Absence of Communication Between Engineer A and Engineer B During Redesign
From Engineer B's retention by the client through completion of the redesign; no communication occurred at any point
At no time after Engineer B was retained were there any communications between the two engineers
Inter-Engineer Communication Absent During Active Redesign State
The professional relationship (or lack thereof) between Engineer A and Engineer B throughout the redesign engagement
Not terminated during the described period; the case states no communications occurred at any time after Engineer B was retained
Engineer B being retained to redesign Engineer A's sealed plans without any notification to or communication with Engineer A
Accept Engagement Without Notifying Engineer A
Accept Engagement Without Notifying Engineer A (Action 3) → Maintain Silence Toward Engineer A Throughout (Action 8)
In Case 79-7 an engineer was asked to inspect mechanical and electrical engineering work performed seven years earlier.
For the reasons cited in Case 79-7 we think it would have been wiser and more professional for Engineer B to consult with Engineer A before undertaking to modify the plans prepared by Engineer A.
Said the Board: 'It may be helpful for future guidance to again point out that the purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit ... comments or explanations for... technical decision, thereby enabling the reviewing engineer to have the benefit of a fuller understanding of the technical considerations in the original design in framing . . . comments or suggestions for the ultimate benefit of the client.'
Board of Ethical Review as analogical precedent for the notification and consultation obligations in the instant case
Established the rationale for Section III.8.a. (formerly Section 12(a)): that the original engineer must be notified of a review so they may submit comments or explanations, enabling the reviewing engineer to have a fuller understanding of the original design; applied analogically to Engineer B's conduct in modifying Engineer A's plans
NSPE Board of Ethical Review — Prior Cases on Plan Alteration and Sealing Obligations
Engineer B reviewed the original drawings, made changes on the grading plans
Engineer B also made major design changes to the storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities
Ethics reviewers analyzing Engineer B's conduct
Analogical precedents from the NSPE Board of Ethical Review addressing situations where engineers altered or used sealed plans of predecessor engineers, providing pattern-based ethical reasoning for this case
BER Case 79-7 Rationale Cross-Factual Application to Case 82-5
The Board applied the rationale of Case 79-7 to the present case despite factual differences regarding the discharge status of Engineer A
BER Precedent Rationale Cross-Factual Relevance Constraint
Although BER Case 79-7 involved different facts (no formal discharge of the predecessor engineer), the rationale articulated in Case 79-7 for the purpose of Section III.8.a — enabling the reviewed engineer to submit comments and explanations for technical decisions — remained relevant to the analysis of Engineer B's obligations in the present case, constraining the Board to apply the underlying policy reasons even while acknowledging the factual differences.
BER Case 79-7; NSPE Code Section III.8.a
While the facts of Case 79-7 are different from those in the instant case in that in the instant case the client clearly discharged Engineer A from his services, we think that many of the reasons for Section III.8.a. as stated in Case 79-7 are relevant to the discussion of the facts present in this case.
At the time of ethics adjudication of Engineer B's conduct
It may be helpful for future guidance to again point out that the purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit ... comments or explanations
CausalLink_Accept Engagement Without Noti
CausalLink_Claim Partial Rather Than Full
CausalLink_Maintain Silence Toward Engine
CausalLink_Modify Grading Plans Without N
CausalLink_Place Vague Responsibility Not
CausalLink_Redesign Public Improvements W
Change Notation Specificity Violation by Engineer B on Title Sheet
Engineer B's title sheet notation on the public improvement plan set
Engineer B's notation on the title sheet of the public improvement plans that he was 'taking responsibility for the revisions of the plans' was found ethically insufficient because it failed to identify with specificity the changes made to grading plans, housing pads, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities, rendering the notation virtually meaningless as a professional accountability mechanism
A blanket title-sheet disclaimer of responsibility for 'revisions' without specifying what was revised fails to serve the public record function of engineering documentation and does not constitute meaningful professional accountability
Change Notation Specificity Requirement in Successor Design Obligation
Engineer B's failure to state with specificity what those changes in fact were made such a notation on the title sheet virtually meaningless.
The Board found that the existence of some notation did not cure the ethical deficiency — the specificity of the notation is itself an ethical requirement, not merely a formality
His failure to do so constituted a form of deception which places him in violation of Section III.3.a.
It is clear that Engineer B had an ethical obligation to make all necessary notations of changes which he had made with respect to the grading plans, housing pads, routing of streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities.
We acknowledge that Engineer B did in fact note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans that he was taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans.' However, as we have indicated, Engineer B's failure to state with specificity what those changes in fact were made such a notation on the title sheet virtually meaningless.
Claim Partial Rather Than Full Design Responsibility
Client Direction Does Not Authorize Ethical Violation in Plan Transfer
Transfer of sealed plans from client to Engineer B
Client autonomy in engineering service provider selection
The client's act of transferring Engineer A's sealed plans to Engineer B and directing Engineer B to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize Engineer B to make major changes without re-sealing modified sheets — the client's direction cannot override Engineer B's independent professional obligation to properly certify all work bearing their design decisions.
The client's authority over the engineering engagement is bounded by the professional ethics obligations of the engineers involved; the client cannot direct engineers to adopt procedures that violate sealing and certification requirements.
Engineer B Undocumented Alteration Successor Design Engineer
Client Direction Does Not Authorize Ethical Violation
The client gave Engineer B the set of plans produced by Engineer A to use as a guide in the redesign.
Client direction over the scope and approach of engineering services does not extend to authorization of professional certification procedures that violate licensing law and ethics requirements.
Engineer B was later retained by the client to review and redesign the project.
He made no notation of the changes, did not sign the plans, and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact.
Client Plan Transfer Non-Authorization Engineer B Unsealed Alteration
The client gave Engineer B Engineer A's sealed plans to use as a guide, and Engineer B treated this client authorization as sufficient justification for making undocumented, unsealed modifications to the sealed plan sets.
Client Plan Transfer Non-Authorization of Successor Unsealed Alteration Constraint
The client's act of transferring Engineer A's sealed drawings to Engineer B and directing Engineer B to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize Engineer B to make material design changes without complying with all professional obligations governing modification of sealed engineering documents — including removing Engineer A's seal, affixing his own seal, and documenting all changes.
NSPE Code of Ethics; State engineering licensure regulations
Throughout Engineer B's redesign engagement
Engineer B reviewed the original drawings, made changes on the grading plans...
Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Obligation for Engineer A Toward Engineer B
Engineer B's failure to re-seal and document altered plans
Public safety risks from improperly documented altered plans
Before escalating to formal reporting to the licensing authority, Engineer A should first engage Engineer B directly to make Engineer B aware of the professional obligations arising from the seal alteration situation and provide an opportunity for Engineer B to voluntarily correct the plan sets through proper re-sealing and documentation.
The collegial engagement obligation applies as a sequencing requirement before formal reporting, though its weight is reduced by the magnitude of Engineer B's violations and the complete absence of any communication between the engineers.
Engineer A Discharged Original Design Engineer
Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Obligation for Inadvertent Violations
At no time after Engineer B was retained were there any communications between the two engineers.
The collegial engagement obligation creates a first-step requirement but does not excuse inaction if Engineer B fails to correct the violations; the self-policing obligation then requires formal reporting.
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans, leaving Engineer A's signature and seal intact, stating that he, Engineer B, is taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans,' making no notation what those changes were.
Engineer B was not unethical in performing services for the client without first notifying Engineer A.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer B was not unethical in accepting the engagement without notifying Engineer A, the Board's conclusion should not be read as endorsing complete silence between the two engineers throughout the entire redesign process. The permissibility of accepting the engagement without prior notification is grounded in the practical reality that a discharged engineer has no continuing contractual authority over a client's project. However, once Engineer B reviewed Engineer A's sealed plans and determined that material alterations were necessary — particularly alterations as sweeping as changing housing pad elevations, rerouting streets, and redesigning storm drains across a 43-sheet plan set — a distinct and separate prudential obligation arose to consult Engineer A before proceeding. The Board's conclusion addresses only the threshold question of engagement acceptance; it does not immunize Engineer B's subsequent silence throughout the redesign. The distinction between permissible engagement without notification and ethically obligatory pre-alteration consultation is a nuance the Board's explicit conclusions leave unresolved, and the failure to draw that line risks being read as broader authorization for successor-engineer silence than the ethical framework supports.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer B was unethical in making changes without clearly indicating them understates the severity of the violation by treating it as a documentation deficiency rather than a form of deceptive professional conduct. Engineer B's failure to notate changes was not a mere administrative omission: it left Engineer A's seal and signature as the only visible attribution on substantially redesigned sheets, thereby affirmatively misrepresenting to reviewing authorities, contractors, and the public that Engineer A's original design remained intact and operative. This is not a case of incomplete paperwork — it is a case where the absence of notation created a false professional record. The ethical violation is therefore better characterized under the principle prohibiting material misrepresentation of fact through omission, not merely as a failure to follow change-documentation conventions. The public safety stakes of a subdivision plan set — governing storm drainage, utility routing, street geometry, and housing pad elevations — amplify this characterization: any party relying on the plans to understand design responsibility would be affirmatively misled into believing Engineer A remained the responsible engineer of record for sheets he had never reviewed in their altered form.
The Board's finding that Engineer B was unethical in failing to note his assumption of full responsibility for the entire plan set reveals a deeper structural problem that the Board's framing does not fully articulate: when a successor engineer makes changes of the scope Engineer B made — affecting storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing across both a grading plan set and a 38-sheet public improvement plan set — the cumulative effect is not a revision of an existing design but a functional replacement of it. At that threshold of redesign, the ethical obligation is not merely to annotate changes on existing sheets but to treat the integrated document set as a new design requiring fresh sealing of all affected sheets under Engineer B's own seal and signature, with Engineer A's seal removed from every sheet Engineer B altered. Engineer B's placement of a vague responsibility note on only the title sheet of the public improvement plans — while making no notation whatsoever on the grading plans — compounded the violation by creating an asymmetric and internally inconsistent attribution record across the two plan sets. The Board's conclusion correctly identifies the failure to assume full responsibility, but the appropriate remedy implied by that conclusion is not a better-worded title sheet note: it is complete re-sealing of altered sheets and removal of Engineer A's seal from those sheets, which is the only mechanism that accurately represents the actual state of professional accountability for the integrated design.
A significant issue the Board's explicit conclusions do not address is Engineer A's continuing professional exposure arising from the misuse of his seal. Although Engineer A was discharged and fully compensated, his seal and signature remained the only visible professional attribution on substantially altered plans that were presumably submitted to public authorities and used to guide construction. Engineer A therefore bears a residual accountability risk — not because he authorized the alterations, but because third parties relying on the plans have no mechanism to know that the design they are reviewing is not the design Engineer A sealed. Upon discovering that his sealed plans had been materially altered without his knowledge or consent, Engineer A incurred an affirmative obligation to investigate the scope of the alterations, demand that Engineer B or the client correct the attribution record, and if those demands were not met, to report the matter to the relevant licensing authority. The seriousness of Engineer B's conduct — leaving a predecessor's seal intact on fundamentally redesigned plans — is not the kind of inadvertent or technical violation that triggers a collegial pre-reporting consultation obligation; it is a deliberate course of conduct that removes any ethical requirement for Engineer A to first seek informal resolution before escalating to regulatory authorities.
The Board's conclusions focus entirely on Engineer B's conduct and Engineer A's residual exposure, but the client's role as an enabling condition for the ethical violations deserves independent analytical attention. The client discharged Engineer A, obtained the original drawings, and then transferred those sealed plans to Engineer B as a working basis for redesign — without requiring that Engineer A's seal be removed before redesign commenced, and without imposing any contractual obligation on Engineer B to properly attribute changes or assume documented responsibility for the integrated design. While clients are not licensed engineers and cannot be held to the same professional code, the client's act of transferring sealed plans to a successor engineer without any protective conditions effectively enabled Engineer B's misconduct by providing him with a ready-made attribution vehicle — Engineer A's seal — that Engineer B then exploited through inaction. This does not shift ethical responsibility away from Engineer B, but it does establish that the client's plan transfer was not ethically neutral: it was an act that carried foreseeable risk of exactly the kind of attribution confusion that materialized, and a client acting in good faith should have been advised by Engineer B — or should have independently required — that Engineer A's seal be superseded before redesign work was incorporated into the plan set.
Engineer B was unethical in making changes on specific sheets of a set of drawings without clearly indicating those changes.
In response to Q101: Engineer A bears a continuing professional and potentially legal exposure arising from the fact that his seal and signature remained physically intact on plans that Engineer B materially altered. A professional seal is not merely a historical artifact of authorship; it is an ongoing representation to reviewing authorities, contractors, and the public that the sealed engineer stands behind the technical content of the document. When Engineer A discovered — or reasonably should have discovered — that his sealed plans had been fundamentally redesigned without his knowledge or consent, he acquired an affirmative obligation to investigate the scope of the alterations, demand in writing that the client and Engineer B correct the attribution and seal status of the documents, and, if correction was refused or ignored, report the matter to the relevant licensing authority. Failure to take these steps would leave Engineer A passively complicit in a continuing misrepresentation to every party who relied on those documents. The discharge and full payment of fees did not extinguish Engineer A's seal-based accountability; it merely ended his contractual relationship with the client.
In response to Q102: The client's act of transferring Engineer A's original sealed drawings to Engineer B carries independent ethical weight, though the Board did not address it explicitly. By providing sealed plans to a successor engineer without requiring that Engineer A's seal be removed, superseded, or formally superseded before redesign commenced, the client created the enabling condition for the ethical violations that followed. While clients are not licensed engineers and cannot be held to the same professional code, the transfer of sealed documents for the purpose of redesign — without notifying the original engineer or requiring proper attribution protocols — constitutes an act that implicitly authorized Engineer B to work within a framework that was structurally deceptive from the outset. The client did not merely hand over reference material; the client handed over documents bearing the professional imprimatur of Engineer A and directed Engineer B to use them as the foundation for a redesign. This transfer did not, however, relieve Engineer B of his independent professional obligation to handle the sealed documents correctly. The client's facilitation of the situation is an ethically significant enabling condition, but it does not transfer or dilute Engineer B's professional responsibility.
