?
From a consequentialist perspective, did Engineer A's selective presentation of only two delivery methods produce net harm to City B's public infrastructure decision-making, and does the potential downstream harm to ratepayers and public welfare outweigh any efficiency benefit Engineer A may have believed justified narrowing the analysis?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer A demonstrate the professional virtues of honesty and integrity when they appended firm experience summaries and project references to what was ostensibly an objective advisory memo, or does this commingling of advisory and promotional content reveal a character disposition incompatible with the role of a trusted engineering advisor?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer A violate a duty of faithful agency to City B by omitting the Construction Manager at Risk option — particularly given the funding agency's distinct-entity requirement that would have structurally prevented Engineer A from serving as Engineer of Record under that method — thereby concealing a material regulatory constraint that bore directly on City B's informed decision?
Would Engineer A's recommendation have been ethically defensible if they had explicitly disclosed at the outset of the memo that their firm was qualified to provide services only under Progressive-Design-Build and Construction Manager at Risk, and that this qualification gap influenced the scope of the analysis presented?
What if Engineer A had declined to provide the delivery method analysis and instead referred City Administrator to a neutral third-party resource or an independent engineering consultant with no stake in the outcome — would this have better served City B's interests and satisfied Engineer A's ethical obligations, and does the Board's suggestion of this referral pathway imply an affirmative duty to recuse when a conflict of interest cannot be fully mitigated?
Had Engineer A provided a complete comparative analysis of all four approved delivery methods — including an objective evaluation of Design-Bid-Build and Fixed-Price-Design-Build alongside the two methods they could service — and still recommended Progressive-Design-Build on documented merit, would the inclusion of firm experience summaries and references at the end of the memo have remained ethically permissible, or does the Board's approval of marketing materials depend on the prior condition of analytical completeness?
If City B had been a sophisticated engineering client rather than a non-engineer City Administrator, would Engineer A's selective presentation of delivery methods still constitute an ethical violation, or does the vulnerability of the non-engineer client amplify the severity of the breach by exploiting an informational asymmetry that a licensed professional engineer has a heightened duty to correct?
Referral Alternative Ethical Pathway Engineer A City Administrator Informal Solicitation
City Administrator informally solicited delivery method guidance from Engineer A. The BER identified that Engineer A had ethically permissible alternatives — referral to library or subscription resources, or provision of a complete neutral analysis — that would have discharged the advisory obligation without creating the self-interest conflict that the partial self-serving memo created.
When City B's City Administrator informally solicited advisory input on project delivery methods, Engineer A was constrained from providing a self-serving partial analysis and was instead required to either refer the City Administrator to neutral resources providing complete analyses, or provide a complete objective analysis of all four methodologies — establishing that the informal nature of the solicitation did not reduce the ethical obligations attaching to the advisory response actually provided.
NSPE Code of Ethics — objectivity and truthfulness provisions; BER Cases 95-5 and 99-8
At time of informal solicitation receipt and advisory response preparation
In the present case, City Administrator solicited services from Engineer A. It is not clear whether City Administrator knowingly solicited a donation of services.
Regulatory Constraint Accurate Representation Engineer A Funding Agency Requirements City B
The funding agency imposed specific regulatory constraints on the approved delivery methods, including a requirement that the CM-at-Risk firm and Engineer of Record be two distinct entities. Engineer A's partial advisory memo failed to accurately and completely represent these regulatory constraints, depriving City B of information necessary to evaluate the feasibility and implications of each delivery method.
Regulatory Constraint Accurate Representation in Advisory Constraint
Engineer A was required to accurately and completely represent to City B's City Administrator all funding agency regulatory constraints governing the available delivery methods — including the entity separation requirement for Construction-Manager-at-Risk — and was prohibited from omitting or mischaracterizing material regulatory constraints that would affect City B's ability to implement any recommended delivery method.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections II.3.a and III.2.b; Funding agency approved delivery method specifications
Throughout preparation and submission of advisory memo to City Administrator
Regulatory Constraint Complete Representation Engineer A City B Funding Agency
The funding agency approved four delivery methods and imposed an entity-separation requirement on Construction Manager at Risk. Engineer A's memo omitted Construction Manager at Risk entirely and did not address the entity-separation requirement, depriving City B of complete regulatory information needed for an informed decision.
