ABC Engineers Consulting Engineering Firm
{'type': 'Consulting engineering firm', 'client': 'City M / Metropolitan Water Commission'}
Consulting engineering firm employing Engineer B, retained by MWC for water supply project evaluation; discharged along with Engineer B following safety warnings
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission'}
{'type': 'employer', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
a consulting engineer with ABC Engineers
City M is a major client of ABC Engineers, through the MWC on water supply projects, and on other public works projects
The MWC discharged Engineer B and ABC Engineers from project involvement
{'type': 'Private engineering consulting firm', 'interests': ['Business impact evaluation', 'Legal liability assessment']}
Engineering firm employing Engineer B; has business and legal interests in any additional advocacy steps Engineer B might take beyond formal professional obligations; Engineer B bears obligation to act as faithful agent of ABC Engineers while recognizing public safety is paramount
{'type': 'employs', 'target': 'Engineer B Concerned Citizen Advocate'}
{'type': 'employs', 'target': 'Engineer B Public Health Risk Reporter'}
Engineer B would need to consider the interests of his employer, ABC Engineers
ABC Engineers likely has a need to evaluate both the business impacts and legal liabilities of such additional steps
Engineer B has an ethical obligation to act as a faithful agent of the employer
ABC Engineers Major Client Financial Pressure
Throughout the engagement and following discharge
City M is a major client of ABC Engineers, through the MWC on water supply projects, and on other public works projects through other commissions and departments.
ABC Engineers' financial relationship with City M as a major client creating tension with Engineer B's safety obligations
City M identified as a major client of ABC Engineers across multiple commissions and departments
BER Case 20-4 is directly related to the current case
The BER concluded that Engineer B had an ethical obligation to report the risk to public health and safety to the appropriate regulatory authority, regardless of whether the MWC consented to or opposed such a report
BER as the primary analogical precedent for the current case
Cited as directly related precedent involving the same Engineer B and the same MWC, establishing that Engineer B had an ethical obligation to report the risk to public health and safety to the appropriate regulatory authority regardless of client consent
BER Case 20-4 equals current case (Engineer B escalation to State Department)
BER Case 76-4 addressed the duty to report likely environmental damage to appropriate regulatory authorities
The BER concluded that Doe had an obligation to report the observations to the applicable regulatory authority
BER in establishing the baseline reporting obligation applicable to Engineer B
Cited as precedent establishing the duty to report likely environmental damage to appropriate regulatory authorities when a client suppresses findings
In BER Case 89-7, a structural engineer inspected a building that was about to be sold
The BER concluded that the engineer had a duty to report the potential code violations to the appropriate authority
BER in reinforcing the reporting obligation applicable to Engineer B
Cited as precedent establishing the duty to report potential code violations to appropriate authority even when outside the engineer's area of specialization and when information was received confidentially
CausalLink_Post-Approval Further Action D
CausalLink_Regulatory Authority Notificat
CausalLink_Risk-Based Report Recommendati
CausalLink_Verbal Warning to Commissioner
CausalLink_Water Source Evaluation Accept
City M Drinking Water Consumers Affected Community
{'vulnerability': 'Children particularly at risk from lead exposure', 'water_source': 'MWC public water supply'}
Residents of City M whose primary drinking water source is at risk from the water source change without concurrent treatment, particularly children at risk of lead exposure from old service pipes
{'type': 'protected_by', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'served_by', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission'}
The report clearly outlined the risk of even short-term exposure of adults, and particularly children, to elevated lead levels if appropriate treatment was not provided concurrent with the change in water source
Engineer B pointed out at a public meeting with the Water Commissioners that public health and safety would be at risk
{'type': 'Municipal government client', 'relationship': 'Major client of ABC Engineers'}
City M is a major client of ABC Engineers through the MWC on water supply projects and through other commissions and departments, creating a significant financial relationship that could influence Engineer B's willingness to escalate safety concerns
{'type': 'client_of', 'target': 'ABC Engineers'}
City M is a major client of ABC Engineers, through the MWC on water supply projects, and on other public works projects through other commissions and departments
Client Loyalty Tension With Public Welfare Invoked By Engineer Doe Contract Severance
Industry Manufacturing Process Client instruction not to write report
Engineer Doe faced a conflict between client loyalty — including the client's instruction not to write a report after severing the contract — and the public welfare obligation to report findings to regulatory authorities; client loyalty did not override the reporting obligation
Client loyalty operates within the ethical limit that public welfare is paramount; a client's instruction to suppress findings that bear on public health and safety cannot be honored
The client severed Doe's contract and asked DOE not to write a report.
Public welfare obligation overrides client instruction to suppress findings; BER concluded Doe had an obligation to report regardless of client instruction
The BER concluded that Doe had an obligation to report the observations to the applicable regulatory authority.
Completeness in Responsive Technical Testimony Invoked By Structural Engineer Building Inspection
Mechanical and electrical code violations
Professional Scope and Interdisciplinary Boundary Respect
The structural engineer who inspected the building prior to sale made only brief mention of mechanical and electrical code violations in the project report, rather than fully reporting them to appropriate authorities, which the BER concluded was insufficient to discharge the reporting obligation
Completeness requires the structural engineer to do more than make brief mention of known safety violations — the engineer must report them to appropriate authorities even when the violations fall outside the engineer's primary area of licensure
Structural Engineer Building Sale Inspector
Completeness in Responsive Technical Testimony
The BER concluded that the engineer had a duty to report the potential code violations to the appropriate authority.
The duty to report safety violations to appropriate authorities overrides the confidentiality of the owner's disclosure and the engineer's limited scope of licensure; BER Case 89-7 concluded the engineer had a duty to report
The structural engineer made only brief mention of the potential mechanical and electrical violations in the project report, and did not report the potential violations to any third party.
the structural engineer inspected a building that was about to be sold, and was apprised confidentially by the owner that, although the building was structurally sound, there were mechanical and electrical code violations that had not been addressed
The Board's conclusion that further action beyond regulatory notification is a personal citizen choice rather than a professional obligation implicitly assumes that the regulatory process has functioned adequately as a safeguard. However, the five-year deferred treatment implementation plan approved by the State Department of the Environment does not neutralize the documented lead leaching risk — it defers its mitigation while the population remains exposed. Engineer B's own technical analysis established that even short-term exposure to elevated lead levels poses a documented danger, particularly to children. A five-year timeline is not a short-term deferral; it is an extended period of foreseeable harm. The Board's framing of further action as optional does not adequately reckon with the fact that the outcome of the regulatory process — approval with deferred treatment — is substantively different from the outcome Engineer B's reporting was intended to produce. When regulatory approval results in a plan that Engineer B's documented analysis indicates remains dangerous, the sufficiency of prior reporting in form does not translate into sufficiency in outcome, and that gap materially affects the ethical weight of the choice the Board characterizes as merely personal.