In response to Q103: Engineer B's placement of a vague responsibility note on only the title sheet of the public improvement plans — while making no notation whatsoever on the grading plans — constitutes a form of deceptive conduct that could materially mislead reviewing authorities, contractors, and the public. The note claimed responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without identifying which sheets were revised, what the nature of those revisions was, or how extensively the underlying design had changed. A reviewing authority examining any individual sheet of the grading plans would have no indication that Engineer B had altered it; Engineer A's seal and signature would appear to authenticate the content as Engineer A's original work. Similarly, a contractor working from a specific sheet of the public improvement plans would have no basis to know that the dimensions, routing, or specifications on that sheet had been changed by an engineer who had not sealed it. The vague title-sheet note, rather than providing transparency, created a false sense of partial disclosure — suggesting that some minor revisions had been noted while concealing the fundamental scope of the redesign. This is not merely insufficient disclosure; it is a technically true but functionally misleading representation that violates the prohibition against statements containing material omissions.
In response to Q104: When Engineer B made fundamental redesign changes affecting storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing across a 43-sheet plan set, the cumulative scope of those changes obligated him to treat the integrated document set as a new design requiring fresh sealing of all materially altered sheets rather than a selective notation on a single title sheet. The ethical standard for attribution and change notation is not merely quantitative — it is qualitative. When changes are so fundamental that they alter the structural, hydraulic, and geometric character of the design, the successor engineer cannot credibly claim to be annotating a predecessor's work; he is producing a new design that happens to share a document lineage with the original. In such circumstances, Engineer B was obligated to remove Engineer A's seal from every sheet he altered, affix his own seal and signature to those sheets, and assume documented responsibility for the integrated design as a whole. The failure to do so was not a minor procedural lapse; it was a fundamental breach of the principle that a professional seal represents active, knowing, and current accountability for the technical content it authenticates.
In response to Q201: The Board's conclusion that Engineer B was not required to notify Engineer A before accepting the engagement does not conflict irreconcilably with the principle that Engineer B had a heightened obligation once he began materially altering sealed plans. The two principles operate at different temporal and functional stages of the engagement. The permissibility of accepting the engagement without notification is grounded in the practical reality that a discharged engineer has no veto over a client's choice of successor, and requiring pre-engagement notification would give discharged engineers an unwarranted form of project control. However, once Engineer B moved from reviewing Engineer A's plans to fundamentally redesigning them — altering elevations, routing, dimensions, and drainage across both plan sets — he crossed a threshold at which the collegial consultation norm became not merely prudent but ethically compelling. At that point, the question was no longer whether Engineer B could accept the engagement, but whether he could proceed with material alterations to sealed documents without either consulting Engineer A or removing Engineer A's seal. The Board's conclusion on Q1 addresses the former; the violations identified in Q2 and Q3 address the latter. The two principles are therefore sequential rather than conflicting: permissible engagement acceptance does not license impermissible alteration conduct.
In response to Q202: Engineer A faces a genuine tension between two simultaneously operative principles: his ongoing accountability as the engineer whose seal authenticates the documents, and his right to seal integrity following discharge. These principles are not fully reconcilable in the abstract, but they can be practically resolved by recognizing that Engineer A's residual accountability is precisely what generates his affirmative right — and obligation — to demand correction. Because Engineer A's seal continues to represent him to the world as the responsible engineer for the technical content of those documents, he has both the standing and the duty to insist that his seal be removed from any sheet he did not author in its current form. The apparent conflict dissolves when Engineer A's accountability is understood not as passive liability but as active professional responsibility: he is accountable, therefore he must act. Inaction in the face of known seal misuse would transform residual accountability into complicit silence. Engineer A cannot simultaneously claim that his seal has been wrongfully retained and decline to take the steps necessary to correct that wrongful retention.
In response to Q203: The public safety stakes of a 43-sheet subdivision plan set — encompassing grading, storm drainage, sewer, utility, and street design — do elevate the ethical standard for attribution and change notation beyond what a minimal compliance reading of the Board's conclusions might suggest. The Board correctly identified Engineer B's conduct as a violation, but characterizing the vague title-sheet note as merely 'insufficient' risks understating the affirmative deceptive effect it produced. In a subdivision plan set of this scale and complexity, reviewing authorities, municipal inspectors, and contractors routinely rely on the sealed engineer's identity as a proxy for design accountability. When Engineer B left Engineer A's seal intact across all sheets while making fundamental changes to drainage, elevations, and routing, he did not merely fail to provide adequate notice — he actively maintained a false representation of authorship and accountability that could cause reviewing authorities to approve plans they believed were Engineer A's work, and could cause contractors to build to specifications that neither engineer had jointly validated. The public welfare principle demands that the ethical standard for attribution in large-scale subdivision plans be treated as a substantive safety requirement, not merely a professional courtesy.
In response to Q204: The principle requiring collegial pre-reporting counsel toward Engineer B before notifying licensing authorities does not apply with full force here because Engineer B's conduct — leaving a predecessor's seal intact on fundamentally redesigned plans across 43 sheets while providing only a vague and unspecific title-sheet disclaimer — constitutes a serious rather than inadvertent violation. The collegial pre-reporting norm is designed to give engineers who have made honest mistakes or procedural oversights an opportunity to self-correct before facing regulatory consequences. It is not designed to shield engineers who have made deliberate or structurally deceptive choices about attribution and seal management. Engineer B's conduct was not the product of ignorance about sealing requirements; it was a sustained pattern of omission across two plan sets, involving multiple sheets, multiple design disciplines, and a complete absence of any notation on the grading plans. When Engineer A discovers this situation, he is therefore not ethically required to first counsel Engineer B before reporting to licensing authorities, though prudence may still counsel an initial direct communication to demand correction. If Engineer B refuses to correct the documents, Engineer A's obligation to report to the licensing authority is clear and unqualified.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer B failed his duty of honesty and non-deception toward the public, the licensing authority, and Engineer A, regardless of whether any actual harm resulted. A deontological analysis focuses on the intrinsic character of the act rather than its consequences. Engineer B's act of leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on materially altered plans was, in its structure, a false representation: it communicated to every reader of those documents that Engineer A was the responsible engineer for their technical content, when in fact Engineer A had no knowledge of, and had not consented to, the changes. The vague title-sheet note did not cure this deception; it compounded it by creating the appearance of partial disclosure while concealing the scope and location of the changes. Engineer B's duty of honesty required him to ensure that every sheet of the plan set accurately represented its authorship and the identity of the responsible engineer. That duty was categorical — it did not depend on whether reviewing authorities were actually misled, whether construction proceeded incorrectly, or whether Engineer A suffered reputational harm. The deontological verdict is that Engineer B's conduct was intrinsically dishonest and therefore unethical independent of outcome.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, the cumulative outcome of Engineer B's undocumented alterations created a net harm to public safety and professional trust that substantially outweighs any efficiency gained by building on Engineer A's existing plans. The efficiency benefit of using Engineer A's plans as a foundation — avoiding the time and cost of producing entirely new drawings — was real but modest. Against this must be weighed the following harms: reviewing authorities were presented with documents that misrepresented their authorship, creating a risk that approvals were granted on the basis of a false attribution; contractors working from individual sheets had no way to know which specifications had been changed, creating a risk of construction errors; Engineer A was exposed to professional and legal liability for design decisions he did not make and did not know about; and the professional trust that underlies the entire system of sealed engineering documents was undermined by demonstrating that a successor engineer could fundamentally redesign a sealed plan set without any traceable attribution. The consequentialist calculus is not close: the systemic harms to public safety, professional accountability, and regulatory integrity far exceed the transactional efficiency of reusing existing drawings.
In response to Q303: From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer B failed to demonstrate the professional integrity and collegial respect expected of a competent engineer. Virtue ethics asks not merely whether an engineer followed rules, but whether he acted as a person of good professional character would act. A virtuous engineer in Engineer B's position — inheriting a sealed plan set from a discharged predecessor and tasked with fundamental redesign — would have recognized that the situation called for transparency, care, and respect for the professional identity embedded in Engineer A's seal. Such an engineer would have, at minimum, contacted Engineer A to inform him of the impending alterations, removed Engineer A's seal from every sheet he materially changed, affixed his own seal and signature to those sheets, and provided a clear and specific account of every change made. Engineer B did none of these things. His complete silence toward Engineer A throughout the process, his failure to document any changes on the grading plans, and his vague and unspecific title-sheet note on the public improvement plans collectively reflect a disposition toward professional convenience over professional integrity. The virtue ethics verdict is that Engineer B's conduct fell well below the standard of character that the engineering profession demands.
In response to Q304: From a deontological perspective, Engineer A bears a continuing duty — grounded in the ongoing accountability attached to a professional seal — to investigate, demand correction of, and if necessary report to licensing authorities the unauthorized alteration of his sealed plans, even after discharge and full payment. The professional seal is not a historical signature; it is a continuing representation of accountability that persists as long as the sealed document remains in active use. Engineer A's discharge ended his contractual obligations to the client but did not end his professional obligations to the public and to the integrity of his own seal. Upon discovering that his sealed plans had been materially altered without his knowledge or consent, Engineer A acquired a duty to act proportionate to the seriousness of the violation. That duty has three sequential components: first, to investigate the scope of the alterations; second, to demand in writing that the client and Engineer B correct the attribution and seal status of the documents; and third, if correction is refused or ignored, to report the matter to the relevant licensing authority. This duty is not discretionary; it flows directly from the deontological principle that a professional who holds a seal holds a continuing responsibility for what that seal represents to the world.
In response to Q401: If Engineer B had contacted Engineer A before beginning the redesign — even informally — the communication would have created a shared professional awareness that could have prevented the ethical violations the Board identified, though it would not have automatically discharged Engineer B's independent obligations. Engineer A, upon learning that his sealed plans were about to be materially altered, would have had both the standing and the incentive to insist on proper attribution protocols: removal of his seal from altered sheets, affixing of Engineer B's seal, and specific change notation. Engineer B, having initiated the communication, would have been on explicit notice of those requirements and could not later claim ignorance or inadvertence. The communication would also have given Engineer A the opportunity to formally withdraw his seal from the documents before alteration commenced, which would have clarified the attribution picture from the outset. The counterfactual therefore suggests that the absence of communication was not merely a missed courtesy but a structural cause of the violations: it removed the natural check that collegial engagement would have provided and allowed Engineer B to proceed in a professional vacuum that made the attribution failures both more likely and more consequential.
In response to Q402: If Engineer B had removed Engineer A's seal and signature from every sheet he altered, affixed his own seal and signature to those sheets, and provided a detailed change log on the cover sheet of each plan set, the Board's primary ethical concerns would have been substantially resolved, but a residual concern about the integrity of the mixed-authorship document set would remain. The residual concern arises from the fact that a 43-sheet plan set in which some sheets bear Engineer A's seal and others bear Engineer B's seal — without a clear integrated design review by either engineer of the combined document — presents a structural accountability gap. Engineering designs are not merely collections of independent sheets; they are integrated systems in which changes to one component affect the adequacy of others. When Engineer B fundamentally redesigned storm drainage, elevations, and street routing, he necessarily affected the adequacy of sheets he did not directly alter. A proper resolution would therefore require not only sheet-by-sheet attribution but also an affirmative statement by Engineer B that he had reviewed the integrated design as a whole and assumed responsibility for its systemic adequacy — not merely for the individual sheets he modified.
In response to Q403: If the client had refused to give Engineer B Engineer A's original drawings and had instead required Engineer B to produce entirely new plans from scratch, the specific ethical violations identified by the Board — undocumented alteration of sealed plans, failure to remove Engineer A's seal, and vague assumption of responsibility — would have been avoided entirely, because there would have been no sealed predecessor documents to misattribute. This counterfactual reveals that the client's act of transferring the sealed plans was indeed an ethically significant enabling condition for Engineer B's misconduct. The transfer created the structural opportunity for the violations: it placed sealed documents in Engineer B's hands, invited him to use them as the foundation for redesign, and created the ambiguous mixed-authorship situation that Engineer B then failed to resolve properly. However, the counterfactual also reveals the limits of the client's culpability: the client's transfer of the plans was a necessary but not sufficient cause of the violations. Engineer B's independent professional judgment — his decision not to remove Engineer A's seal, not to document his changes, and not to assume full documented responsibility — was the proximate cause. A competent and ethical successor engineer could have received the same sealed plans and handled the situation correctly. The client enabled the violation; Engineer B committed it.
In response to Q404: If Engineer B had specifically enumerated every sheet he modified, described the nature of each change, removed Engineer A's seal from altered sheets, and affixed his own seal with a statement assuming full responsibility for the integrated design, the question of whether he would still have been ethically obligated to notify Engineer A is genuinely contested. The Board concluded that Engineer B was not unethical in accepting the engagement without notifying Engineer A, which suggests that notification was not a threshold requirement. However, the scenario described in Q404 — comprehensive documentation, seal removal, and full responsibility assumption — is qualitatively different from merely accepting an engagement. At the point where Engineer B removes Engineer A's seal from specific sheets and affixes his own, he is making a public professional statement that directly affects Engineer A's professional record and reputation. In that context, notification to Engineer A — while perhaps not strictly required by the code — would be strongly prudent and collegially expected, because Engineer A has a legitimate interest in knowing that his sealed documents have been formally superseded and that his professional identity has been publicly disassociated from specific sheets. The comprehensive documentation scenario would discharge Engineer B's public-facing obligations but would not fully discharge his collegial obligations toward Engineer A as a professional peer.
Engineer B was unethical in failing to note his assumption of full responsibility for the entire set of drawings.
The tension between a successor engineer's freedom to accept a discharged engineer's project without notification and the successor engineer's obligation to preserve sealed-document integrity was resolved by the Board through a temporal and functional distinction: the permissibility of accepting the engagement is governed by the client-relationship dimension of professional conduct, while the obligation to properly attribute, notate, and re-seal altered documents is governed by the public-protection dimension. These two principles operate on different axes and do not conflict — Engineer B's right to accept the engagement without notifying Engineer A was never in dispute, but that right carried with it the full weight of sealed-document integrity obligations from the moment he began making material changes. The case teaches that freedom of engagement and integrity of professional output are not in tension; rather, the former is a threshold question and the latter is an unconditional obligation that attaches immediately upon the successor engineer's first substantive act of redesign. Accepting the engagement without notification was permissible precisely because the ethical framework assumed Engineer B would then handle the sealed documents correctly — which he did not.