Regulatory Constraint Complete Representation in Advisory Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to accurately and completely represent all funding-agency regulatory constraints in the advisory memo to City B, including the requirement that if Construction Manager at Risk is selected, the CM-at-Risk firm and the Engineer of Record must be two distinct entities — a constraint that may have affected the comparative evaluation of that option.
Regulatory Constraint Complete Representation Engineer A Funding Agency Requirements
Engineer A's advisory memo omitted two of the four funding-agency-approved project delivery methodologies, thereby misrepresenting the regulatory landscape to City Administrator.
Engineer A was obligated to accurately and completely represent to City B's City Administrator the full landscape of funding agency requirements governing project delivery method selection — including that the funding agency had approved four methodologies, not merely the two presented — so that the Administrator's decision was made with full awareness of the regulatory framework.
At the time of preparing and delivering the advisory memo
Regulatory Constraint Omission Engineer A CM-at-Risk Entity Separation City B
The funding agency imposed a specific entity separation requirement for CM-at-Risk that would have affected City B's evaluation of that delivery method. Engineer A omitted CM-at-Risk from the advisory memo entirely, thereby avoiding the need to disclose this regulatory constraint — and potentially avoiding disclosure of Engineer A's own qualification to serve under CM-at-Risk.
Engineer A was constrained from omitting from the advisory memo the funding agency's requirement that, if Construction-Manager-at-Risk is selected, the CM-at-Risk firm and the Engineer of Record must be two distinct entities — a regulatory constraint that materially affects the comparative analysis of delivery methods and that Engineer A may have had a financial interest in suppressing, given that Engineer A is qualified to provide services under CM-at-Risk.
Funding Agency Regulatory Requirements; NSPE Code of Ethics Sections II.3.a, III.2.b
Regulatory Funding Constraint Completeness Violated By Engineer A
Advisory memo on project delivery methods for wastewater system improvements project with specific funding source
Engineer A's advisory memo failed to accurately represent the full regulatory landscape governing the project delivery method selection, omitting Fixed-Price-Design-Build and Construction-Manager-at-Risk from the analysis and failing to disclose the funding agency's requirement that Construction-Manager-at-Risk engagements use separate Engineer of Record and CM-at-Risk entities — a constraint that would have been material to City B's evaluation of that option
The funding agency's four-method approval framework and the entity-separation requirement for Construction-Manager-at-Risk were regulatory constraints that Engineer A was professionally obligated to accurately and completely represent; omitting two approved methods and the entity-separation constraint produced a materially incomplete regulatory picture
Regulatory and Funding Constraint Completeness in Advisory Analysis
Regulatory completeness is not a matter of professional discretion; the engineer's obligation to accurately represent the applicable regulatory framework is not diminished by the scope of the engagement or the engineer's commercial interests
Regulatory Funding Source Delivery Method Constraints
Throughout the project planning and delivery method selection process
Under the proposed funding source, there are four approved project delivery methods
The funding agency's constraints on approved delivery methods and the requirement that Construction Manager at Risk firm and Engineer of Record be distinct entities
Project delivery method selection and contract execution in compliance with funding requirements
City B's selection of a specific funding source that carries regulatory constraints on permissible delivery methods
Regulatory and Funding Constraint Completeness Violated by Engineer A Omission of Funding Agency Requirements
City B wastewater system improvements project delivery method selection
Engineer A's partial delivery method analysis failed to accurately represent the full landscape of funding agency requirements specifying four approved delivery methodologies, instead presenting a selective analysis that omitted methodologies disfavored by Engineer A's commercial interests, thereby depriving City B of a complete picture of its regulatory options
The regulatory completeness obligation required Engineer A to identify all four funding-agency-approved delivery methodologies and to analyze each accurately, including constraints and requirements associated with each, rather than filtering the analysis to present only those options favorable to Engineer A
No legitimate tension — complete representation of the regulatory landscape serves both the client's interests and the public interest in lawful procurement; the only competing consideration was Engineer A's commercial interest, which cannot override the completeness obligation
City B's City Administrator to recommend project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project
Scope of Practice Delivery Method Advisory Competence Boundary Engineer A
Engineer A's qualification to provide services under Progressive-Design-Build and CM-at-Risk — but not under Design-Bid-Build or Fixed-Price-Design-Build — created a structural competence and conflict dynamic that constrained the objectivity of Engineer A's advisory capacity across all four delivery methods.