The Board's characterization of post-reporting advocacy as a personal citizen choice, while ethically defensible as a minimum threshold, obscures a critical asymmetry: Engineer B possesses specific, documented technical knowledge about the lead leaching risk that no member of the affected public can independently obtain or evaluate. The public's ability to protect itself — by filtering water, seeking alternative sources, or demanding political accountability — depends entirely on access to information that only Engineer B and the suppressed record can provide. In this context, Engineer B's silence after regulatory approval is not a neutral act of professional restraint; it is a functional withholding of information that the public has no other means of accessing. The principle of professional competence in risk assessment, which grounds Engineer B's entire prior escalation, does not dissolve at the boundary between professional obligation and citizen choice. The Board's framework, by treating that boundary as ethically decisive, allows the engineer's unique technical competence to become a reason for silence rather than a reason for continued engagement. A more complete analysis would recognize that the very expertise that created Engineer B's professional obligation also creates a heightened ethical weight to the citizen choice the Board deems optional.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer B must obtain ABC Engineers' concurrence before taking further public action as a citizen requires significant qualification in light of the discharge. Once Engineer B and ABC Engineers were discharged from the MWC project, the structural basis for the employer concurrence requirement — namely, that Engineer B's public statements could be attributed to the firm and affect its client relationships — is substantially altered. ABC Engineers' financial dependence on City M as a major client creates a conflict of interest that makes employer concurrence not merely difficult to obtain but structurally unavailable as a practical matter: the firm's institutional incentives are aligned with the client whose decision created the risk. Requiring Engineer B to obtain concurrence from an employer whose financial interests are adverse to the safety disclosure effectively converts the faithful agent obligation into a mechanism for suppressing a documented public health risk. The Board's framework should have explicitly addressed whether the employer concurrence requirement remains operative and ethically binding when the employer's conflict of interest renders genuine concurrence impossible, and whether in that circumstance Engineer B's obligation to hold public safety paramount supersedes the faithful agent constraint. The more defensible conclusion is that post-discharge, with a conflicted employer, the concurrence requirement cannot function as an ethical veto over citizen advocacy grounded in documented public safety concerns.
The Board's conclusions do not address the ethical significance of the sequence of events in which Engineer B was discharged specifically after escalating the safety concern. This sequence — documented risk, public escalation, discharge, replacement with a consultant whose report contradicted Engineer B's findings — constitutes a pattern that the ethical framework should recognize as a potential retaliatory suppression of professional safety reporting. The XYZ Consultants report, which characterized the risk as indeterminate despite Engineer B's prior documented analysis indicating a clear and specific danger, did not emerge in a vacuum; it was produced by a consultant retained after Engineer B's discharge and served the institutional interest of enabling the MWC to proceed without concurrent treatment. Whether or not XYZ Consultants acted in bad faith, the contradictory report created an evidentiary conflict that the State Department of the Environment resolved in favor of the less protective assessment. Engineer B's ethical considerations should therefore include not only whether to continue advocating for the affected public but also whether to report the retaliatory discharge pattern to the relevant professional licensing board, and whether the XYZ Consultants report itself — as a document that materially contributed to regulatory approval of a plan Engineer B's analysis indicates is dangerous — warrants a formal professional challenge. The Board's silence on these dimensions leaves significant ethical terrain unaddressed.
The Board's framework for evaluating Engineer B's citizen advocacy correctly identifies multiple stakeholders whose interests must be considered, but does not provide sufficient analytical structure for how Engineer B should weigh those interests when they conflict. The stakeholders include: the affected public, particularly children at risk from lead exposure; ABC Engineers, whose financial relationship with City M creates institutional pressure adverse to continued advocacy; the MWC, which has made a decision Engineer B regards as dangerous; and the regulatory authority, which has approved a plan Engineer B's analysis indicates is insufficient. The Board's instruction to take 'due consideration of the multiple stakeholders' without specifying how to resolve conflicts among them leaves Engineer B without actionable ethical guidance. A more complete analysis would apply the paramount public safety principle as a lexical priority: when the interests of employer, client, and regulatory authority all point toward silence, and the interest of the affected public points toward continued disclosure, the paramount public safety obligation does not merely add weight to one side of a balance — it establishes a threshold below which the other interests cannot override it. Engineer B's citizen advocacy, grounded in documented technical findings and limited to factually accurate public statements, would satisfy that threshold and should be recognized as ethically supported rather than merely ethically permissible.
The Board's conclusion, read in conjunction with the case facts, reveals a systemic vulnerability that the Board does not name explicitly: the replacement consultant mechanism. When Engineer B was discharged and XYZ Consultants was retained, the MWC effectively used the procurement of a second engineering opinion as a tool to neutralize an inconvenient safety finding. XYZ Consultants' report — characterizing the risk as insufficiently documented — provided the regulatory cover needed for the State Department of the Environment to approve the water source change with deferred treatment. This sequence illustrates that the formal regulatory reporting channel, which the Board treats as sufficient to discharge Engineer B's obligation, is structurally vulnerable to being undermined by a replacement consultant willing to produce a more favorable assessment. The ethical implications extend beyond Engineer B's individual obligations: XYZ Consultants bore an independent obligation to provide an objective risk assessment grounded in the available technical evidence, and their failure to do so — whether through genuine disagreement or through accommodation of client preferences — represents a distinct ethics failure that the Board does not address. The adequacy of the 'notify appropriate authorities' standard as a discharge of professional obligation must be evaluated against the realistic possibility that those authorities will be presented with a contradicting report designed to minimize the documented risk, and that they may lack the independent technical capacity to resolve the conflict.
Any additional steps taken beyond the notification of appropriate authorities are not an obligation of Engineer B but rather a personal choice as a citizen, and should be taken with due consideration of the multiple stakeholders in this matter and the engineer’s many ethical obligations.
In response to Q101: The five-year deferred treatment implementation plan does not constitute a sufficiently adequate safeguard to meaningfully reduce the documented lead leaching risk, and the extended timeline materially alters Engineer B's ethical calculus. Engineer B's original report identified a clear and specific danger of lead leaching from old service pipes upon the water source change, with particular harm to children from even short-term exposure. A five-year window during which the population consumes water through an untreated corrosive source is not a mitigation of that risk — it is a structured continuation of it. The Board's conclusion that formal regulatory reporting satisfies Engineer B's obligation was rendered in the context of a regulatory authority having acted, but the content of that action — approving a plan that Engineer B's own technical analysis indicates leaves the population at documented risk for five years — cannot be treated as ethically equivalent to a regulatory resolution that actually addresses the hazard. The deferred timeline therefore does not extinguish Engineer B's concern; it reframes the question from whether to report to whether the prior reporting was sufficient in outcome, which is a distinct and more demanding inquiry than the Board explicitly addressed.
In response to Q102: XYZ Consultants bore an independent and unambiguous ethical obligation to provide an objective risk assessment grounded in available technical evidence, and their report characterizing the risk as indeterminate — when Engineer B's prior documented analysis had identified a clear and specific danger — constitutes a failure of that obligation with direct public safety consequences. The replacement report did not merely reach a different professional conclusion on a genuinely contested technical question; it effectively neutralized a documented safety finding by asserting epistemic uncertainty where prior analysis had established specific risk pathways. This is not a permissible expression of professional disagreement — it is a failure of the obligation to hold public welfare paramount and a violation of the constraint against deception in replacement reporting. The contradictory report itself functioned as a public safety harm because it provided the regulatory basis for approving a deferred treatment plan that Engineer B's analysis indicated was dangerous. Whether XYZ Consultants' conclusion reflected genuine independent analysis or was shaped by the client relationship with MWC cannot be determined from the case facts, but the ethical obligation to investigate that question — including whether Engineer B has any obligation to flag the contradictory report to the State licensing board — is a live question the Board did not address.