The principle of honesty in professional representations and the principle of public welfare paramount in subdivision plan integrity converged to expose Engineer B's title-sheet notation as something more ethically serious than mere insufficiency — it constituted a form of technically true but functionally deceptive conduct. By stating that he assumed responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without identifying which sheets were revised, what was changed, or that Engineer A's seal no longer reflected the operative design on those sheets, Engineer B created a document set that affirmatively misled any reviewing authority, contractor, or public official who relied on Engineer A's intact seal as a signal of design continuity. The Board's conclusion that the notation was insufficient implicitly resolves the tension between these principles by treating the public-safety stakes of a 43-sheet subdivision plan set as elevating the specificity standard for attribution and change notation beyond what a vague disclaimer can satisfy. This case teaches that when the scope of redesign is fundamental — affecting storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing across both plan sets — the ethical standard for disclosure is not merely 'some notation' but 'complete and unambiguous notation,' because the public interest in accurate plan attribution scales directly with the magnitude of the design changes.
The principle of stamped-document ongoing accountability of Engineer A and the principle of original engineer seal integrity right of Engineer A exist in a relationship of mutual reinforcement rather than conflict, but together they generate a paradox that the Board's conclusions leave partially unresolved: Engineer A simultaneously bears residual technical accountability for a design he no longer controls and possesses a right to demand that his seal not be misused on plans he did not authorize. This paradox is not merely theoretical — it has concrete professional and legal consequences. The case teaches that the ethical framework resolves this paradox by placing the primary corrective obligation on Engineer B (to remove Engineer A's seal and assume documented responsibility) rather than on Engineer A, but it does not thereby extinguish Engineer A's affirmative obligations upon discovery of the misuse. Engineer A's stamped-document accountability is not a passive condition; it is an active professional status that obligates Engineer A, upon discovering that his sealed plans have been materially altered without proper attribution, to investigate, demand correction, and if necessary report the violation to licensing authorities — with the collegial pre-reporting engagement obligation applying only if the violation appears inadvertent rather than willful. The cumulative scope of Engineer B's undocumented changes across both plan sets suggests a pattern that moves beyond inadvertence, which would reduce or eliminate Engineer A's obligation to extend collegial deference before reporting.
The principle of holistic design responsibility and the principle of responsible charge integrity converged to establish that Engineer B's obligation was not merely to notate specific changes but to assume documented, affirmative, and comprehensive professional responsibility for the entire integrated design once his modifications became fundamental in scope. The Board's conclusion that Engineer B was unethical in failing to note his assumption of full responsibility for the entire set of drawings reflects a deeper principle: when a successor engineer's redesign is so extensive that it affects the structural, hydraulic, and spatial logic of a plan set — as Engineer B's changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing plainly did — the ethical framework treats the resulting document set as a new design for accountability purposes, even if it is physically built upon the predecessor's sheets. This principle prioritization teaches that the threshold for 'full design accountability assumption' is not the percentage of sheets altered but the functional interdependence of the changes: once Engineer B's modifications altered systems that interacted with Engineer A's remaining design elements, Engineer B became responsible for the integrity of the whole, not merely the sum of his individual changes. A vague title-sheet note claiming responsibility for unspecified 'revisions' cannot discharge this holistic obligation because it neither identifies the scope of the redesign nor signals to downstream users that the integrated design — not merely discrete modifications — is Engineer B's professional product.
Should Engineer B clearly identify and document all design changes on each affected sheet of the plan set — removing Engineer A's seal from altered sheets and affixing his own — or is a general notation on the title sheet of the public improvement plans sufficient to discharge his attribution and documentation obligations?
Engineer B made substantive changes to Engineer A's sealed grading plans and public improvement plans — altering housing pad elevations, street routing, storm drain systems, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities across a 43-sheet plan set — without signing any sheets, without noting what changes were made on the grading plans, and without removing Engineer A's seal and signature from any altered sheet. The core question is whether Engineer B was obligated to clearly identify and document those changes on each affected sheet, or whether some lesser form of notation was sufficient.
Remove Engineer A's seal from every sheet materially altered, affix Engineer B's own seal and signature to those sheets, and provide a specific itemized change log on the cover sheet of each plan set identifying the nature, location, and scope of every modification.
Place a general note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans,' without identifying specific sheets altered, the nature of changes, or removing Engineer A's seal from any sheet — treating the title-sheet note as sufficient disclosure to alert reviewing authorities.
Add written change notations on each sheet that was modified — describing what was altered — while leaving Engineer A's seal intact and adding Engineer B's signature as a co-reviewer, on the theory that co-signature without full re-sealing adequately signals shared professional accountability for the revised content.
Should Engineer B assume and document full professional accountability for the entire integrated subdivision design — treating the plan set as a new design requiring comprehensive re-sealing — or may Engineer B limit his documented responsibility to only the discrete modifications he made while leaving Engineer A's seal to certify the remainder?
Engineer B made fundamental changes to core design elements of Engineer A's subdivision plan set — including grading plans, housing pad elevations, street routing, storm drain systems, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — changes that have cascading impacts on the efficacy and integrity of the whole integrated design. The question is whether Engineer B was obligated to assume and document professional accountability for the entire integrated design, not merely for the discrete modifications he made, and whether his vague title-sheet note claiming responsibility only for 'revisions' was sufficient to discharge that obligation.
Remove Engineer A's seal from all altered sheets, affix Engineer B's own seal to those sheets, and include an affirmative statement on the cover sheet of each plan set assuming full professional responsibility for the integrated design as a whole — not merely for discrete modifications — acknowledging that fundamental changes to interconnected systems make the successor engineer accountable for the systemic adequacy of the combined document.
Document and seal only the specific sheets Engineer B personally modified, leaving Engineer A's seal intact on unaltered sheets and placing a title-sheet note claiming responsibility for identified revisions — on the theory that a successor engineer's accountability is properly bounded by the scope of his actual design work and should not extend to elements he did not touch.
Decline to use Engineer A's sealed plans as the foundation for the redesign and instead produce an entirely new plan set from scratch under Engineer B's own seal and signature — eliminating the mixed-authorship problem entirely by ensuring that every sheet in the plan set reflects Engineer B's independent professional judgment and bears only his seal.
Should Engineer B have notified or consulted Engineer A before accepting the engagement or before making material alterations to Engineer A's sealed plans, or was Engineer B ethically permitted to proceed without any communication with Engineer A given that Engineer A had been formally discharged by the client?
Engineer B accepted the engagement to review and redesign Engineer A's sealed subdivision plans after Engineer A was formally discharged by the client. At no time after Engineer B was retained were there any communications between the two engineers. The question is whether Engineer B was ethically required to notify Engineer A before accepting the engagement or before commencing material alterations to Engineer A's sealed plans — and whether the permissibility of accepting the engagement without notification extends to complete silence throughout the entire redesign process.
Accept the engagement and proceed with the redesign without notifying or consulting Engineer A at any stage, relying on the formal discharge as terminating any notification obligation under NSPE Code Section III.8.a and treating the client's transfer of the drawings as sufficient authorization to proceed.
Contact Engineer A before formally accepting the engagement to inform him that the client has requested a redesign of his sealed plans, giving Engineer A the opportunity to provide context about design intent and known constraints — treating the notification as a professional courtesy that serves design quality even if not strictly required by the discharge exception.
Accept the engagement without prior notification — consistent with the discharge exception — but initiate direct professional communication with Engineer A before commencing material alterations to his sealed plans, recognizing that the permissibility of accepting the engagement is analytically separate from the prudential obligation to consult before fundamentally redesigning sealed work.
Upon discovering that Engineer B materially altered his sealed plans without removing his seal or providing adequate attribution, should Engineer A report the unauthorized alteration directly to the state engineering licensing authority, or should Engineer A first attempt collegial engagement with Engineer B to demand correction before escalating to regulatory authorities?
Engineer A's signed and sealed plan set was materially altered by Engineer B, who left Engineer A's seal intact on all sheets, made no per-sheet notations on the grading plans, and provided only a vague title-sheet disclaimer on the public improvement plans. Upon discovering this, Engineer A faces the question of what affirmative steps he must take — given that his seal continues to represent him as the responsible engineer for the technical content of documents he did not author in their current form, and given that the scope and pattern of Engineer B's omissions suggest conduct beyond inadvertent error.
Report the unauthorized alteration of his sealed plans directly to the state engineering licensing authority without first seeking collegial engagement with Engineer B, on the grounds that the sustained and systematic nature of Engineer B's omissions across both plan sets constitutes a serious rather than inadvertent violation that removes any obligation of collegial deference before regulatory escalation.
Contact Engineer B directly to demand in writing that Engineer B remove Engineer A's seal from all altered sheets, affix his own seal, and provide specific change documentation — reserving the right to report to licensing authorities only if Engineer B refuses or fails to correct the documents within a reasonable time, treating the violation as potentially correctable through collegial engagement.
Contact both the client and Engineer B simultaneously with a written demand that the attribution and seal status of all altered documents be corrected — recognizing that the client's transfer of the sealed plans was an enabling condition for the violation — and report to licensing authorities only if both parties fail to remedy the situation, treating the client's cooperation as a practical prerequisite for effective correction.
Should Engineer B treat his attribution and change-notation obligations in the subdivision plan redesign as a substantive public safety requirement demanding complete and unambiguous per-sheet documentation — or as a professional courtesy obligation satisfied by a general title-sheet disclaimer claiming responsibility for unspecified 'revisions'?
Engineer B's redesign of the subdivision plan set — affecting storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing across a 43-sheet plan set governing public infrastructure — raises the question of whether the public safety stakes of subdivision engineering elevate the ethical standard for attribution and change notation beyond minimal compliance, and whether Engineer B's conduct constituted an affirmative deceptive misrepresentation rather than merely an insufficient disclosure.
Treat attribution and change notation as a substantive public safety obligation — providing specific, itemized documentation of every change on each affected sheet, removing Engineer A's seal from altered sheets, and affixing Engineer B's own seal — recognizing that reviewing authorities, inspectors, and contractors rely on the sealed engineer's identity as a proxy for design accountability in public infrastructure.
Treat the title-sheet note claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' as adequate professional disclosure — on the theory that a reviewing authority examining the plan set would be on notice that some revisions had been made and could inquire further, and that the note's technical truth satisfies the honesty obligation even if it does not enumerate every change.
Provide a detailed, itemized change log on the cover sheet of each plan set identifying every sheet modified and the nature of each change — without removing Engineer A's seal from individual altered sheets or affixing Engineer B's seal to those sheets — treating comprehensive cover-sheet documentation as a middle path that provides meaningful notice to reviewers while preserving the document structure of the original plan set.
Professional engineering practice norms / NSPE
Engineer Notification Right in Review Contexts
Engineer B upon being retained to review and redesign Engineer A's plans
Governs whether Engineer B had an obligation to notify Engineer A that his sealed plans were being reviewed and substantially redesigned, particularly given that Engineer A's seal remained on the modified documents
Engineer Stamped Document Responsibility Standard
Each set had a cover sheet and all sheets in each set were signed and sealed by Engineer A.
left Engineer A's seal and signature intact
Engineer A (original sealing engineer); Engineer B (successor engineer)
Governs Engineer A's ongoing responsibility for the plans he stamped and sealed, and the risk created when Engineer B leaves Engineer A's seal intact on materially altered documents — potentially exposing Engineer A to liability for work he did not perform
Engineer A Discharged But Work Product Transmitted to Engineer B
From the moment the client passed Engineer A's plans to Engineer B through the completion of Engineer B's redesign work
Engineer A still maintained a connection with the work which he had performed by virtue of the fact that the client passed along Engineer A's work product to Engineer B
Discharged Engineer Residual Connection via Passed Work Product State
Engineer A's professional relationship to the project after discharge
Not terminated — Engineer A was never notified or consulted, leaving the residual connection unresolved
it would have been wiser and more professional for Engineer B to consult with Engineer A before undertaking to modify the plans prepared by Engineer A
Client's act of transmitting Engineer A's sealed plans to Engineer B after discharging Engineer A
Engineer A Discharged Engineer Sealed Plan Post-Alteration Licensing Authority Reporting
Discharged Engineer Sealed Plan Post-Alteration Licensing Authority Reporting Capability
Engineer A was obligated to exercise the capability to report Engineer B's unauthorized alteration of Engineer A's sealed plan sets to the state engineering licensing authority, recognizing that the discharge from the project did not extinguish this reporting obligation
Engineer A was discharged from the project but retained ongoing professional accountability for the sealed plans, obligating formal reporting of Engineer B's unauthorized alterations
Engineer A's retention of reproducibles and ongoing professional accountability for the sealed plan sets provided the basis for formal reporting to the licensing authority
The client was not satisfied with the plans, so he discharged Engineer A after paying the complete fee for production of the plans.
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Subdivision design — grading, public improvements', 'plan_sets_sealed': ['5-sheet grading plans', '38-sheet public improvement plans'], 'discharge_status': 'Discharged after full fee payment', 'communication_with_successor': 'None'}
Prepared a complete 5-sheet grading plan set and 38-sheet public improvement plan set for a subdivision client, signed and sealed all sheets, was discharged after full fee payment, surrendered original drawings while retaining reproducibles, and subsequently had his seal and signature left intact on plans materially altered by Engineer B without any communication.