Engineer A's scope of practice in providing the advisory recommendation was bounded by the obligation to present only those delivery method assessments within Engineer A's competence to evaluate objectively — and was further constrained by the ethical prohibition on allowing Engineer A's own qualification status under specific delivery methods to distort the scope or content of the advisory analysis provided to City B.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.2.a; NSPE Code Section III.2.b
Selective Delivery Method Presentation Engineer A City B Advisory Memo
Engineer A, having no existing contractual relationship with City B, was informally asked by the City Administrator to recommend project delivery methods for a wastewater system improvements project. Engineer A presented only two of four funding-agency-approved methods and recommended the one under which Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide construction services.
Selective Delivery Method Presentation Prohibition Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from presenting only Design-Bid-Build and Progressive-Design-Build to City B's City Administrator while omitting Construction-Manager-at-Risk and Fixed-Price-Design-Build from the advisory memo, given that all four methods were approved by the funding agency and the omission served Engineer A's financial self-interest in securing a Progressive-Design-Build engagement.
NSPE Code of Ethics Sections II.2.a, II.3.a, III.2.b; BER Case 95-5
Self-Interest Conflict Disclosure Engineer A City B Delivery Method Recommendation
Engineer A recommended Progressive-Design-Build to City B while simultaneously being qualified and positioned to provide construction services under that delivery method, creating an undisclosed financial interest in the outcome of the recommendation.
Engineer A was constrained from providing an advisory recommendation on project delivery methods to City B without first disclosing that Engineer A's firm was qualified to provide construction services under Progressive-Design-Build — the method Engineer A recommended — creating a direct financial conflict of interest that required affirmative disclosure before the advisory relationship could proceed on an ethically sound basis.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.4; NSPE Code Section III.2.b
Prior to and at the time of submission of the advisory memo to City B's City Administrator
Self-Promotional Material Non-Commingling Engineer A Advisory Memo
Engineer A's advisory memo to City Administrator included firm experience summaries alongside the partial delivery method recommendation, blurring the line between objective advisory analysis and commercial solicitation.
Self-Promotional Material Non-Commingling with Objective Advisory Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from commingling firm experience summaries and capability statements with the advisory recommendation on project delivery methods provided to City B's City Administrator, so that the advisory opinion was presented as objective professional analysis rather than as a vehicle for business development.
Self-Promotional Material Non-Commingling Engineer A Advisory Memo City B
Engineer A accompanied the advisory recommendation of Progressive-Design-Build with a summary of the firm's experience with Progressive-Design-Build projects and references from past projects, effectively converting an ostensibly objective advisory memo into a marketing solicitation without disclosure.
Engineer A was obligated to refrain from including firm experience summaries and project references for Progressive-Design-Build in the same communication as the advisory recommendation to City B, or to clearly separate and disclose the self-promotional nature of those materials so that the City Administrator was not misled about the objective character of the advisory opinion.
Self-Serving Delivery Method Recommendation
Self-Serving Delivery Method Recommendation (Action 4) + Appending Firm Experience and References (Action 5) → Client Decision Vulnerability Created (Event 5)
Transparency Obligation Violated By Engineer A Advisory Memo
Advisory memo on project delivery methods and accompanying firm experience summary
Engineer A's advisory memo lacked transparency in two respects: (1) it did not disclose that two of the four funding-agency-approved project delivery methods had been excluded from the analysis, and (2) it did not disclose that Engineer A's firm had a commercial interest in the recommended method and had embedded marketing materials in the advisory product
Transparency in professional advisory relationships requires that the client be able to assess the completeness and objectivity of the advice received; Engineer A's memo denied City B Administrator the information necessary to make that assessment
Transparency obligations are not balanced against commercial interests; the engineer's duty to be transparent about the scope and limitations of the advisory product is not diminished by the desire to obtain subsequent work
cure period before test hammer drops before count began
incomplete plan submission before acknowledgment of incompleteness
pile driving to installed depth before cure period