In response to Q103: The sequence of events — Engineer B escalating a documented safety concern followed immediately by discharge from the project — creates a textbook retaliatory pattern that the ethical framework must address rather than treat as background context. The Board's analysis proceeds as though Engineer B's post-discharge obligations are simply a function of what formal reporting steps remain available, without examining whether the discharge itself was an ethically impermissible act that Engineer B has an affirmative obligation to report to a professional licensing board or other authority. If the discharge was retaliatory, it constitutes an attempt by MWC to suppress safety-relevant professional judgment, which is precisely the conduct that whistleblower protection frameworks and the non-acquiescence obligation are designed to address. Engineer B's silence about the retaliatory pattern — beyond the immediate safety reporting already completed — could itself function as a form of acquiescence that enables the same suppression mechanism to operate against future engineers in similar circumstances. The Board's conclusion that further action is a personal choice rather than a professional obligation does not adequately reckon with the systemic harm created when retaliatory discharge goes unreported and unchallenged.
In response to Q104: ABC Engineers bore an independent institutional ethical obligation to continue or support Engineer B's safety escalation after Engineer B's discharge, and that obligation was not extinguished by the firm's financial relationship with City M as a major client — it was in direct tension with it. The firm's financial dependence on City M through MWC and other commissions created a structural conflict of interest that made employer concurrence practically unavailable as a mechanism for authorizing Engineer B's continued advocacy, which is precisely the scenario in which the employer concurrence requirement becomes ethically problematic rather than merely procedural. If ABC Engineers chose not to continue escalation because of client financial pressure, that choice itself constitutes a failure of the firm's paramount public safety obligation. The Board's analysis focuses on Engineer B's individual obligations without examining whether the firm's institutional silence after discharge was itself an ethical failure — a gap that matters because it affects whether Engineer B's inability to obtain employer concurrence was a legitimate constraint or a manufactured one.
In response to Q201 and Q202: The principle that public welfare is paramount and the faithful agent obligation to ABC Engineers are not merely in tension in this case — they are structurally irreconcilable given the firm's financial dependence on City M. The employer concurrence requirement, which the Board identifies as a precondition for Engineer B's citizen advocacy, presupposes an employer capable of exercising independent judgment about the public interest. Where the employer's financial interests are aligned with the client whose decision created the risk, the concurrence requirement does not function as an ethical safeguard — it functions as a veto mechanism that structurally suppresses safety disclosure. In such circumstances, requiring Engineer B to obtain ABC Engineers' concurrence before acting as a citizen effectively makes the faithful agent obligation operate as a constraint on the paramount public safety obligation, which inverts the ethical hierarchy the Code establishes. The Board's conclusion that further action is a personal choice does not resolve this structural conflict; it defers it by treating the concurrence requirement as moot after discharge without examining whether the requirement was ever ethically operative given the firm's conflict of interest.
In response to Q203: The principle that sufficiency of prior safety reports satisfies Engineer B's formal obligation conflicts irreconcilably with the escalation obligation principle when the regulatory outcome of those reports is a plan that Engineer B's technical analysis indicates remains dangerous. Formal completeness of reporting — verbal warning, written letter to commissioners, submission to the State Department of the Environment — does not produce substantive adequacy of outcome when the regulatory authority approves a deferred treatment plan that leaves the documented risk unaddressed for five years. The Board's conclusion treats the completion of formal reporting steps as the measure of obligation fulfillment, but this conflates procedural compliance with the underlying purpose of the reporting obligation, which is to protect public health. If Engineer B's prior reports were technically complete but substantively insufficient to prevent the approved plan from creating ongoing harm, the escalation obligation is not discharged — it is merely deferred to the next available channel. The Board's framework does not provide adequate guidance for this scenario because it does not distinguish between regulatory action that resolves the safety concern and regulatory action that institutionalizes a continuation of it.
In response to Q204: The Board's characterization of post-reporting advocacy as a personal citizen choice does not adequately account for the asymmetry of information that makes Engineer B's silence a substantively different act than the silence of an uninformed citizen. Engineer B possesses specific, documented technical knowledge of the lead leaching risk that the affected population cannot obtain from any other source with equivalent specificity and credibility. The XYZ Consultants report has effectively neutralized the public record by introducing epistemic uncertainty where Engineer B's analysis established specific risk. In this context, Engineer B's silence is not a neutral exercise of personal discretion — it is a withholding of uniquely available safety-relevant information from a population that is currently being exposed to the documented risk. The principle of professional competence in risk assessment, which grounds Engineer B's unique epistemic position, does not cease to generate obligations simply because formal reporting channels have been exhausted. The Board's personal choice framing is most defensible when the public has access to adequate information through other means; it is least defensible precisely when, as here, the engineer's unique knowledge has been actively contradicted by a replacement consultant's report.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer B's duty to hold public safety paramount does generate a categorical obligation that extends beyond formal regulatory reporting when those channels have demonstrably failed to prevent a known health risk — but the scope of that obligation is constrained by the principle that duties must be action-guiding rather than merely aspirational. The Kantian formulation requires asking whether a maxim permitting engineers to cease escalation once formal channels are exhausted, regardless of whether those channels produced safety-adequate outcomes, could be universalized without undermining the entire structure of professional safety obligation. It cannot: if every engineer were permitted to treat formal reporting as the terminal point of obligation regardless of outcome, the paramount public safety duty would be reduced to a procedural requirement rather than a substantive one. This does not mean Engineer B faces an unlimited obligation to escalate indefinitely, but it does mean that the deontological framework supports continued escalation — including public notification — when the specific conditions of this case are met: documented risk, contradicted by a replacement report, approved by a regulatory authority under a plan that leaves the risk unaddressed for five years.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, the Board's conclusion that formal regulatory reporting satisfies Engineer B's obligation does not adequately weigh the foreseeable harm to children from lead exposure against the marginal costs of further escalation. The harm side of the calculus is severe: lead exposure in children produces irreversible neurological damage, the affected population is large, the exposure period under the approved plan is five years, and the risk was specifically documented rather than speculative. The cost side of the calculus for further escalation — reputational risk to Engineer B, potential conflict with ABC Engineers, discomfort to MWC commissioners — is comparatively modest and largely falls on parties who are not the ones bearing the health risk. A rigorous consequentialist analysis would find that the expected harm from silence substantially outweighs the expected costs of continued escalation, particularly public notification, and would therefore not support the Board's characterization of further action as merely a personal choice. The Board's framework implicitly weights the costs of escalation — which fall on Engineer B and institutional relationships — more heavily than the benefits, which accrue to children and families who have no voice in the analysis.
In response to Q303: From a virtue ethics perspective, the Board's distinction between Engineer B's professional obligation and personal citizen choice does not reflect genuine professional integrity — it permits a retreat from the full expression of the virtue of courage that the paramount public safety obligation demands. The virtuous engineer is not one who completes the minimum required procedural steps and then exercises personal discretion about whether to do more; the virtuous engineer is one whose character disposes them toward the protection of those who cannot protect themselves, particularly children facing irreversible harm from lead exposure. The Board's framework is most coherent as a floor of minimum obligation, but virtue ethics asks what the excellent engineer would do, not merely what the compliant engineer must do. An engineer of genuine integrity, possessing specific knowledge of a documented risk that has been neutralized by a contradictory report and approved under an inadequate regulatory plan, would not experience the question of further escalation as a matter of personal preference — they would experience it as a matter of professional character. The Board's personal choice framing, while not incorrect as a statement of minimum obligation, inadvertently licenses a kind of moral minimalism that is inconsistent with the virtue the profession claims to embody.