{'type': 'peer_predecessor_to', 'target': 'Engineer B Undocumented Alteration Successor'}
{'type': 'provider_to_client', 'target': 'Subdivision Project Client'}
Discharged Original Design Engineer with Retained Seal
Engineer A prepared subdivision plans for a client
Engineer A complied, retaining a set of reproducibles
Engineer B left Engineer A's seal and signature intact
all sheets in each set were signed and sealed by Engineer A
the client discharged Engineer A after paying the complete fee
Engineer A Inadvertent Licensure Violation Collegial Counsel Before Reporting Toward Engineer B
Inadvertent Licensure Violation Collegial Counsel Delivery Capability
Engineer A possessed the capability to approach Engineer B directly and collegially before filing a formal report with the licensing authority, to make Engineer B aware of the violations and provide an opportunity to cure — recognizing that collegial pre-reporting engagement is appropriate as a first step even in serious cases, though not required when violations are deliberate
Before escalating to formal reporting to the licensing authority, Engineer A should consider whether to first engage Engineer B directly to make Engineer B aware of the violations
The absence of any communication between the two engineers after Engineer B was retained created the context in which Engineer A would need to decide whether to engage Engineer B collegially before formal reporting
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans, leaving Engineer A's signature and seal intact
Engineer A Original Plans Transferred to Client and Successor
From the time Engineer A complied with the client's request for original drawings through the redesign engagement
The client asked Engineer A for his original drawings
Engineer A's original drawings and reproducibles, now in possession of the client and used by Engineer B
The client gave Engineer B the set of plans produced by Engineer A to use as a guide in the redesign
Client asking for and receiving Engineer A's original drawings; client providing those drawings to Engineer B as a guide for redesign
Engineer A Post-Discharge Continuing Seal Exposure
From the client's discharge of Engineer A through the present use of the altered plans
The client was not satisfied with the plans, so he discharged Engineer A after paying the complete fee for production of the plans
Engineer A's professional status following discharge by the client, with sealed plans now in active use by a successor engineer
Not yet terminated; Engineer A's seal remains on substantially altered plans
Engineer B was later retained by the client to review and redesign the project
Client discharging Engineer A after paying the complete fee, then retaining Engineer B to redesign the project using Engineer A's plans
Engineer A Seal Retained on Engineer B Altered Grading Plans
From the time Engineer B completed modifications to the grading plans through any future use or submission of those plans
Engineer B reviewed the original drawings, made changes on the grading plans, including deletion of one sheet, raising the elevation of the housing pads and changing routing of the street
Predecessor Engineer Seal Retained on Substantially Altered Plans State
The 5-sheet grading plan set originally sealed by Engineer A, substantially modified by Engineer B
Not yet terminated; plans remain in altered state with Engineer A's seal
Engineer B did not note what changes were made nor did he sign any of the sheets, including the cover sheet
Engineer B making changes to grading plans — deleting one sheet, raising housing pad elevations, changing street routing — without signing any sheets or noting changes, while leaving Engineer A's seal intact
Engineer A Seal Retained on Engineer B Altered Public Improvement Plans
From the time Engineer B completed modifications to the public improvement plans through any future use or submission of those plans
Future contractors and users of the plans
Engineer B also made major design changes to the storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the public improvement plans
The 38-sheet public improvement plan set originally sealed by Engineer A, substantially modified by Engineer B
He made no notation of the changes, did not sign the plans, and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact
Engineer B making major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities without signing any sheets, noting changes, or removing Engineer A's seal
Engineer A Sealed Report Alteration Investigation Subdivision Plans
Sealed Report Alteration Investigation Capability
Engineer A possessed the capability to investigate the nature and scope of Engineer B's undocumented alterations to Engineer A's sealed grading and public improvement plans upon learning of the modifications.
Engineer A, upon learning of Engineer B's undocumented modifications, was obligated to investigate and take corrective action including reporting to the licensing authority
Engineer A's recognition upon learning that Engineer B had made major design changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact
Upon learning that Engineer B had made major design changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact, Engineer A was obligated to investigate and demand correction
Engineer A Sealed Report Alteration Investigation and Correction Demand
Engineer A was obligated to exercise the capability to investigate the nature and scope of Engineer B's unauthorized alterations to both plan sets and demand correction, including comparing original sealed documents against altered versions and determining the appropriate corrective response
Upon learning that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact, Engineer A needed to investigate and demand correction
Engineer A retained reproducibles of the original sealed plans, providing the basis for investigating the scope of Engineer B's undocumented alterations
Engineer A complied, retaining a set of reproducibles.
Engineer A Sealed Report Unauthorized Alteration Correction and Notification Case 82-5
Engineer A's signed and sealed plans were materially altered by Engineer B across 43 sheets, with Engineer A's seal left intact on altered sheets and only a vague title-sheet disclaimer provided. Engineer A retained reproducibles of the original plans.
Engineer A (Discharged Original Design Engineer)
Sealed Report Unauthorized Alteration Correction and Notification Obligation
Engineer A, upon learning that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact, was obligated to take affirmative corrective action — including demanding correction of the record, notifying appropriate professional and regulatory authorities, and ensuring that Engineer A's seal was no longer falsely certifying content Engineer A never reviewed.
Upon learning that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes while leaving Engineer A's seal intact
Engineering Self-Policing Obligation Applied to Engineer A's Discovery of Seal Misuse
Engineer A Sealed Report Unauthorized Alteration Detection
Sealed Report Unauthorized Alteration Detection Capability
Engineer A possessed the capability to recognize that his signed and sealed plan sets had been materially altered without authorization by Engineer B, including the ability to compare original designs against the altered versions and correctly classify the unauthorized alterations as a serious professional violation
Engineer A was discharged and later learned that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact
Engineer A retained a set of reproducibles when transferring the original drawings, enabling comparison of original and altered versions upon learning of Engineer B's changes
Engineer B made major design changes to the storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the public improvement plans. He made no notation of the changes, did not sign the plans, and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact.
Engineer A Sealed Report Unauthorized Alteration Detection Subdivision Plans
Engineer A possessed the capability to detect and correctly classify Engineer B's undocumented material alterations to Engineer A's sealed plan sets as a serious professional and legal violation requiring corrective action.
Engineer A's sealed plans were materially altered by Engineer B without proper documentation, consent, or re-sealing, requiring Engineer A to detect and respond to this violation
Engineer A's recognition that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact, constituting unauthorized alteration of sealed professional documents
Engineer A still maintained a connection with the work which he had performed by virtue of the fact that the client passed along Engineer A's work product to Engineer B.
the facts indicate that Engineer B took those plans and made certain modifications in those plans.
Engineer A Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Non-Requirement Recognition
Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Engagement Non-Requirement Recognition Capability
Engineer A must recognize that while collegial pre-reporting engagement is generally appropriate for inadvertent violations, the scope and deliberateness of Engineer B's alterations — making major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact — may constitute a serious enough violation that Engineer A may proceed directly to formal reporting without first engaging Engineer B
Engineer A must calibrate whether Engineer B's conduct warrants direct formal reporting or collegial pre-engagement first
The scale and nature of Engineer B's alterations (major changes to both a 5-sheet grading plan set and a 38-sheet public improvement plan set, with no documentation and no re-sealing) suggests deliberate rather than inadvertent conduct
Engineer B also made major design changes to the storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the public improvement plans. He made no notation of the changes, did not sign the plans, and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact.
Engineer B reviewed the original drawings, made changes on the grading plans, including deletion of one sheet, raising the elevation of the housing pads and changing routing of the street. Engineer B did not note what changes were made nor did he sign any of the sheets, including the cover sheet.
Engineer A Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Reporting Non-Requirement Engineer B
Engineer B's conduct was not an inadvertent technical violation but a deliberate pattern of unsealed, undocumented modification across two complete plan sets, placing it in the serious violation category where collegial pre-reporting engagement is not required.
Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Non-Requirement Constraint
Given the scope and deliberateness of Engineer B's violations — making major undocumented design changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact across 43 sheets — Engineer A was not required to first approach Engineer B collegially before filing a formal complaint with the licensing authority.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on serious vs. inadvertent violations
Engineer B also made major design changes to the storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the public improvement plans.
Upon Engineer A learning of Engineer B's alterations
Engineer A Signed and Sealed Document Integrity Significance Recognition
Signed and Sealed Document Integrity Significance Recognition Capability
Engineer A demonstrated the capability to understand the professional significance of signing and sealing engineering documents, including recognizing that Engineer B's unauthorized alterations while leaving Engineer A's seal intact constituted a serious compromise of the sealed document system
Engineer A prepared, signed, and sealed a complete 5-sheet grading plan set and 38-sheet public improvement plan set for the subdivision client
Engineer A signed and sealed all sheets of both plan sets, retained reproducibles, and bore ongoing professional accountability for the sealed documents — demonstrating understanding of the seal's significance
Engineer A Stamped Document Continuing Technical Accountability
Stamped Document Ongoing Technical Accountability Capability
Engineer A retained ongoing professional accountability for the technical integrity of the sealed plan sets even after being discharged by the client, requiring recognition that the seal creates an enduring obligation to stand behind the document's technical content and to act when that integrity is compromised
Engineer A was discharged after completing and sealing both plan sets, but retained ongoing professional accountability for those sealed documents
Engineer A retained reproducibles of the original sealed plans, demonstrating awareness of ongoing accountability; Engineer A's obligation to investigate and report Engineer B's unauthorized alterations flows from this continuing accountability
Engineer A Stamped Document Ongoing Technical Accountability Post-Discharge
Engineer A was discharged by the client after completing the plans, but retained a set of reproducibles and remained professionally accountable for the sealed documents now being materially altered by Engineer B.
Stamped Document Ongoing Technical Accountability Non-Abandonment Constraint
Engineer A retained ongoing professional accountability for the technical integrity of the sealed plan sets even after being discharged by the client, constraining Engineer A to take action upon learning that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes while leaving Engineer A's seal intact.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Professional engineering accountability standards
The client asked Engineer A for his original drawings. Engineer A complied, retaining a set of reproducibles.
Following Engineer A's discharge and upon learning of Engineer B's alterations
Engineer B...left Engineer A's seal and signature intact.
Engineer A Stamped Document Ongoing Technical Accountability Subdivision Plans
Engineer A retained ongoing professional accountability for the technical integrity of the sealed plan sets even after being discharged by the client, because Engineer A's seal remained on the documents and Engineer A's professional reputation remained connected to the work.
The Board recognized that Engineer A's discharge did not extinguish Engineer A's professional accountability for the sealed documents, particularly when those documents were passed to a successor who made undocumented modifications
Engineer A's continuing professional connection to the sealed plans after discharge, which the Board recognized as a basis for Engineer A's obligation to investigate and report unauthorized alterations
it is true that Engineer A had been 'discharged' by the client, Engineer A still maintained a connection with the work
Engineer A Stamped Document Residual Accountability Post-Discharge — Case 82-5
Engineer A's sealed plans were passed to Engineer B and substantially modified while Engineer A's seal remained intact, creating ongoing professional accountability exposure for Engineer A
Engineer A retained ongoing professional accountability for the technical integrity of the sealed subdivision plan sets even after being discharged by the client, because the client passed Engineer A's work product to Engineer B — Engineer A's residual connection via the sealed documents meant Engineer A could not simply abandon accountability for those plans and was constrained to take corrective action upon learning of Engineer B's undocumented modifications.
NSPE Code professional accountability provisions; Stamped Document Ongoing Technical Accountability Non-Abandonment Constraint
From the time Engineer A was discharged through the time Engineer A learned of Engineer B's modifications
it is true that Engineer A had been 'discharged' by the client
Engineer A complying with request for original drawings meets Engineer B receiving Engineer A's plans
Engineer A preparing subdivision plans before client discharging Engineer A
Engineer A's seal and signature remaining intact during Engineer B's redesign activities
Engineer B Change Notation Absence Grading Plans
Engineer B made substantive changes to the 5-sheet grading plan set but made no notation of any changes on any sheet.
Successor Engineer Plan Modification Change Notation Constraint
Engineer B was required to specifically identify and document all changes made to Engineer A's grading plans — including the deleted sheet, the raised housing pad elevations, and the changed street routing — on each affected sheet, and was prohibited from submitting the altered plans without such notation.
NSPE Code Section III.3.a (non-deception); Professional engineering documentation standards
Engineer B did not note what changes were made nor did he sign any of the sheets, including the cover sheet.
At the time Engineer B submitted the altered grading plans
Engineer B Change Notation Absence Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to the 38-sheet public improvement plan set but made no notation of any changes on any sheet.
Engineer B was required to specifically identify and document all changes made to Engineer A's public improvement plans — including changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — on each affected sheet, and was prohibited from submitting the altered plans without such notation.
NSPE Code Section III.3.a (non-deception); NSPE Code Section III.9; Professional engineering documentation standards
At the time Engineer B submitted the altered public improvement plans
Engineer B Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization Recognition
Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization of Successor Alteration Recognition Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to recognize that the client's act of transferring Engineer A's sealed drawings to him and directing him to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize him to make undocumented alterations while leaving Engineer A's seal intact
The client gave Engineer B Engineer A's sealed plans to use as a guide in the redesign, and Engineer B treated this as sufficient authorization to proceed with undocumented alterations
Engineer B accepted the client's direction to use Engineer A's plans as a guide and proceeded to make major undocumented changes without recognizing that client authorization was insufficient to substitute for proper professional procedures
Engineer B Covert Redesign Without Engineer A Notification
Engineer B was retained to review and redesign the project using Engineer A's sealed plans, but at no time were there any communications between the two engineers.
Successor Engineer Prior-Engineer Notification Before Sealed Plan Redesign Constraint
Engineer B was required to communicate with Engineer A before making substantive design changes to Engineer A's sealed grading and public improvement plans, and was constrained from proceeding with material modifications without affording Engineer A the opportunity to be informed of the redesign engagement.
NSPE Code Section III.8.a; Professional courtesy norms
Before and during Engineer B's redesign engagement
Engineer B Discharged Engineer Review Without Notification Permissibility Case 82-5
Engineer B was retained by the subdivision client to review and redesign a project after the client discharged Engineer A following full fee payment. The client passed Engineer A's sealed plans to Engineer B to use as a guide.
Discharged Engineer Review Without Notification Permissibility Recognition Obligation
Engineer B was not ethically required to notify Engineer A before reviewing Engineer A's work, because Engineer A had been formally discharged by the client, terminating the professional relationship that triggers the NSPE III.8.a. notification requirement.
this Board concedes that Engineer B did not act unethically in agreeing to review the work of Engineer A without notifying Engineer A
At the time Engineer B was retained and commenced review of Engineer A's sealed plans
the client clearly discharged Engineer A from his services
Engineer B Discharged Engineer Review Without Notification Permissibility Recognition
Discharged Engineer Review Without Notification Permissibility Recognition Capability
Engineer B had the capability to recognize that reviewing Engineer A's work without notification was permissible because Engineer A had been formally discharged by the client, satisfying the termination exception under Section III.8.a.
Engineer B was retained by the client after Engineer A was discharged; the Board found that review without notification was permissible under the termination exception but that subsequent undocumented modifications were not
Engineer B's review of Engineer A's sealed plans without prior notification, which the Board conceded was not unethical given the discharge
While this Board concedes that Engineer B did not act unethically in agreeing to review the work of Engineer A without notifying Engineer A
Section III.8.a. admonishes engineers against reviewing the work of another engineer for the same client except with the expressed knowledge of the engineer or unless the original relationship between the first engineer and the client has been terminated.
Engineer B Discharged Engineer Review Without Notification Permissibility — Case 82-5
Subdivision development project where client discharged Engineer A and transferred sealed grading and public improvement plans to Engineer B for redesign
Discharged Engineer Peer Review Notification Non-Requirement Constraint
Engineer B was not ethically required to notify Engineer A before reviewing Engineer A's sealed plans because Engineer A had been formally discharged by the client, satisfying the termination exception of NSPE Code Section III.8.a — but this exception applied only to the notification obligation and did not authorize unrestricted modification of Engineer A's sealed documents.
NSPE Code Section III.8.a; BER Case 79-7
At the time Engineer B was retained to review and redesign Engineer A's sealed plans
Engineer B Full Professional Responsibility Assumption Upon Sealing Modified Plans
Engineer B's position that he bore responsibility only for his specific modifications, not for the integrated design as a whole, is inconsistent with the full professional responsibility assumption that sealing requires.
Full Professional Responsibility Assumption Upon Sealing Constraint
Had Engineer B properly sealed the modified plan sheets, he would have been required to assume full professional responsibility for the entire integrated design on those sheets — including both his modifications and the predecessor design elements — and could not have limited his responsibility only to his specific modifications.
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans...stating that he, Engineer B, is taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans,' making no notation what those changes were.
Upon any sealing of modified plan sheets by Engineer B
Engineer B Fundamental Redesign Full Design Accountability Assumption Case 82-5
Engineer B attempted to limit professional responsibility to only the specific items altered, while leaving Engineer A's seal to certify the remainder of the design, failing to recognize that fundamental changes to core elements affect the entire integrated design.
Fundamental Redesign Full Design Accountability Assumption Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to acknowledge and assume professional accountability for the entire integrated subdivision design — not merely for the discrete modifications made — because Engineer B made fundamental changes to core design elements including grading plans, housing pad elevations, street routing, storm drain systems, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities, which had cascading impacts on the efficacy and integrity of the whole project.
we are troubled by Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings. (See Section III.9.)
Upon making fundamental changes to core design elements of the subdivision project
Engineer B seems to have taken the position that he would only assume responsibility for those changes which he had made by virtue of his modifications, failing to recognize the fact that once he began to make fundamental changes to certain aspects of the design, his modifications might have an overall impact upon the entire design of the project
This suggests a lack of recognition on the part of Engineer B that his modifications in the design might have a significant impact upon the efficacy and integrity of the entire project design
Engineer B Fundamental Redesign Full Design Accountability Assumption Failure
Fundamental Redesign Full Design Accountability Assumption Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to recognize that his fundamental changes to the subdivision design required him to assume professional accountability for the entire integrated design, not merely for the discrete modifications he made.
The Board found Engineer B's failure to acknowledge full design accountability violated Section III.9 of the Code
Engineer B's position that he would only assume responsibility for the specific changes he made, failing to recognize that fundamental modifications to core design elements could have cascading impacts on the entire project
We are troubled by Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings.
Engineer B seems to have taken the position that he would only assume responsibility for those changes which he had made by virtue of his modifications, failing to recognize the fact that once he began to make fundamental changes to certain aspects of the design, his modifications might have an overall impact upon the entire design of the project.
Engineer B Inadvertent Licensure Violation Collegial Counsel Inapplicability
The collegial counsel priority constraint applies most clearly to inadvertent or technical violations; Engineer B's conduct was extensive and deliberate, potentially removing it from the inadvertent category.
Inadvertent Licensure Violation Collegial Counsel Priority Constraint
While the collegial counsel priority constraint would ordinarily require Engineer A to first approach Engineer B directly before filing a formal complaint, the deliberate and extensive nature of Engineer B's violations — spanning both plan sets across 43 sheets with no notation and no sealing — places this situation at the boundary of the inadvertent violation category where collegial pre-reporting is preferred.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER precedent on inadvertent vs. serious violations
Upon Engineer A learning of Engineer B's alterations and considering reporting options
Engineer B Inadvertent vs Willful Licensure Violation Distinction Subdivision Plans
Inadvertent vs Willful Licensure Violation Distinction Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to recognize that his conduct — whether intentionally or unwittingly misleading — constituted a serious violation that could not be characterized as merely inadvertent, and that the Board's characterization of the conduct as deceptive reflected the gravity of the violations.
The Board found Engineer B's failure to document changes and failure to acknowledge full design accountability constituted deception regardless of intent
The Board's finding that Engineer B's conduct was 'misleading either intentionally or unwittingly,' indicating that even if unwitting, the violations were serious enough to constitute deception under Section III.3.a.
We view the conduct of Engineer B under the facts of this case to be misleading either intentionally or unwittingly.
Engineer B Mandatory Change Notation Grading Plans — Case 82-5
Engineer B made major changes to Engineer A's 5-sheet grading plan set — including deleting a sheet, raising housing pads, and rerouting streets — without making any notations of those changes
Successor Engineer Sealed Plan Change Notation Mandatory Specificity Constraint
Engineer B was absolutely constrained to make all necessary notations of every change made to Engineer A's grading plans — including modifications to grading, housing pads, and street routing — with sufficient specificity to allow any reviewer to identify exactly what was changed; failure to do so constituted deception in violation of NSPE Code Section III.3.a.
Engineer B had an ethical obligation to make all necessary notations of changes which he had made with respect to the grading plans, housing pads, routing of streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities.
At the time Engineer B submitted the modified grading plan set
Engineer B Mandatory Change Notation Public Improvement Plans — Case 82-5
Engineer B placed a general responsibility note on the title sheet of the 38-sheet public improvement plan set but failed to specify what changes were made on which sheets
Engineer B was absolutely constrained to make all necessary notations of every change made to Engineer A's 38-sheet public improvement plan set — including modifications to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — with sufficient specificity on each affected sheet; the vague title-sheet notation claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' was insufficient to satisfy this constraint.
At the time Engineer B submitted the modified public improvement plan set
Engineer B did in fact note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans that he was taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans.'
Engineer B Mixed-Authorship Design Submission Without Delineation
From the time Engineer B began modifying Engineer A's plans through submission of the combined documents without attribution markings
Engineer B appears to have 'mixed and matched' the plans prepared by Engineer A with what he thought would be appropriate, never indicating which represented the work of Engineer A and which represented his own work
Undifferentiated Mixed-Authorship Design Submission State
The design documents submitted by Engineer B combining Engineer A's original work with Engineer B's modifications
Not terminated — the documents were submitted in mixed-authorship form without resolution
Engineer B had an ethical obligation to make all necessary notations of changes which he had made with respect to the grading plans, housing pads, routing of streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities
His failure to do so constituted a form of deception which places him in violation of Section III.3.a
Engineer B's decision to use Engineer A's plans as a partial design basis and integrate his own modifications without marking the distinction
Engineer B Mixed-Authorship Plan Set Delineation Prohibition — Case 82-5
Engineer B used Engineer A's plans as a guide and combined Engineer A's original elements with his own modifications without indicating which represented whose work
Mixed-Authorship Plan Set Delineation Non-Deception Constraint
Engineer B was prohibited from submitting the redesigned subdivision plan set without clearly delineating which design elements represented Engineer A's original work and which represented Engineer B's own modifications — the 'mixed and matched' approach of intermingling predecessor and successor contributions without attribution violated NSPE Code Section III.9.
Engineer B appears to have 'mixed and matched' the plans prepared by Engineer A with what he thought would be appropriate, never indicating which represented the work of Engineer A and which represented his own work.
At the time Engineer B submitted the combined plan sets for the subdivision project
We think such conduct violates Section III.9. of the Code.
Engineer B Mixed-Authorship Successor Design Attribution Case 82-5
Rather than starting from scratch, Engineer B used Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide and produced a redesigned plan set that commingled Engineer A's original design elements with Engineer B's own modifications, never indicating which elements derived from which engineer's work.
Mixed-Authorship Successor Design Attribution and Differentiation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to clearly identify and differentiate in the redesigned plan set which design elements represented Engineer A's original work and which represented Engineer B's own redesign work, rather than commingling the two without attribution in a 'mixed and matched' plan set.
Rather than starting from scratch and redesigning the project, Engineer B appears to have 'mixed and matched' the plans prepared by Engineer A with what he thought would be appropriate, never indicating which represented the work of Engineer A and which represented his own work
At the time of producing and submitting the redesigned plan set
We think such conduct violates Section III.9. of the Code
Engineer B Mixed-Authorship Successor Design Attribution Failure
Mixed-Authorship Successor Design Attribution and Differentiation Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to clearly identify and differentiate which design elements in the redesigned plan set represented Engineer A's original work and which represented his own redesign contributions, instead 'mixing and matching' plans without attribution.
The Board found that Engineer B's mixed-and-matched approach without attribution violated Section III.9 of the NSPE Code
Engineer B's practice of combining Engineer A's sealed plans with his own redesign elements without indicating which represented Engineer A's work and which represented his own, in violation of Section III.9
Rather than starting from scratch and redesigning the project, Engineer B appears to have 'mixed and matched' the plans prepared by Engineer A with what he thought would be appropriate, never indicating which represented the work of Engineer A and which represented his own work.
Engineer B Original Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Grading Plans
Engineer B made material changes to the grading plans — deleting a sheet, raising housing pad elevations, rerouting streets — but left Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all remaining sheets.
Successor Engineer Original Seal Removal Upon Material Sheet Alteration Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on each sheet of the grading plan set that he materially altered, before those plans were submitted to any regulatory authority, contractor, or other party.
Engineer B reviewed the original drawings, made changes on the grading plans, including deletion of one sheet, raising the elevation of the housing pads and changing routing of the street.
Before submission or use of the altered grading plan set
Engineer B Original Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities across the 38-sheet public improvement plan set, but left Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets.
Engineer B was obligated to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on each sheet of the public improvement plan set that he materially altered, before those plans were submitted to any regulatory authority, contractor, or other party.
Before submission or use of the altered public improvement plan set
Engineer B Partial Responsibility Claim for Whole-Impact Modifications
From the time Engineer B completed his modifications through the Board's review
Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings
Partial Responsibility Claim Insufficient for Whole-Design Impact State
Engineer B's position that he bore responsibility only for his specific modifications, not for the integrated design as a whole
Not terminated — Engineer B never acknowledged full design responsibility
Engineer B's fundamental modifications to grading plans, housing pads, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — changes affecting overall design integrity
Engineer B Peer Engineer Sealed Document Modification Prior Consent
Peer Engineer Sealed Document Modification Prior Consent Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to obtain prior consent from Engineer A before making substantive modifications to Engineer A's sealed grading plans and public improvement plans
Engineer B was retained by the client to redesign the subdivision project using Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide, but proceeded without any consultation with or approval from Engineer A
Engineer B made major changes to grading plans (deleting a sheet, raising housing pad elevations, changing street routing) and major changes to public improvement plans (storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities) without obtaining Engineer A's approval
Engineer B Peer Engineer Sealed Document Modification Prior Consent Subdivision Plans
Peer Engineer Sealed Document Modification Prior Consent
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to confer with and obtain the approval of Engineer A before making substantive modifications to Engineer A's sealed grading and public improvement plans.
Engineer B made major changes to both plan sets without consulting Engineer A, despite Engineer A's continuing professional connection to the sealed documents
Engineer B's modification of Engineer A's sealed plans without prior consent or consultation, which the Board found to be professionally unwise and ethically problematic
we think it would have been wiser and more professional for Engineer B to consult with Engineer A before undertaking to modify the plans prepared by Engineer A.
Engineer B took those plans and made certain modifications in those plans.
Engineer B Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Obligation Case 82-5
Engineer B made major changes to grading plans, housing pad elevations, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities across a 43-sheet plan set without any communication with Engineer A.
Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Obligation
Engineer B was prudentially obligated — though not strictly required — to consult with Engineer A before undertaking modifications to Engineer A's sealed plans, so that Engineer B could benefit from Engineer A's technical understanding of the design decisions and so that Engineer A's professional interest in the integrity of their sealed work was respected.
we think it would have been wiser and more professional for Engineer B to consult with Engineer A before undertaking to modify the plans prepared by Engineer A
Before commencing substantive modifications to Engineer A's sealed plan set
the purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit ... comments or explanations for... technical decision, thereby enabling the reviewing engineer to have the benefit of a fuller understanding of the technical considerations in the original design
Engineer B Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Wisdom Failure
Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Wisdom Recognition Capability
Engineer B lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize the professional wisdom of consulting Engineer A before modifying Engineer A's sealed plans, despite the discharge having removed the strict notification requirement.
The Board found that while notification was not strictly required after discharge, consultation before modification would have been wiser and more professional, reflecting the underlying purpose of Section III.8.a.
Engineer B's failure to consult with Engineer A before undertaking modifications to Engineer A's sealed grading and public improvement plans, which the Board characterized as unwise and unprofessional
Engineer B Predecessor Seal Removal Grading Plans Material Alteration
Engineer B made changes to the 5-sheet grading plan set including deletion of one sheet, raising housing pad elevations, and changing street routing, without signing any sheets or removing Engineer A's seal.
Successor Engineer Predecessor Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Constraint
Engineer B was prohibited from leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on the grading plan sheets he materially altered — including the cover sheet — and was required to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and affix his own seal and signature on each altered sheet.
NSPE Code of Ethics; State engineering licensure regulations governing sealed document modification
At the time Engineer B made material changes to the grading plan sheets
Engineer B Predecessor Seal Removal Public Improvement Plans Material Alteration
Engineer B made major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the 38-sheet public improvement plan set without signing any sheets or removing Engineer A's seal.
Engineer B was prohibited from leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on the public improvement plan sheets he materially altered — including the cover sheet — and was required to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and affix his own seal and signature on each of the 38 sheets he modified.
At the time Engineer B made major design changes to the public improvement plan set
Engineer B Prudential Consultation With Engineer A Before Plan Modification — Case 82-5
Engineer B received Engineer A's sealed subdivision plans from the client and proceeded to make major design changes without consulting Engineer A
Discharged Engineer Residual Work-Product Connection Prudential Consultation Constraint
Although not strictly required, Engineer B was prudentially constrained to consult with Engineer A before undertaking modifications to Engineer A's sealed plans, because Engineer A retained a residual professional connection to the project through the work product passed to Engineer B by the client.
NSPE Code Section III.8.a rationale; BER Case 79-7; professional courtesy norms
Before Engineer B began making substantive modifications to Engineer A's sealed grading and public improvement plans
many of the reasons for Section III.8.a. as stated in Case 79-7 are relevant to the discussion of the facts present in this case
Engineer B Public Welfare Paramount Subdivision Plan Integrity Safety Obligation
Engineer B made major undocumented changes to subdivision infrastructure plans — affecting grading, streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — without proper attribution, creating a risk that parties relying on the plans would be misled about the design intent and the identity of the responsible engineer.