In response to Q304: From a deontological perspective, Engineer B's faithful agent obligation to ABC Engineers does constrain the scope of permissible citizen advocacy after discharge, but that constraint becomes ethically impermissible when it operates to suppress disclosure of a documented public health risk. The Code's hierarchy is explicit: the faithful agent obligation applies within ethical limits, and the paramount public safety obligation defines those limits. A deontological reading of this hierarchy does not permit the faithful agent duty to function as a suppression mechanism for safety-relevant information, because doing so would require Engineer B to treat the financial interests of ABC Engineers and City M as ends that override the safety of children — a formulation that fails the categorical imperative. After discharge, the practical scope of the faithful agent constraint narrows considerably: Engineer B no longer has access to confidential client information in an ongoing professional capacity, and the primary remaining constraint is the prohibition on using confidential information obtained during the engagement. That constraint does not prohibit Engineer B from acting on the basis of technical knowledge and documented findings that were already disclosed in the original report and regulatory submissions.
In response to Q401: Engineer B conditioning acceptance of the water source evaluation engagement on a contractual commitment from MWC to implement concurrent water treatment would have been ethically permissible in principle but practically and ethically complex in execution. It would have been permissible because an engineer is not obligated to accept an engagement whose terms structurally prevent fulfillment of the paramount public safety obligation. However, such a precondition would have been premature at the engagement stage because the specific risk — lead leaching from old service pipes — was a finding of the evaluation, not a known precondition of it. Conditioning engagement acceptance on a treatment commitment before the risk was documented would have been technically unjustified and potentially manipulative. The more defensible precondition would have been a contractual commitment to implement Engineer B's recommendations regarding public health safeguards, conditioned on the findings of the evaluation. Whether such a precondition would have been practically effective is doubtful given MWC's subsequent willingness to discharge Engineer B rather than implement the recommendations — suggesting that the institutional disposition to prioritize cost savings over safety was sufficiently entrenched that contractual preconditions would likely have been resisted or circumvented.
In response to Q402: The counterfactual in which XYZ Consultants fulfilled their independent professional obligation to provide an objective risk assessment reveals a systemic ethical failure that extends beyond any individual actor. Had XYZ Consultants confirmed Engineer B's findings rather than characterizing the risk as indeterminate, the State Department of the Environment engineer would have faced a unified professional record indicating specific danger rather than a contested one, making approval of a five-year deferred treatment plan substantially harder to justify. The regulatory approval was therefore not simply a product of the State engineer's independent judgment — it was enabled by the epistemic gap created by the contradictory report. This reveals that the systemic failure in the case is not merely MWC's decision to defer treatment or Engineer B's discharge, but the replacement of a documented safety finding with a report that provided regulatory cover for an inadequate plan. The ethical framework must therefore address not only what Engineer B should do after the fact, but what obligations exist to correct a public record that has been distorted by a professionally deficient replacement report — a question the Board did not address.
In response to Q403: Had Engineer B proactively notified the public directly through media or community channels before the MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment, such disclosure would have been ethically justifiable under the paramount public safety obligation but would have required satisfaction of several preconditions: exhaustion of internal escalation channels, a documented and specific rather than speculative risk, and a good-faith assessment that internal channels were insufficient to prevent the harm. At the pre-decision stage, internal escalation had not yet been exhausted — Engineer B had issued the report but had not yet presented at the public meeting or sent the written letter to commissioners. Direct public notification before those steps would have bypassed the graduated escalation framework that the Code contemplates. However, after the public meeting and written letter failed to alter the MWC's decision, and before the regulatory submission to the State Department of the Environment had produced a response, a case for direct public notification would have been substantially stronger. Whether earlier public disclosure would have altered the MWC's decision is speculative, but the ethical question is not primarily consequentialist — it is whether the preconditions for bypassing institutional channels were met, and the answer is that they were closer to being met after the public meeting than the Board's analysis acknowledges.
In response to Q404: Had Engineer B remained the engineer of record during implementation of the water source change, the ethical obligations regarding public notification and escalation would have been substantially greater than those the Board identifies for a discharged engineer. As engineer of record, Engineer B would have had ongoing professional responsibility for the safety of the implementation, direct access to real-time data on water quality and corrosion indicators, and a formal duty to halt or flag unsafe conditions as they emerged. The discharge therefore functions as a mechanism that reduces Engineer B's formal accountability for foreseeable harm — not because the underlying safety concern diminishes, but because the professional relationship that generates the most demanding obligations has been severed. This is ethically troubling because it means that MWC's retaliatory discharge achieved two simultaneous effects: it removed the engineer most likely to continue escalating the safety concern, and it reduced that engineer's formal professional accountability for the consequences. The Board's analysis does not examine whether this dual effect of discharge — silencing the safety advocate while reducing their formal accountability — is itself an ethically impermissible outcome that the framework should resist by maintaining heightened obligations for discharged engineers in retaliatory contexts.
The tension between the faithful agent obligation and the paramount public safety obligation was resolved in this case through a sequenced priority structure rather than a binary override. Engineer B was not required to choose between loyalty to ABC Engineers and protection of the public; instead, the ethical framework permitted — and required — graduated escalation that honored both obligations in sequence. Internal escalation to the MWC came first, followed by formal written notice to commissioners, followed by regulatory reporting to the State Department of the Environment. Only after each of those channels was exhausted did the faithful agent obligation yield entirely to the public safety obligation. This sequencing reveals a core teaching of the case: the paramount public safety principle does not instantaneously extinguish client loyalty, but it does set an absolute ceiling beyond which client loyalty cannot operate. Once Engineer B had completed the full escalation sequence, the faithful agent obligation was fully discharged, and the public safety obligation had been satisfied through proper channels. The Board's conclusion that further action is a personal choice rather than a professional obligation reflects the view that the sequenced resolution was complete — not that client loyalty ultimately prevailed.
The principle of professional competence in risk assessment interacts with the post-reporting advocacy principle in a way the Board's conclusion does not fully resolve. The Board treats further advocacy after regulatory reporting as a personal citizen choice, implying a kind of ethical neutrality about silence. However, the professional competence principle carries an asymmetric implication: Engineer B possesses specific, documented technical knowledge about lead leaching risk that no other actor in the public domain has independently verified, given that XYZ Consultants' contradictory report effectively removed the only other professional voice from the evidentiary record. This means Engineer B's silence after regulatory approval is not equivalent to the silence of an uninformed citizen — it is the withholding of uniquely available safety-critical information from a public that cannot obtain it elsewhere. The principle of professional competence therefore creates a residual ethical weight on the side of continued advocacy that the personal choice framing underweights. The case teaches that when an engineer's unique technical knowledge is the only reliable basis for public understanding of a documented risk, the boundary between professional obligation and personal choice becomes ethically unstable, even if it remains formally intact under the Code.