Engineer B was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in the redesign of subdivision infrastructure — including grading, street routing, storm drains, sewers, and utilities — and to ensure that all design changes were properly documented, attributed, and certified so that contractors, inspectors, and regulatory authorities could rely on the accuracy of the plan set.
Engineer B Responsible Charge Active Engagement Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to the 38-sheet public improvement plan set without signing or sealing any sheets, effectively disclaiming responsible charge while simultaneously exercising design authority.
Responsible Charge Active Engagement Constraint
Engineer B was required to exercise genuine responsible charge over the modified public improvement plans — including personally making or directly supervising all engineering decisions in the redesign — and was prohibited from treating the act of making changes to a predecessor's plans without sealing them as a substitute for proper responsible charge.
NSPE Position Statement No. 10-1778; State licensure law; NSPE Code Section III.9
Throughout Engineer B's redesign of the public improvement plans
Engineer B Responsible Charge Integrity Non-Delegation Public Improvement Plans
Successor Engineer Responsible Charge Integrity Non-Delegation Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to ensure that his modifications to Engineer A's sealed public improvement plans were made under proper responsible charge, instead leaving Engineer A's seal intact and providing only a vague disclaimer
Engineer B made major changes to the 38-sheet public improvement plan set without assuming proper responsible charge through signing and sealing the modified sheets
Engineer B made major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities without signing or sealing the modified sheets, effectively attempting to delegate responsible charge to Engineer A's retained seal
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans, leaving Engineer A's signature and seal intact, stating that he, Engineer B, is taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans'
Engineer B Responsible Charge Integrity Non-Delegation Subdivision Plans
Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to maintain proper responsible charge over his modifications to Engineer A's sealed plans — instead attempting to delegate accountability to Engineer A's remaining seal and a vague title-sheet disclaimer rather than personally assuming full responsible charge over the modified work.
The Board found Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design violated Section III.9, reflecting a failure of responsible charge
Engineer B's failure to properly seal modified sheets and acknowledge full design accountability, effectively attempting to rely on Engineer A's seal for portions of the design he had fundamentally altered
We are troubled by Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings. (See Section III.9.)
Engineer B seems to have taken the position that he would only assume responsibility for those changes which he had made by virtue of his modifications
Engineer B Sealed Document Modification Documentation Grading Plans
Sealed Document Modification Documentation Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to identify, record, and document all changes made to Engineer A's sealed grading plans, including the deleted sheet, raised housing pad elevations, and changed street routing
Engineer B made major changes to Engineer A's 5-sheet grading plan set without any notation of what was changed
Engineer B made changes to the grading plans but 'did not note what changes were made nor did he sign any of the sheets, including the cover sheet'
Engineer B Sealed Document Modification Documentation Grading Plans Failure
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to document all changes made to Engineer A's grading plans — including the deleted sheet, raised housing pads, rerouted streets, and modified storm drains — leaving Engineer A's seal intact without specific notation of what was changed.
The Board found Engineer B's failure to document changes to the grading plans constituted a form of deception violating Section III.3.a.
Engineer B's failure to make all necessary notations of changes to grading plans covering grading, housing pads, routing of streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities
Engineer B Sealed Document Modification Documentation Obligation Case 82-5
Engineer B made major design changes across both the 5-sheet grading plan set and the 38-sheet public improvement plan set but provided only a vague title-sheet notation claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what was revised.
Sealed Document Modification Documentation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to make all necessary notations of changes made to Engineer A's sealed plans — specifically identifying modifications to grading plans, housing pad elevations, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — so that all parties relying on the documents could determine precisely what was changed, by whom, and when.
It is clear that Engineer B had an ethical obligation to make all necessary notations of changes which he had made with respect to the grading plans, housing pads, routing of streets, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities. His failure to do so constituted a form of deception which places him in violation of Section III.3.a.
At the time of making each design modification to Engineer A's sealed plan sheets
Engineer B's failure to state with specificity what those changes in fact were made such a notation on the title sheet virtually meaningless
Engineer B Sealed Document Modification Documentation Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to the public improvement plans but made no notation of the changes on any sheet.
Engineer B was obligated to identify and document all changes made to Engineer A's public improvement plans — including changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — on each affected sheet, so that Engineer A and all parties relying on the documents could determine precisely what was changed, by whom, and when.
Concurrent with or immediately following each design change to the public improvement plan set
Engineer B Sealed Document Modification Documentation Public Improvement Plans Failure
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to document all changes made to Engineer A's public improvement plans with sufficient specificity — placing only a vague title-sheet notation about 'revisions' without identifying what was actually changed.
The Board found that Engineer B's vague title-sheet notation was virtually meaningless and insufficient to satisfy the documentation obligation
Engineer B's vague title-sheet notation on public improvement plans claiming responsibility for 'revisions' without specifying the nature, scope, or location of changes
Engineer B Sealed Plan Unsigned Alteration Prohibition Grading Plans
Engineer B made changes to the grading plans including deletion of one sheet, raising housing pad elevations, and changing street routing, but did not sign any sheets and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact.
Successor Engineer Sealed Plan Unsigned Alteration Prohibition Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to sign and seal each sheet of the grading plan set that he materially altered — including the cover sheet — and to remove or supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on those sheets, rather than leaving Engineer A's seal intact on sheets whose content Engineer A never reviewed or approved.
Upon making material changes to any sheet of the grading plan set
Engineer B Sealed Plan Unsigned Alteration Prohibition Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities across the 38-sheet public improvement plan set, but did not sign any sheets and left Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets.
Engineer B was obligated to sign and seal each sheet of the public improvement plan set that he materially altered — including the cover sheet — and to remove or supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on those sheets, rather than leaving Engineer A's seal intact on sheets containing major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities that Engineer A never reviewed.
Upon making material changes to any sheet of the public improvement plan set
Engineer B Sealed Report Integrity Inviolability Grading Plans
Engineer B made substantive changes to Engineer A's sealed 5-sheet grading plan set while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets.
Sealed Report Integrity Inviolability Constraint
Engineer B was absolutely prohibited from modifying Engineer A's signed and sealed grading plans without removing Engineer A's seal and affixing his own — the inviolability of Engineer A's sealed documents meant that Engineer B could not alter those documents while leaving Engineer A's professional certification intact.
NSPE Code of Ethics; State engineering licensure law
At the time Engineer B made changes to the grading plan set
Engineer B Sealed Report Integrity Inviolability Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B made major design changes to Engineer A's sealed 38-sheet public improvement plan set while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets.
Engineer B was absolutely prohibited from modifying Engineer A's signed and sealed public improvement plans without removing Engineer A's seal and affixing his own — the inviolability of Engineer A's sealed documents meant that Engineer B could not alter those documents while leaving Engineer A's professional certification intact.
Engineer B Section III.8.a. Purpose Purposive Interpretation Application
Section III.8.a. Purpose and Scope Purposive Interpretation Capability
Engineer B failed to apply purposive interpretation of Section III.8.a. to recognize that even after Engineer A's discharge, the underlying rationale of the rule — enabling the reviewing engineer to benefit from the original engineer's knowledge of design intent — remained professionally relevant and should have guided his conduct before modifying Engineer A's plans.
The Board applied Case 79-7's articulation of Section III.8.a.'s purpose to the post-discharge modification context, finding the rationale relevant even where the strict requirement did not apply
Engineer B's failure to consult Engineer A before modifying sealed plans, despite the Board's finding that the purposes of Section III.8.a. remained relevant even after discharge
the purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit ... comments or explanations for... technical decision
we think that many of the reasons for Section III.8.a. as stated in Case 79-7 are relevant to the discussion of the facts present in this case.
Engineer B Section III.8.a Discharge Exception Scope Limitation — Case 82-5
Engineer B treated Engineer A's discharge as authorization for unrestricted modification of sealed plans, failing to comply with sealing, attribution, and documentation requirements
Section III.8.a Discharge Exception Scope Limitation Constraint
Engineer B's permissibility in reviewing Engineer A's work without notification — based on Engineer A's formal discharge — was limited strictly to the notification obligation under Section III.8.a and did not authorize Engineer B to make material design changes without complying with sealing, attribution, and documentation obligations; Engineer B was constrained to comply with all other professional obligations governing modification of sealed engineering documents regardless of the discharge exception.
NSPE Code Section III.8.a; Section III.3.a; Section III.9
Throughout Engineer B's redesign engagement on the subdivision project
we are troubled by much of the actions undertaken by Engineer B subsequent to his review of Engineer A's work
Engineer B Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Engagement Non-Requirement Recognition Subdivision
Engineer A possessed the capability to recognize that Engineer B's deliberate and extensive undocumented modifications to sealed plans — constituting a serious violation — did not require Engineer A to first engage Engineer B collegially before reporting to the licensing authority.
Engineer A's obligation to report Engineer B's serious violations to the licensing authority, with the Board noting that the seriousness of the violations may not require prior collegial engagement
The Board's recognition that Engineer A must recognize that while collegial pre-reporting engagement is generally appropriate for inadvertent violations, the scope and deliberateness of Engineer B's conduct may warrant direct formal reporting
Engineer B Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Non-Requirement Recognition
Engineer B made major design changes across both plan sets, left Engineer A's seal intact on all sheets, provided only a vague title-sheet disclaimer, and made no per-sheet notations — a pattern suggesting either deliberate disregard or profound ignorance of professional sealing requirements.
Serious Violation Collegial Pre-Reporting Engagement Non-Requirement Obligation
Engineer A must recognize that while collegial pre-reporting engagement is generally appropriate for inadvertent violations, the scope and deliberateness of Engineer B's alterations — major changes across 43 sheets of sealed subdivision infrastructure plans, with a vague title-sheet disclaimer rather than proper re-sealing — may constitute a serious violation for which direct licensing board reporting without prior collegial engagement is ethically permissible.
When Engineer A is assessing whether to engage Engineer B collegially before reporting to the licensing board
Engineer B Signed and Sealed Document Integrity Significance Recognition
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to understand and apply the full professional significance of Engineer A's seal — specifically that leaving Engineer A's seal intact after material alterations creates a false professional certification and compromises the integrity of the sealed document system
Engineer B made major design changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets
Engineer B left Engineer A's seal and signature intact on materially altered sheets of both the grading plans and public improvement plans, and placed only a vague title-sheet disclaimer rather than properly re-sealing altered sheets
Engineer B Successor Engineer Original Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Grading Plans
Successor Engineer Original Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Capability
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on each sheet of the grading plan set that he materially altered
Engineer B made material changes to Engineer A's 5-sheet grading plan set while leaving Engineer A's seal intact on all sheets
Engineer B deleted a sheet, raised housing pad elevations, and changed street routing in the grading plans without removing Engineer A's seal from any altered sheet or signing any sheet himself
Engineer B Successor Engineer Original Seal Removal Upon Material Alteration Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B failed to exercise the capability to remove or clearly supersede Engineer A's seal and signature on each sheet of the public improvement plan set that he materially altered
Engineer B made major changes to Engineer A's 38-sheet public improvement plan set while leaving Engineer A's seal intact on all sheets
Engineer B made major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities in the 38-sheet public improvement plan set without removing Engineer A's seal from any altered sheet or signing any sheet himself
Engineer B Successor Engineer Prior-Engineer Communication Before Redesign
Engineer B was retained by the client to review and redesign a subdivision project using Engineer A's sealed 43-sheet plan set as a guide. Engineer B made major changes across both plan sets without any communication with Engineer A.
Successor Engineer Prior-Engineer Communication Before Redesign Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to communicate with Engineer A before making substantive design changes to Engineer A's sealed grading plans and public improvement plans, to advise Engineer A of the intended redesign scope and afford Engineer A the opportunity to respond.
Before commencing substantive design changes to Engineer A's sealed plan sets
Engineer B Successor Redesign Deceptive Omission of Change Specificity Case 82-5
Engineer B noted on the title sheet of the public improvement plans that he was 'taking responsibility for the revisions of the plans' but did not identify what was revised, where, or to what extent — leaving the notation virtually meaningless as a professional accountability document.
Successor Redesign Deceptive Omission of Change Specificity Prohibition Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to refrain from misleading conduct — whether intentional or unwitting — arising from the failure to specify the nature, scope, and location of all design changes made to Engineer A's sealed plans, and was prohibited from substituting a vague title-sheet disclaimer for the specific, itemized change documentation required by professional ethics.
We view the conduct of Engineer B under the facts of this case to be misleading either intentionally or unwittingly
At the time of submitting the redesigned plan set to regulatory authorities and the client
{'license': 'Professional Engineer (implied)', 'specialty': 'Subdivision redesign — grading, storm drainage, utilities', 'changes_documented': False, 'sheets_signed_by_engineer_b': 'None', 'prior_engineer_seal_removed': False, 'communication_with_engineer_a': 'None'}
Retained by the client to review and redesign the subdivision project using Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide. Made major changes to grading plans (deleting a sheet, raising housing pad elevations, rerouting streets) and major design changes to storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — without documenting any changes, without signing or sealing any sheets, and without communicating with Engineer A. Left Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all sheets, placing only a vague title-sheet note claiming responsibility for unspecified 'revisions.'
{'type': 'peer_successor_to', 'target': 'Engineer A Discharged Original Design Engineer'}
Undocumented Alteration Successor Design Engineer
Engineer B did not note what changes were made nor did he sign any of the sheets
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans, leaving Engineer A's signature and seal intact, stating that he, Engineer B, is taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans,' making no notation what those changes were
Engineer B Undocumented Redesign on Engineer A Plans
From Engineer B's retention by the client through completion of the redesign work
Successor Engineer Undocumented Redesign on Predecessor Plans State
Engineer B's redesign engagement across both the grading and public improvement plan sets
Not yet terminated in terms of ethical consequences; the undocumented redesign is complete and the plans are in use
Client retaining Engineer B to review and redesign the project using Engineer A's plans as a guide, with Engineer B proceeding to make substantial changes without documentation, signing, or communication
Engineer B Unwitting Deception Non-Exculpation for Change Notation Failure — Case 82-5
The Board found Engineer B's conduct to be misleading 'either intentionally or unwittingly,' establishing that intent does not determine whether the deception constraint is violated
Engineer B was constrained from the defense that his failure to notate changes was unintentional or unwitting — the ethical prohibition on deceptive conduct under NSPE Code Section III.3.a applied regardless of whether the misleading omission was intentional or merely unwitting, establishing that the deception constraint operates independently of subjective intent.
At the time Engineer B submitted the modified plan sets without adequate change notation
Engineer B Vague Title-Sheet Disclaimer Insufficiency Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what changes were made, while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on all 38 sheets.
Vague Title-Sheet Disclaimer Insufficiency for Sealed Plan Modification Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to provide specific, itemized documentation of all changes made to Engineer A's public improvement plans on each affected sheet, and was prohibited from substituting a vague title-sheet note claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' — without identifying what was revised, on which sheets, or to what extent — as a substitute for proper per-sheet documentation and re-sealing.
At the time of submitting or using the altered plan set
Engineer B Vague Title Sheet Disclaimer Insufficiency Public Improvement Plans
Engineer B placed a note on the title sheet claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact and making no specification of what changes were made.
Vague Successor Responsibility Claim Insufficient Sealed Plan Attribution Constraint
Engineer B's placement of a general note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what those revisions were was insufficient to satisfy his professional attribution and documentation obligations, and he was prohibited from treating this vague disclaimer as a substitute for specific, itemized change documentation.
NSPE Code Section III.3.a (non-deception); NSPE Code Section III.9 (full design responsibility acknowledgment)
At the time Engineer B submitted the public improvement plans with the vague title sheet notation
Engineer B Vague Title Sheet Responsibility Notation
From submission of the public improvement plans through the Board's review
Engineer B did in fact note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans that he was taking responsibility for the 'revisions of the plans'
Vague Successor Responsibility Claim Without Change Specification State
Engineer B's title sheet notation claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what those revisions were
Not terminated — the notation remained in its vague form
Engineer B's placement of a general responsibility notation on the title sheet without specifying the nature or scope of changes
Engineer B Vague Title Sheet Responsibility Note
From the time Engineer B placed the note on the title sheet through any future use of the plans
The title sheet of the public improvement plans bearing Engineer B's unspecified responsibility note alongside Engineer A's intact seal
Not yet terminated; the vague note remains the only attribution of Engineer B's responsibility
Engineer B placing a note on the title sheet claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what those revisions were, while leaving Engineer A's signature and seal intact
Engineer B Whole-Project Accountability Upon Fundamental Redesign — Case 82-5
Engineer B made fundamental changes to grading, housing pads, street routing, storm drains, and utilities but took the position that he bore responsibility only for his specific modifications, not for the integrated design as a whole
Fundamental Redesign Whole-Project Accountability Assumption Constraint
Engineer B was constrained to acknowledge and assume professional accountability for the entire integrated subdivision design — not merely for the discrete modifications he made — because his fundamental changes to core design elements had an overall impact upon the efficacy and integrity of the entire project, making partial responsibility claims professionally and ethically insufficient under NSPE Code Section III.9.
Upon making fundamental changes to Engineer A's subdivision design
Engineer B making changes to grading plans before Engineer B making changes to public improvement plans
Engineer B placing note on title sheet during Engineer B's redesign activities
Engineer B reviewing Engineer A's plans before Engineer B making changes to grading plans
Engineer B's retention before any communication between the two engineers
Engineer B's undocumented alteration of sealed plans
Professional Reciprocity and Collegial Solidarity Principle
Engineer A, upon learning that Engineer B had made major undocumented changes to both plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal intact, bore a professional obligation as part of the engineering profession's self-policing function to report Engineer B's conduct to the appropriate licensing authority.
The self-policing obligation is particularly strong here because Engineer B's conduct — leaving a predecessor's seal on materially altered plans without notation or re-sealing — directly undermines the public protection function of the licensure system and constitutes a clear ethical violation that the profession cannot tolerate.
The magnitude and deliberateness of Engineer B's conduct — major changes across two plan sets with no notation, no signing, and only a vague title-sheet disclaimer — suggests this was not an inadvertent violation, strengthening the reporting obligation relative to the collegial engagement preference.
Holistic Design Responsibility Invoked Against Engineer B Subdivision Redesign
Engineer B's subdivision redesign of Engineer A's sealed plans
Scope-of-Work Limitation as Incomplete Ethical Defense
Engineer B made fundamental changes to grading plans, housing pads, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities, but attempted to limit his professional responsibility only to those discrete changes, failing to recognize that such fundamental modifications to interconnected design elements created professional accountability for the entire integrated design
Once an engineer makes fundamental changes to core elements of an integrated engineering design, the interconnected nature of engineering systems means that accountability cannot be surgically limited to discrete changes — the entire design integrity is implicated
Holistic Design Responsibility Upon Fundamental Modification Principle
The Board found that Engineer B's attempt to limit responsibility to discrete changes was ethically insufficient given the fundamental and interconnected nature of the modifications made
This suggests a lack of recognition on the part of Engineer B that his modifications in the design might have a significant impact upon the efficacy and integrity of the entire project design.
Honesty in Professional Representations Violated by Engineer B's Vague Disclaimer
All altered sheets across both plan sets
Title sheet note on public improvement plans
Engineer B's title-sheet note claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' without specifying what was revised constitutes a professionally dishonest representation — it creates the false impression that Engineer B has properly assumed accountability for the redesign while simultaneously leaving Engineer A's seal intact on all modified sheets, producing a document that misrepresents both engineers' professional accountability.
Honesty in professional representations requires that accountability claims be specific and accurate; a vague disclaimer that obscures rather than clarifies the nature and extent of design changes fails this standard.
No efficiency consideration justifies a professionally dishonest representation of accountability; the honesty obligation requires specificity proportional to the magnitude of changes made.
Inter-Engineer Communication Absent — Engineer B Modifying Engineer A's Plans
From the time Engineer B received Engineer A's plans through completion of the redesign
Absence of any communication between Engineer B and Engineer A during Engineer B's redesign of Engineer A's sealed plans
Not terminated — no communication occurred
Engineer B's commencement of modifications to Engineer A's sealed plans without any notification or consultation
Inter-Engineer Communication Obligation Violated by Engineer B
Client interest in avoiding contact with discharged Engineer A
Engineer B was retained to review and redesign a subdivision project using Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide, but made major changes across both plan sets without initiating any communication with Engineer A — foregoing the opportunity to understand Engineer A's design intent, identify known project constraints, and ensure Engineer A was aware that their sealed work was being materially modified.
The communication obligation was triggered by the magnitude of the redesign — major changes to grading, elevations, street routing, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — which made Engineer A's design intent knowledge directly relevant to the quality and safety of Engineer B's redesign decisions.
Inter-Engineer Communication Obligation in Sequential Design Engagement
The client's interest in avoiding contact with the discharged engineer does not override Engineer B's independent professional obligation to communicate with the original engineer when making material changes to their sealed work.
Maintain Silence Toward Engineer A Throughout
Mixed-Authorship Attribution Violation by Engineer B
Engineer B's subdivision plan set combining Engineer A's and Engineer B's design elements
Engineer B used Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide and produced a redesigned plan set that commingled Engineer A's original design elements with Engineer B's own modifications, without indicating on any sheet which elements represented Engineer A's work and which represented Engineer B's own work
The commingling of two engineers' design work without attribution on the plan documents constitutes misleading conduct — whether intentional or unwitting — because it creates a false impression about the authorship and professional accountability for each design element
Mixed-Authorship Design Document Attribution Obligation
The Board found that the client's instruction to use Engineer A's plans as a guide did not excuse Engineer B's failure to attribute authorship of design elements on the plan documents
Modify Grading Plans Without Notation (Action 4) → Engineer A's Seal Left Intact (Event 5)
National Society of Professional Engineers
making no notation what those changes were
Engineer B (obligated party); ethics reviewers analyzing the case
Primary normative authority governing Engineer B's obligations when modifying Engineer A's sealed plans, including duties of honesty, public safety, and professional integrity
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers, Section III.3.a
Board of Ethical Review in finding Engineer B's omissions constituted deception
Prohibits deceptive or misleading conduct; cited as the basis for finding Engineer B in violation due to failure to notate all changes made to Engineer A's plans
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers, Section III.8.a
Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer B's review of Engineer A's work
Governs the prohibition on reviewing another engineer's work for the same client without the knowledge of that engineer or unless the prior relationship has been terminated; cited as the foundational rule framing Engineer B's conduct
NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers, Section III.9
Board of Ethical Review in assessing Engineer B's mixed-and-matched plan attribution
Governs an engineer's obligation to acknowledge full design responsibility when modifications affect the integrity of the entire project; cited in connection with Engineer B's failure to take responsibility for the full redesign
Original Engineer Seal Integrity Right Invoked for Engineer A Upon Discharge
Engineer A's sealed subdivision plans after discharge and transfer to Engineer B
Successor Engineer Sealed Plan Alteration Without Attribution Prohibition
Engineer A, having been discharged after completing and sealing a full set of subdivision plans, retained a professional interest in ensuring that the sealed plans were not used in ways that misrepresented his professional conclusions — an interest that persisted through the client's transfer of the sealed plans to Engineer B and Engineer B's subsequent modifications without proper attribution or seal supersession
Discharge does not extinguish the original engineer's professional connection to sealed work; the seal continues to represent a public certification of the engineer's judgment, and that certification is compromised when the sealed documents are materially altered without proper attribution
Original Engineer Seal Integrity Right Upon Discharge
The Board acknowledged Engineer A's continuing connection to the work despite discharge, using this as a basis for finding Engineer B's conduct troubling and for recommending consultation as the professionally wise course
In addition, the facts indicate that Engineer B took those plans and made certain modifications in those plans.
While it is true that Engineer A had been 'discharged' by the client, Engineer A still maintained a connection with the work which he had performed by virtue of the fact that the client passed along Engineer A's work product to Engineer B.
Original Engineer Seal Integrity Right of Engineer A
Engineer A's post-discharge disengagement interest
Engineer A, having been discharged and having transferred the original drawings to the client while retaining reproducibles, retained a professional right and obligation to ensure that their seal was not left intact on materially altered plans — a right that was violated when Engineer B made major changes without removing Engineer A's seal or initiating any communication to alert Engineer A to the situation.
The discharge and plan transfer did not extinguish Engineer A's seal integrity rights; Engineer A's decision to retain reproducibles reflects an implicit understanding that the seal creates continuing accountability that survives the client relationship.
The client's property rights in the physical drawings do not include the right to authorize a successor engineer to leave the original engineer's seal on materially altered work; the seal's public protection function creates rights that belong to the profession and the public, not solely to the client.
Peer Review Purpose Articulated in Case 79-7 Precedent
The relationship between Engineer B's review of Engineer A's work and the peer review notification provisions of the Code
Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Principle
The Board cited Case 79-7 to articulate that the purpose of the peer review notification requirement is to give the original engineer an opportunity to submit comments and explanations for technical decisions, enabling the reviewing engineer to have a fuller understanding of the technical considerations in the original design — a purpose that remains relevant even in discharge contexts
Even where the mandatory notification requirement does not apply due to discharge, the underlying purpose of peer review notification — enabling the reviewing engineer to benefit from the original engineer's accumulated design knowledge — remains professionally relevant
Incumbent Engineer Knowledge Requirement in Peer Review
The purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit comments or explanations for technical decisions, thereby enabling the reviewing engineer to have the benefit of a fuller understanding of the technical considerations in the original design.
The Board distinguished the mandatory obligation (not triggered by discharge) from the prudential wisdom of consultation, finding the latter still professionally advisable for the quality reasons underlying the former
It may be helpful for future guidance to again point out that the purpose of Section 12(a) (now Section III.8.a.) is to provide the engineer whose work is being reviewed by another engineer an opportunity to submit ... comments or explanations for... technical decision, thereby enabling the reviewing engineer to have the benefit of a fuller understanding of the technical considerations in the original design in framing . . . comments or suggestions for the ultimate benefit of the client.
Place Vague Responsibility Note (Action 6) combined with Claim Partial Rather Than Full Design Responsibility (Action 7) → False Attribution State Created (Event 7)
Professional engineering practice norms / state licensing board rules
Engineer B during redesign of subdivision grading and public improvement plans
Establishes Engineer B's obligation to clearly notate all changes made to Engineer A's plans, identify which sheets were modified, and take explicit and specific documented responsibility for each revision rather than a vague blanket note
Post-Discharge Collegial Consultation Prudential Norm Applied to Engineer B
Engineer B's decision to modify Engineer A's sealed subdivision plans without prior consultation
Although Engineer B was not ethically prohibited from reviewing Engineer A's work after Engineer A's discharge, the Board found it would have been wiser and more professional for Engineer B to consult with Engineer A before modifying the sealed plans, because Engineer A retained a professional connection to the work through the continued use of his sealed documents
Discharge of the original engineer does not fully sever the professional relationship between the original engineer and their sealed work; the successor engineer's professional wisdom is enhanced by consultation even when not strictly required
While this Board concedes that Engineer B did not act unethically in agreeing to review the work of Engineer A without notifying Engineer A, we are troubled by much of the actions undertaken by Engineer B subsequent to his review of Engineer A's work.
The Board distinguished between the mandatory notification obligation (which did not apply after discharge) and the prudential best practice of consultation (which remained professionally advisable), finding Engineer B not unethical for omitting notification but still professionally deficient in not consulting
Engineer B when placing the responsibility note on the title sheet
Governs Engineer B's obligation to accurately and completely represent the authorship and scope of changes in the revised plans, prohibiting vague or misleading notations that obscure the extent of redesign performed
Professional Accountability of Engineer B for Redesign Decisions
All modified sheets in grading and public improvement plan sets
Engineer B, having made major design changes to both plan sets, bore full professional accountability for those changes — an accountability that required formal expression through sealing and signing all modified sheets and documenting each change, rather than through a vague title-sheet disclaimer that left the original engineer's seal intact.
Professional accountability is not dischargeable through nominal disclaimers; it requires formal acts of professional certification (sealing and signing) that place the engineer's license on record as the guarantor of specific design decisions.
Professional accountability admits no practical efficiency exception; the magnitude of the redesign required Engineer B to formally certify each modified sheet through proper sealing procedures.
Public Welfare Paramount in Subdivision Plan Integrity
Public improvement plans including storm drains, sewers, and utilities
The integrity of subdivision plans — including grading, street routing, storm drains, sewers, and utilities — directly affects the safety and welfare of future subdivision residents and the public; Engineer B's undocumented major changes to these systems, left under Engineer A's seal without proper attribution, created a public safety risk by obscuring who was professionally accountable for each design decision.
The public welfare principle requires that engineering documents accurately reflect professional accountability so that public authorities and contractors can identify the responsible engineer for each design decision — a requirement that Engineer B's conduct directly undermined.
Public welfare in the context of subdivision infrastructure design is paramount; the client's interest in efficient redesign does not justify creating ambiguous accountability records for public infrastructure systems.