The employer concurrence requirement, which would ordinarily constrain Engineer B from taking public citizen advocacy positions without ABC Engineers' approval, was structurally neutralized in this case by two converging facts: Engineer B's discharge from the MWC project, and ABC Engineers' financial dependence on City M as a major client. The discharge rendered the concurrence requirement practically moot as to the specific MWC engagement, since Engineer B no longer represented ABC Engineers in that context. More significantly, the financial relationship between ABC Engineers and City M created a structural conflict of interest that made genuine employer concurrence for safety advocacy functionally unavailable — any concurrence obtained under those conditions would be ethically suspect as a product of institutional pressure rather than independent professional judgment. The case therefore teaches that the employer concurrence principle, while legitimate in ordinary circumstances as a check on individual engineers acting unilaterally, cannot be invoked to suppress disclosure of a documented public health risk when the employer's financial interests are aligned with the party whose decision created the risk. In such circumstances, the employer concurrence requirement is not merely outweighed by the public safety obligation — it is itself rendered ethically inoperative as a constraint on disclosure.
Confirmed Lead Leaching Risk Without Safeguards
From completion of Engineer B's report through the case facts
Engineer B's report recommended to the MWC the need for appropriate water treatment prior to making the change in water source
Confirmed Risk Without Adequate Safeguards State
Documented lead leaching risk in MWC service area pipes
The report clearly outlined the risk of even short-term exposure of adults, and particularly children, to elevated lead levels if appropriate treatment was not provided concurrent with the change in water source.
Engineer B's report identifying specific corrosion control requirements and lead leaching risk
Contradictory Consultant Report Issued → Health Risk Information Gap
How should Engineer B communicate the documented lead leaching risk to the Water Commissioners to ensure they can make a genuinely informed decision?
Engineer B has completed a water source evaluation and documented a clear lead leaching risk to public health, including specific risk to children. The Metropolitan Water Commission (MWC) has declined to act on the risk, preferring to defer water treatment for cost reasons. Engineer B must decide how to communicate this risk to the full Commission before any external escalation.
Present complete verbal warning to all Commissioners at the public meeting, explicitly identifying the specific risk of lead exposure to children, the severity of potential harm, and the consequences of deferring treatment — followed immediately by a formal written letter documenting the same findings
Deliver a general verbal caution about water quality concerns to the Commissioners without specifying the lead exposure risk to children or the consequences of deferred treatment, relying on the written report already submitted to management
Submit only the written technical report to the Commission without verbal escalation, treating the documented findings as sufficient notification and deferring further communication unless explicitly requested
Should Engineer B report the documented public health risk to the State Department of the Environment after being discharged from the project, and if so, how?
After being discharged from the project following escalation of the safety concern to the Water Commissioners, Engineer B possesses documented technical evidence that the water source change without concurrent treatment poses an ongoing public health risk. Engineer B must decide whether and how to report this risk to the State Department of the Environment, notwithstanding the termination of the client relationship.
Submit the original technical report and a cover letter to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment, clearly and completely documenting the lead leaching risk and the specific population at risk, notwithstanding the discharge from the project
Seek ABC Engineers' explicit concurrence before submitting any report to the state regulatory authority, and refrain from reporting if ABC Engineers declines to authorize the submission given the firm's financial relationship with City M
Treat the discharge as terminating all professional reporting obligations and take no further action, on the basis that the client relationship has ended and the matter is now within the Commission's discretion
Were Engineer B's prior verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the State Department of the Environment sufficiently clear, complete, and technically unambiguous to constitute full discharge of formal professional reporting obligations?
The State Department of the Environment has approved the water source change with only a five-year deferred implementation plan for water treatment. Engineer B believes this approval leaves a serious and ongoing public health risk unaddressed. Engineer B must critically self-assess whether prior reports to the Commission and the state agency were sufficiently clear and technically unambiguous to constitute full discharge of formal professional obligations, before deciding whether further action is required.
Conduct a rigorous and honest self-assessment of all prior reports — evaluating whether the lead risk to children was explicitly stated, whether the technical findings were unambiguous, and whether a reasonable engineer could have interpreted the risk differently — and remediate any identified deficiency by submitting a clarifying communication to the state agency before concluding obligations are discharged
Conclude that the prior verbal warning, written letter to Commissioners, and written report to the state agency collectively constitute clear and complete notification, and recognize that formal professional obligations have been fully discharged without further remediation
Attribute the regulatory approval of the five-year deferred plan to a professional disagreement rather than a communication deficiency, and treat the regulatory outcome as confirmation that the prior reports were received and considered — thereby closing the self-assessment without further action
Engineer B Prior Safety Report Sufficiency Self-Assessment MWC Water Source
Should Engineer B pursue further advocacy beyond formal regulatory notification, and if so, what steps should be taken and with what regard for ABC Engineers' interests?
Having confirmed that formal professional reporting obligations have been discharged through notification of the Water Commission and the State Department of the Environment, Engineer B — now discharged from the project — considers whether to pursue further advocacy as a private citizen of City M, including potential communication with higher regulatory levels, elected officials, or the public. Engineer B must weigh the residual public health risk against ABC Engineers' legitimate business interests and the boundary between professional and citizen roles.
Seek ABC Engineers' full knowledge and concurrence before pursuing any additional advocacy — including communication with higher regulatory levels, elected officials, or the public — and proceed with such advocacy only with the firm's authorization, while recognizing that the firm's business interests do not override Engineer B's rights and duties as a citizen if public health remains at serious risk
Proceed independently with further citizen advocacy — including public statements, media engagement, or political advocacy — without seeking ABC Engineers' concurrence, on the basis that the discharge has severed the employment relationship and that the paramount duty to protect public health overrides any residual employer loyalty obligation
Treat the regulatory approval of the five-year plan as the definitive resolution of the matter and refrain from any further advocacy, accepting that the formal reporting obligations have been discharged and that further escalation beyond regulatory approval is neither professionally required nor personally warranted given the institutional deference owed to the regulatory process
Does the five-year deferred treatment implementation plan constitute an adequate safeguard, and does the residual public health risk warrant escalation beyond the state regulatory approval?
Engineer B has learned that the State Department of the Environment approved the water source change with a five-year deferred treatment implementation plan. Engineer B must evaluate whether this regulatory approval adequately addresses the documented lead leaching risk, or whether the extended timeline leaves a sufficiently serious residual risk to warrant escalation to higher regulatory bodies, elected officials, or the public — notwithstanding the regulatory approval.