Was Engineer B unethical in performing services for the client without notifying Engineer A?
Given that Engineer A's seal and signature remained intact on substantially altered drawings, does Engineer A bear any continuing professional or legal liability for design failures arising from Engineer B's undisclosed modifications, and what affirmative steps must Engineer A take upon discovering the misuse of his seal?
Does the client's act of transferring Engineer A's original drawings to Engineer B carry any independent ethical weight — specifically, did the client implicitly authorize or enable an ethical violation by providing sealed plans to a successor engineer without requiring that Engineer A's seal be removed or superseded before redesign commenced?
Was Engineer B's placement of a vague responsibility note on only the title sheet of the public improvement plans — while making no notation whatsoever on the grading plans — a form of deceptive conduct that could mislead reviewing authorities, contractors, or the public into believing Engineer A's original design remained intact and fully operative?
When Engineer B made fundamental redesign changes affecting storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, utilities, housing pad elevations, and street routing, did the cumulative scope of those changes obligate Engineer B to treat the entire plan set as a new design requiring fresh sealing of all sheets rather than selective notation on a single title sheet?
Was Engineer B unethical in making changes on specific sheets of a set of drawings without clearly identifying those changes?
Does the principle that Engineer B was not required to notify Engineer A before accepting the engagement conflict with the principle that Engineer B had an obligation to consult Engineer A before materially altering sealed plans — and if so, at what point does a permissible successor engagement transform into an ethically obligatory collegial consultation?
Does the principle of Engineer A's ongoing stamped-document accountability conflict with the principle of Engineer A's right to seal integrity upon discharge — specifically, can Engineer A simultaneously bear residual technical accountability for a design he no longer controls while also asserting that his seal has been wrongfully retained on plans he did not authorize?
Does the principle of public welfare paramount in subdivision plan integrity conflict with the principle that Engineer B's vague title sheet disclaimer is merely insufficient rather than affirmatively deceptive — and should the public safety stakes of a 43-sheet subdivision plan set elevate the ethical standard for attribution and change notation beyond what the Board's conclusion implies?
Does the principle requiring Engineer A to engage in collegial pre-reporting counsel toward Engineer B before notifying licensing authorities conflict with the principle that Engineer B's conduct — leaving a predecessor's seal intact on fundamentally redesigned plans — constitutes a serious rather than inadvertent violation, thereby removing any obligation of collegial deference and requiring direct regulatory reporting?
Was Engineer B unethical in failing to note his assumption of responsibility for the entire set of drawings?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer B fulfill his duty of honesty and non-deception toward the public, the licensing authority, and Engineer A by leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on plans he had materially altered, regardless of whether any actual harm resulted?
From a consequentialist perspective, did the cumulative outcome of Engineer B's undocumented alterations — leaving Engineer A's seal intact, providing only a vague title-sheet disclaimer, and making no notation of specific changes — create a net harm to public safety and professional trust that outweighs any efficiency gained by building on Engineer A's existing plans?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer B demonstrate the professional integrity and collegial respect expected of a competent engineer when he accepted the redesign engagement, made major design changes across 43 sheets, and maintained complete silence toward Engineer A throughout the process — never consulting him, never notifying him, and never removing his seal?
From a deontological perspective, does Engineer A bear a continuing duty — grounded in the ongoing accountability attached to a professional seal — to investigate, demand correction of, and if necessary report to licensing authorities the unauthorized alteration of his sealed plans, even after he has been discharged and compensated in full by the client?
If Engineer B had contacted Engineer A before beginning the redesign — even informally — would Engineer A's awareness of the impending alterations have created a shared professional obligation to jointly ensure that the seal, attribution, and change-notation requirements were properly handled, and would such communication have prevented the ethical violations the Board identified?
If Engineer B had removed Engineer A's seal and signature from every sheet he altered, affixed his own seal and signature to those sheets, and provided a detailed change log on the cover sheet of each plan set, would the Board's ethical concerns have been fully resolved — or would residual concerns about the integrity of the mixed-authorship document set remain?
If the client had refused to give Engineer B Engineer A's original drawings and had instead required Engineer B to produce entirely new plans from scratch, would the ethical violations identified by the Board have been avoided entirely — and does this scenario reveal that the client's act of transferring the sealed plans was itself an ethically significant enabling condition for Engineer B's misconduct?
If Engineer B's title-sheet note on the public improvement plans had specifically enumerated every sheet he modified, described the nature of each change, removed Engineer A's seal from altered sheets, and affixed his own seal with a statement assuming full responsibility for the integrated design — would Engineer B still have been ethically obligated to notify Engineer A, or would that level of documentation have discharged all of his professional obligations without any inter-engineer communication?
Redesign Public Improvements Without Attribution
Redesign Public Improvements Without Attribution (Action 5) → False Attribution State Created (Event 7)
Responsible Charge Integrity Invoked for Engineer B Full Design Accountability
Engineer B's sealing and responsibility acknowledgment practices on the modified subdivision plan set
Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design through notations on the drawings — and his attempt to limit responsibility only to discrete changes — violated the principle that a professional seal certifies the engineer's responsible charge over the certified work, which cannot be artificially fragmented when fundamental modifications affect the whole design
Responsible charge cannot be selectively invoked for only those portions of a design that the engineer personally modified when those modifications fundamentally affect the integrity of the whole design
Responsible Charge Integrity and Seal Authority Principle
The Board found Engineer B's failure to acknowledge full design responsibility through notations on the drawings to be an independent ethical concern, suggesting a lack of recognition of the interconnected impact of his modifications
In addition, we are troubled by Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings. (See Section III.9.)
Responsible Charge Integrity Violated by Engineer B
Practical burden of re-sealing 43 sheets
Engineer B made major design changes to grading plans, storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities across a 43-sheet plan set without removing Engineer A's seal or affixing his own, thereby allowing Engineer A's professional certification to stand on work Engineer A never reviewed or approved.
Engineer B's failure to re-seal modified sheets directly violated the principle that a seal certifies responsible charge over the specific documents bearing it — Engineer A exercised responsible charge over the original designs, not over Engineer B's modifications.
The responsible charge principle admits no exception for practical inconvenience; every sheet containing material changes must be re-sealed by the engineer who made those changes.
Sealed Document Post-Alteration Correction Demand Obligation for Engineer A
Confidentiality of client project information
Upon learning that Engineer B had made major design changes to all plan sets while leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact, Engineer A was obligated to investigate the nature and extent of the alterations and demand that Engineer B properly re-seal all modified sheets or remove Engineer A's seal from them.
The principle applies even in the post-discharge context because Engineer A's seal creates a continuing public certification obligation that survives the client relationship; the alteration without re-sealing constitutes a misrepresentation of Engineer A's professional conclusions.
Sealed Document Post-Alteration Investigation and Correction Demand Obligation
The obligation to investigate and demand correction is triggered by the fact of material alteration under the original seal, regardless of the engineer's employment status at the time of alteration.
Signed and Sealed Report Integrity Standard
Engineer B when modifying Engineer A's grading and public improvement plans
Governs the inviolability of Engineer A's sealed plans and the prohibition on Engineer B leaving Engineer A's seal and signature intact on materially altered documents without proper corrective action or re-sealing
Stamped Document Ongoing Accountability of Engineer A
Engineer A's post-discharge disengagement
Engineer A's seal and signature, left intact on materially altered plans, continued to represent a public certification of professional accountability for design decisions Engineer A never made — including changed elevations, deleted sheets, rerouted streets, and redesigned storm drains — creating ongoing professional exposure for Engineer A.
Discharge by the client and physical transfer of the plans did not extinguish Engineer A's professional accountability for documents bearing their seal; Engineer A retained both the right and obligation to ensure their seal was not misused on altered work.
Stamped Document Ongoing Professional Accountability
The seal's public protection function overrides the engineer's post-discharge disengagement interest; Engineer A retained a professional stake in the integrity of documents bearing their certification.
Subdivision Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization of Successor Alteration Case 82-5
The client discharged Engineer A after full fee payment, requested and received Engineer A's original signed and sealed drawings, and passed them to Engineer B with instructions to use them as a guide for redesign.
Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization of Successor Alteration Obligation
The subdivision client's act of transferring Engineer A's signed and sealed drawings to Engineer B and directing Engineer B to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize Engineer B to make substantive design changes while leaving Engineer A's seal intact, and did not relieve the client of responsibility for facilitating a process that resulted in falsely attributed sealed engineering documents.
The facts seem to suggest that the client gave Engineer B the plans prepared by Engineer A to use as a guide in the redesign
At the time of transferring Engineer A's sealed drawings to Engineer B and directing the redesign
{'type': 'Property developer / subdivision owner', 'fee_paid_to_engineer_a': 'Complete fee paid', 'plans_provided_to_successor': True}
Commissioned original subdivision plans from Engineer A, discharged Engineer A after full fee payment due to dissatisfaction, requested and received the original drawings, then retained Engineer B and provided Engineer A's sealed plans as a guide for redesign — facilitating the situation in which Engineer A's seal remained on materially altered documents.
{'type': 'client_of', 'target': 'Engineer A Discharged Original Design Engineer'}
{'type': 'client_of', 'target': 'Engineer B Undocumented Alteration Successor Design Engineer'}
the client was not satisfied with the plans, so he discharged Engineer A after paying the complete fee
Subdivision Development Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization Recognition
The subdivision development client lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that transferring Engineer A's sealed drawings to Engineer B and directing Engineer B to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize Engineer B to make undocumented alterations while leaving Engineer A's seal intact
The client discharged Engineer A, obtained the original drawings, and passed them to Engineer B to use as a guide for redesign
The client transferred Engineer A's sealed drawings to Engineer B and directed Engineer B to use them as a guide, without recognizing or communicating the professional limitations on what Engineer B could do with those sealed documents
Subdivision Development Client Sealed Plan Transfer Non-Authorization of Successor Alteration
The client discharged Engineer A, obtained the original drawings, and passed them to Engineer B to use as a guide — thereby initiating a chain of events that resulted in materially altered plans bearing Engineer A's seal without Engineer A's knowledge or consent.
The client's act of transferring Engineer A's sealed drawings to Engineer B and directing Engineer B to use them as a guide for redesign did not authorize Engineer B to make substantive design changes while leaving Engineer A's seal intact, and the client bore responsibility for ensuring that the plan transfer process did not result in falsely attributed sealed engineering documents.
Subdivision Project Redesign Client Individual
{'type': 'Property developer or owner', 'action': 'Discharged original engineer, retained successor, transferred sealed plans'}
Discharged Engineer A after full fee payment due to dissatisfaction; passed Engineer A's original signed and sealed drawings to Engineer B to use as a guide for redesign; facilitated the situation in which Engineer B made undocumented modifications to Engineer A's sealed plans.
{'type': 'discharged', 'target': 'Engineer A Discharged Original Design Engineer'}
{'type': 'retained', 'target': 'Engineer B Undocumented Alteration Successor Design Engineer'}
{'type': 'transferred_plans_to', 'target': 'Engineer B Undocumented Alteration Successor Design Engineer'}
the client passed along Engineer A's work product to Engineer B
Successor Engineer Sealed Plan Alteration Without Attribution Prohibition Applied to Engineer B
Practical burden of re-sealing large plan sets
Engineer B made major changes across both plan sets — deleting a sheet, raising housing pad elevations, rerouting streets, redesigning storm drains, pipe dimensions, sewers, and utilities — without removing Engineer A's seal from any sheet, without signing any sheet, and without noting what specific changes were made, thereby leaving a false public record attributing all design decisions to Engineer A.
The prohibition applies with full force here because the changes were major and pervasive across both plan sets, making the failure to re-seal and document particularly egregious — the altered plans misrepresent Engineer A's professional judgment on every materially changed element.
No efficiency or practical burden consideration justifies leaving a predecessor engineer's seal on materially altered work; the public protection function of the seal is non-negotiable.
Surrender Original Drawings (Action 2) → Engineer B Engaged On Project (Event 4) / Significant Design Changes Embedded (Event 6)
Technically True But Misleading Conduct Applied to Engineer B Title Sheet Notation
Engineer B's title sheet notation that he was 'taking responsibility for the revisions' was literally true but created a materially false impression — that the revisions were specifically identified and Engineer B had accepted full accountability for them — when in fact the notation was so vague as to be virtually meaningless as a professional accountability mechanism
A technically accurate but uninformative notation that creates a false impression of meaningful accountability accountability is ethically equivalent to a misleading statement, regardless of whether the deception was intentional
Technically True But Misleading Statement Prohibition
The Board found Engineer B's conduct misleading 'either intentionally or unwittingly,' establishing that the ethical standard focuses on the impression created, not the intent behind the notation
Vague Responsibility Assumption Insufficiency Applied to Engineer B's Title Sheet Note
Engineer B's note on the title sheet of the public improvement plans claiming responsibility for 'revisions of the plans' — without identifying any specific revision, without removing Engineer A's seal, and without signing any modified sheet — was wholly insufficient to satisfy the professional accountability obligations arising from major design changes to a 38-sheet plan set.
A single title-sheet declaration claiming responsibility for unspecified 'revisions' while leaving the original engineer's seal intact on all 38 sheets fails on every dimension of adequate professional accountability: it lacks specificity, lacks proper sealing formality, and does not remove the misleading implication that Engineer A certified the modified design.
Vague Responsibility Assumption Insufficiency for Sealed Plan Modification
The insufficiency of the vague declaration is not cured by any practical efficiency argument; proper accountability requires both specificity and formal sealing procedures.
Vague Responsibility Assumption Insufficiency Invoked Against Engineer B
Engineer B's title sheet disclaimer on the public improvement plan set
Engineer B's general title-sheet notation claiming responsibility for 'revisions' was insufficient because it did not identify what was changed, did not remove Engineer A's seal from altered sheets, and did not constitute a proper professional certification of the modified design through sealing of affected sheets
A non-specific declaration of responsibility for revisions fails to satisfy the professional accountability obligations arising from material design changes to another engineer's sealed plans
The Board found that the notation's vagueness rendered it 'virtually meaningless' as a professional accountability mechanism, confirming that specificity is a necessary element of any valid assumption of responsibility for design changes
In addition, we are troubled by Engineer B's failure to acknowledge responsibility for the full design by notations on the drawings.
client discharging Engineer A before Engineer B being retained
client discharging Engineer A meets client requesting original drawings from Engineer A
original mechanical/electrical engineering work (Case 79-7) before inspection review (Case 79-7)