Evaluate the five-year deferred plan against the documented severity and immediacy of the lead leaching risk — including the specific vulnerability of children — conclude that the extended timeline constitutes an inadequate safeguard, and escalate to higher regulatory bodies or elected officials with a technically grounded explanation of why the approved plan fails to adequately protect public health
Accept the state regulatory approval as a professionally informed determination by a competent authority, treat the five-year plan as a reasonable regulatory compromise, and refrain from further escalation on the basis that the formal reporting obligations have been discharged and the regulatory process has functioned as intended
Document the technical basis for concluding that the five-year deferred plan is inadequate, share that assessment with ABC Engineers, and jointly determine whether further escalation is warranted — escalating only if ABC Engineers concurs that the residual risk is sufficiently serious to justify action beyond the regulatory approval
Drinking Water Lead Contamination Standard
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency / State Department of the Environment
Safe Drinking Water Act / Lead and Copper Rule
sufficient corrosion control is provided so that old service pipes in the MWC service area don't leach lead in excess of drinking water standards
The report clearly outlined the risk of even short-term exposure of adults, and particularly children, to elevated lead levels if appropriate treatment was not provided
Engineer B in formulating water treatment recommendations and risk assessment
Establishes the regulatory threshold for lead leaching from old service pipes that Engineer B's corrosion control recommendation was designed to satisfy, providing the technical and legal basis for the public health risk assessment
Drinking Water Safety Regulation - Water Treatment Standards
State Department of the Environment and applicable federal/state regulatory bodies
Applicable water quality and treatment regulatory standards governing the MWC water source change
Engineer B had provided reports and testimony at public meetings to the effect that changes in water treatment were necessary prior to changing the water source in order to protect public health and safety
Engineer B in formulating technical reports; BER in framing the public safety risk
Implicitly referenced as the regulatory framework within which Engineer B's reports to the Water Commission and State Department of the Environment were made, establishing the substantive public health and safety standards at issue
Employer Concurrence Requirement Invoked By Engineer B ABC Engineers Relationship
ABC Engineers business and legal risk assessment
Potential additional public advocacy by Engineer B
Post-Reporting Advocacy as Personal Choice
Before Engineer B takes any additional advocacy steps beyond formal professional reporting obligations, Engineer B must obtain the full knowledge and concurrence of ABC Engineers, which has legitimate business and legal interests in evaluating the implications of such steps
The faithful agent obligation requires Engineer B to involve ABC Engineers in decisions about post-obligation advocacy, while recognizing that public welfare remains paramount and that termination of employment would remove this constraint
Employer Concurrence Requirement for Post-Obligation Advocacy
Any such steps should only be taken with full knowledge and concurrence of the employer, since Engineer B has an ethical obligation to act as a faithful agent of the employer, while recognizing that the obligation to protect public health and safety is paramount in comparison to other ethical obligations.
Employer concurrence is required for discretionary advocacy steps, but cannot override the paramount public welfare obligation; if Engineer B is no longer employed by ABC Engineers, the concurrence requirement is moot
ABC Engineers likely has a need to evaluate both the business impacts and legal liabilities of such additional steps.
If Engineer B is no longer employed by ABC Engineers, those considerations may be moot and not a constraint.
In considering such actions, Engineer B would need to consider the interests of his employer, ABC Engineers.
ABC Engineers has significant business relationships with City M through MWC and other commissions; Engineer B's advocacy could affect those relationships
Engineer B (ABC Engineers Employer relationship)
Engineer B was obligated to serve ABC Engineers' legitimate business interests faithfully — including being mindful of the firm's significant client relationship with City M — while recognizing that loyalty to ABC Engineers did not extend to suppressing or failing to report the public health and safety risk from the water source change, and that the obligation of loyalty was bounded by the paramount duty to uphold public welfare.
Throughout the engagement and in considering post-discharge advocacy
Engineer B continued to be concerned that public health and safety would be at risk and considered whether there were continuing ethical obligations, and if so, what alternative courses of action as an engineer and/or as a citizen of City M might merit consideration.
City M was a major client of ABC Engineers across multiple projects. This created a structural conflict of interest that constrained Engineer B's ability to act purely on professional judgment without financial pressure from the employer-client relationship.
Conflict of Interest Avoidance (Constraint)
Engineer B was constrained throughout the MWC engagement by the conflict of interest arising from ABC Engineers' major client relationship with City M — including through MWC and other commissions and departments — which created a financial pressure on ABC Engineers that could compromise Engineer B's independent professional judgment regarding the public health risk, requiring Engineer B to ensure that the firm's financial interests in the client relationship did not influence the technical findings or the decision to escalate safety concerns.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.4; Conflict of Interest Avoidance (Constraint)
Throughout Engineer B's engagement with MWC and subsequent post-discharge considerations
The MWC discharged Engineer B and ABC Engineers from project involvement in the water source change, and retained XYZ Consultants to assist with implementation.
ABC Engineers has significant business relationships with City M through MWC and other commissions; Engineer B is a resident of City M considering citizen advocacy
Engineer B (Engineer B Concerned Citizen Advocate)
Engineer Citizen Advocacy Employer Loyalty Boundary Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, before pursuing additional advocacy as a private citizen of City M — including public statements, media engagement, or political advocacy — to weigh the potential impact on ABC Engineers' business interests as a major contractor to City M, while recognizing that those business interests do not override Engineer B's rights and duties as a citizen when public health and safety remain at risk.
When considering additional advocacy steps beyond formal professional reporting obligations
Engineer B had access to confidential client information through the consulting engagement with MWC. Post-discharge citizen advocacy needed to be bounded by confidentiality obligations, even as Engineer B considered additional public action.
Engineer B was constrained, in any post-discharge citizen advocacy or public statements, from disclosing confidential client information obtained during the consulting engagement with MWC beyond what was already in the public record or had been disclosed through the formal regulatory reporting process, even when such information might strengthen the public health advocacy case.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.4; Confidentiality Constraint
Following Engineer B's discharge from MWC project, throughout any subsequent citizen advocacy
Engineer B subsequently sent the original report with a letter to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment.
The approved five-year deferral of water treatment implementation directly contradicted Engineer B's recommendation for concurrent treatment. Engineer B's original report had specifically documented the risk of even short-term exposure, making the five-year deferral period a material public health concern requiring assessment.
Deferred Safety Implementation Adequacy Assessment Constraint
Engineer B was constrained from treating the State Department of the Environment's approval with a five-year deferred water treatment implementation plan as equivalent to adequate safety protection — requiring Engineer B to assess whether the five-year deferral period created an unacceptable residual lead exposure risk to City M residents, particularly children, during the interim period before treatment was implemented, given that the original report had specifically documented the risk of short-term exposure.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I; Drinking Water Lead Contamination Standard; Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard
Engineer B read in the local newspaper that the professional engineer in charge of the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment had approved the change of water source, with a five-year implementation plan to provide updated water treatment.
Following Engineer B's learning of the State Department of the Environment's approval with five-year deferred implementation
Engineer B's report recommended to the MWC the need for appropriate water treatment prior to making the change in water source to ensure that sufficient corrosion control is provided so that old service pipes in the MWC service area don't leach lead in excess of drinking water standards.
Engineer B, having fulfilled formal professional reporting obligations, was considering additional advocacy as a citizen of City M. ABC Engineers had a major client relationship with City M across multiple projects, creating a constraint on unilateral citizen advocacy that could harm that relationship.
Employer Faithful Agent Citizen Action Boundary Constraint
Engineer B was constrained, before pursuing additional advocacy as a private citizen of City M — including public statements, media engagement, or political advocacy — from taking actions that would adversely affect ABC Engineers' significant client relationship with City M and MWC without first obtaining ABC Engineers' concurrence, given that City M is a major client of ABC Engineers across multiple commissions and departments.
NSPE Code of Ethics faithful agent provisions; BER Case 20-4; Engineer Citizen Action Standard
Following Engineer B's discharge from MWC project and completion of formal regulatory reporting obligations
Engineer B was considering public advocacy as a citizen of City M following discharge from the project. Any public statements needed to be grounded in the established technical findings rather than speculation, particularly given the existence of a contradicting report from XYZ Consultants.
Engineer B was constrained, in any additional public statements, media engagement, or citizen advocacy regarding the water source change, from expressing technical opinions about the public health risk that exceeded the established factual basis of the completed analysis — requiring that all public statements be grounded in the documented findings of the original report and subsequent regulatory record, and prohibiting speculation or characterization of risk beyond what the technical evidence supported.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.2; BER Case 20-4; Fact-Grounded Opinion Constraint
Throughout any post-discharge public advocacy or citizen action by Engineer B
XYZ Consultants provided a report to the Water Commission indicating that insufficient information was available to predict the severity of any potential public health and safety risk.
Engineer B provided reports and public testimony regarding lead leaching risk from water source change without concurrent treatment
Engineer B (Public Health Risk Reporting Engineer)
Fact-Grounded Technical Opinion Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to base all public statements, reports, and testimony regarding the public health risk of the water source change on established technical facts and completed professional analysis, and to include all relevant and pertinent information — including the specific risk to children from lead exposure — in reports submitted to the Water Commission and the State Department of the Environment.
Throughout the engagement with MWC and in communications to state regulatory authority
Engineer B possessed the capability to balance fiduciary duties to ABC Engineers as employer with overriding professional obligations to public welfare, recognizing that additional citizen advocacy steps required employer concurrence while public safety obligations remained paramount
Engineer B considering additional advocacy steps beyond formal professional obligations while employed by ABC Engineers, which has significant client relationship with City M through MWC
Consideration of ABC Engineers' business impacts and legal liabilities before pursuing additional advocacy steps, while recognizing that whistleblower protections apply when public health and safety are at risk
Any such steps should only be taken with full knowledge and concurrence of the employer
Graduated Escalation Navigation Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to navigate escalation pathways from the client (MWC) to the state regulatory authority (State Department of the Environment), and to assess whether further escalation to higher levels of the Department of the Environment or other political bodies was warranted after the regulatory authority's response was deemed inadequate
Engineer B escalated from client to state regulatory authority; upon learning of inadequate regulatory response (five-year implementation timeline), considered further escalation options
Sequential reporting to Water Commission (verbally and in writing) and then to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment (in writing), followed by consideration of escalation to higher management levels of the Department of the Environment and other political bodies
such other actions might include additional communication with the MWC, with other levels of management of the Department of the Environment, communication with other political bodies beyond the MWC, or communication with the public.
Engineer B has indeed reported the health and safety risk to the client, and to the 'appropriate authority'.
Engineer B escalated from verbal public meeting testimony to written letter to Commissioners to state regulatory authority reporting
Graduated Internal Escalation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, before or in conjunction with external escalation to the state regulatory authority, to ensure that all appropriate internal escalation channels within the MWC decision-making structure had been exhausted — including written communication to the full Commission — acting carefully and with full documentation of the facts.
Engineer B pointed out at a public meeting with the Water Commissioners that public health and safety would be at risk.
Between public meeting testimony and submission to state regulatory authority
Following the meeting, Engineer B provided the Water Commissioners with a letter detailing the risk to public health and safety.
Informed Decision-Making Process Facilitation Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to structure and present professional analysis to the Metropolitan Water Commission in a manner that facilitated informed decision-making about the public health risks of proceeding with the water source change without concurrent water treatment improvements
Engineer B advising MWC on water source change; provided reports and testimony to enable informed decision-making about public health risks
Provision of verbal and written reports and testimony at public meetings to the Water Commissioners documenting that changes in water treatment were necessary prior to changing the water source to protect public health and safety
Engineer B had provided reports and testimony at public meetings to the effect that changes in water treatment were necessary prior to changing the water source in order to protect public health and safety.
Engineer B was obligated to clearly communicate to the Metropolitan Water Commission at the public meeting that proceeding with the water source change without concurrent water treatment posed a public health and safety risk
Engineer B followed a graduated escalation sequence: report to MWC, public meeting with Water Commissioners, written letter to Commissioners, and then escalation to the State Department of the Environment. This sequence reflects the internal escalation constraint operating alongside the external reporting obligation.
Internal Compliance Reporting Escalation Constraint
Engineer B was constrained, before escalating the public health and safety risk to the State Department of the Environment, to ensure that all appropriate internal escalation channels within the client relationship had been genuinely pursued — including the public meeting with Water Commissioners and the written letter detailing the risk — prohibiting premature external escalation that bypassed available internal resolution opportunities, while simultaneously being constrained from indefinitely deferring external escalation when internal escalation was exhausted without corrective action.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Internal Compliance Reporting Escalation Constraint; Lowest-Level Resolution Priority Constraint
Between Engineer B's identification of the public health risk and the decision to report to the State Department of the Environment
Following the public meeting where MWC proceeded with water source change without concurrent treatment
Engineer B was obligated to promptly provide the Water Commissioners with written documentation of the public health and safety risks following the public meeting, so that the risk was formally and unambiguously communicated to decision-makers.
Promptly following the public meeting with Water Commissioners
The lead exposure risk involved a potentially low-probability but high-consequence harm, particularly to children. XYZ Consultants' subsequent report characterized the risk as having insufficient information to predict severity — a framing that could minimize the high-consequence dimension. Engineer B's disclosure obligation required full consequence profile communication.
Low-Probability High-Consequence Risk Disclosure Constraint
Engineer B was constrained to disclose to MWC and the State Department of the Environment the full consequence profile of the lead exposure risk — including the disproportionate harm to children from even short-term exposure — prohibiting omission or minimization of the high-consequence dimension of the risk on the basis that the probability of harm might be characterized as uncertain or low, and requiring that the severity of potential harm to vulnerable populations be communicated alongside any probability assessment.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I.1; Low-Probability High-Consequence Risk Disclosure Constraint; Drinking Water Lead Contamination Standard
During preparation of Engineer B's report, public meeting testimony, written letter to Commissioners, and regulatory submission
MWC decided to proceed with water source change but defer water treatment to reduce expenses; Engineer B had identified this as a public health and safety risk
Non-Acquiescence to Client Safety Override Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to refuse to acquiesce in MWC's decision to proceed with the water source change without concurrent water treatment, and to not subordinate the public safety obligation to MWC's economic interest in reducing expenses, even at the cost of the client relationship.
The MWC met and decided to proceed with the change in water source but to construct water treatment improvements at a later date.
Upon MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment
The purpose of the contemplated change in water source would be to reduce expenses.
MWC's decision to defer water treatment was explicitly motivated by the economic purpose of reducing expenses. Engineer B's obligation to hold paramount public safety prohibited acquiescence in this economically-motivated deferral of required safety measures.
Non-Acquiescence to Client Economic Override Constraint
Engineer B was constrained from acquiescing in MWC's decision to proceed with the water source change while deferring water treatment improvements — a decision driven by the economic purpose of reducing expenses — when that decision created an unmitigated public health risk from lead leaching in excess of drinking water standards, prohibiting Engineer B from continuing project involvement without escalating the safety concern beyond the client relationship.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I.1; BER Case 84-5; Non-Acquiescence to Client Economic Override Constraint
Following MWC's decision to proceed with water source change while deferring treatment improvements
Engineer B's post-discharge consideration of citizen advocacy was bounded by confidentiality obligations arising from the consulting engagement, creating tension between the desire to advocate publicly and the obligation to protect confidential client information.
Confidential Client Information Constraint
Engineer B was constrained, following discharge from the MWC project, from disclosing confidential client information obtained during the consulting engagement — including non-public project details, financial information, or client-confided information — in any subsequent citizen advocacy, public statements, or media engagement, while simultaneously being bounded by the overriding obligation to disclose public safety risks to regulatory authorities when the client refused to act.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.4; Confidential Client Information Constraint
Following Engineer B's discharge from MWC project through any subsequent citizen advocacy
Engineer B, a resident of City M and a consulting engineer with ABC Engineers, was retained to evaluate changing the Metropolitan Water Commission's (MWC) public water source.
Post-Obligation Citizen Advocacy Boundary Navigation Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to recognize the transition point between discharged professional obligations and permissible personal citizen advocacy, including the need to obtain ABC Engineers' concurrence before pursuing additional advocacy steps
Engineer B, having reported to appropriate authorities, considers whether to pursue additional advocacy as a concerned citizen while recognizing obligations to ABC Engineers as employer
Consideration of additional advocacy steps — including communication with MWC, higher levels of the Department of the Environment, political bodies, and the public — as personal citizen choices requiring employer concurrence rather than professional obligations
Whether Engineer B wishes to consider additional alternative courses of action on a personal basis raises other ethical considerations.
All of these potential actions beyond Engineer B's professional obligations would be as a concerned citizen.
Nothing herein should be construed as a constraint to any engineer functioning as a 'Whistleblower' in an event where public health and safety is at risk.
Post-Approval Construction Monitoring and Escalation Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to assess whether the State Department of the Environment's approval of the water source change with only a five-year implementation timeline warranted further escalation to higher regulatory authority or other bodies
State Department of Environment approved water source change with five-year delay on treatment improvements; Engineer B must assess whether further escalation is warranted
Consideration of whether to escalate to higher levels of management of the Department of the Environment, other political bodies, or the public after the regulatory authority's response was deemed potentially inadequate
The current case goes beyond that, posing the question as to what an engineer's ethical obligations are if the 'appropriate authority' fails to act to adequately protect public health and safety in the opinion of the engineer.
State regulatory engineer approved water source change with five-year treatment implementation plan; Engineer B remained concerned about public health risk
Post-Regulatory-Approval Residual Safety Concern Escalation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, upon learning that the State Department of the Environment had approved the water source change with only a five-year implementation plan for water treatment, to evaluate whether further escalation to higher regulatory bodies, elected officials, or the public was warranted given the continued public health risk, and to take such steps if the residual risk was sufficiently serious.
Several months later, Engineer B read in the local newspaper that the professional engineer in charge of the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment had approved the change of water source, with a five-year implementation plan to provide updated water treatment.
Upon learning of the state regulatory approval from the local newspaper
The State Department of the Environment approved the water source change but with a five-year implementation plan for water treatment — a deferred rather than concurrent approach that Engineer B had specifically identified as creating unacceptable public health risk, particularly for children.
Post-Regulatory-Approval Escalation Proportionality Constraint
Engineer B was constrained, following the State Department of the Environment's approval of the water source change with a five-year deferred treatment implementation plan, from treating that regulatory approval as a complete discharge of all continuing professional obligations — but was simultaneously constrained from pursuing disproportionate escalation beyond what the residual risk and available higher authorities warranted — requiring Engineer B to assess whether the five-year deferral adequately addressed the identified lead exposure risk before determining whether further escalation to higher authorities was ethically required.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I; BER Case 20-4; Post-Dismissal Safety Escalation Constraint; Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard
Prior Report Sufficiency Self-Assessment Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to critically self-assess whether verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the State Department of the Environment were sufficiently clear and technically documented to discharge professional obligations
Engineer B discharged from MWC project after reporting water source change risks; must assess whether prior reports were sufficient to fulfill professional obligations before considering additional advocacy steps
Self-assessment of whether prior reports to MWC and State Department of Environment were unambiguous and whether the health and safety risk could reasonably be interpreted differently by another engineer
Engineer B should carefully assess whether verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the water supply division of the Department of the Environment were sufficiently clear so that there was no misunderstanding of the technical documentation.
And Engineer B should consider whether the health and safety risk might reasonably be interpreted otherwise by another engineer.
Professional Opinion Versus Factual Disagreement Discrimination Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to assess whether the discrepancy between Engineer B's safety findings and XYZ Consultants' report represented a legitimate professional opinion disagreement or a factual/informational gap requiring further clarification
XYZ Consultants provided report indicating insufficient information to predict severity of risk, potentially contradicting Engineer B's findings; Engineer B must assess nature of discrepancy to determine whether additional reporting or clarification is required
Consideration of whether the health and safety risk could reasonably be interpreted differently by another engineer, and whether the discrepancy reflected a disagreement of professional opinions or a misunderstanding of facts and technical considerations
Is this a disagreement of professional opinions, or is it a misunderstanding of the facts or the technical considerations?
Engineer B should consider whether the health and safety risk might reasonably be interpreted otherwise by another engineer.
Public meeting with Water Commissioners following MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment
Public Hearing Testimony Completeness Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, at the public meeting with the Water Commissioners, to address all material technical concerns about the public health and safety risk of the water source change without concurrent treatment — including the specific risk of lead leaching to children — so that the Commissioners' decision was based on complete and accurate engineering information.
At the public meeting with Water Commissioners
MWC decided to proceed with water source change but defer water treatment improvements; Engineer B attended public meeting with Water Commissioners
Public Water Authority Informed Decision Facilitation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to clearly communicate to the Metropolitan Water Commission at the public meeting that proceeding with the water source change without concurrent treatment would place public health and safety at risk, including the specific risk to children from lead exposure.
At and following the public meeting with Water Commissioners after MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment
Engineer B possessed the capability to recognize that the public health and safety risk from the water source change without concurrent treatment exceeded the client relationship and required escalation to the State Department of the Environment
MWC decided to proceed with water source change without concurrent treatment despite Engineer B's recommendations; Engineer B escalated to state regulatory authority
Reporting the public health and safety risk to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment in writing after MWC decided to proceed without concurrent water treatment improvements
Engineer B did report the matter to the regulatory authority; namely, the Water Commission (both verbally and in writing) and to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment (in writing).
Engineer B had an ethical obligation to report the risk to public health and safety to the appropriate regulatory authority, regardless of whether the MWC consented to or opposed such a report.
Engineer B faced direct pressure from the client relationship — MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment and the subsequent discharge of ABC Engineers — that could have induced Engineer B to moderate or withdraw the documented safety findings. The paramount public safety obligation constrained Engineer B from doing so.
Engineer B was constrained from allowing ABC Engineers' financial interest in maintaining the City M client relationship to override the professional obligation to hold paramount the public health and safety of City M residents — prohibiting Engineer B from softening, qualifying, or withdrawing the documented safety findings in response to MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment or in response to ABC Engineers' financial exposure from the client relationship.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section I.1; BER Case 20-4; Public Safety Paramount Constraint
Throughout Engineer B's engagement with MWC, including the public meeting, written communications, and regulatory reporting
Public Welfare Paramountcy Recognition Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to recognize that the obligation to protect public health and safety was paramount compared to other ethical obligations, including faithful agent duties to ABC Engineers
Engineer B balancing faithful agent obligations to ABC Engineers against paramount public health and safety obligations when considering additional advocacy steps
Recognition that while employer concurrence is required for citizen advocacy steps, the obligation to protect public health and safety is paramount and cannot be constrained by employer interests or whistleblower concerns
Engineer B has an ethical obligation to act as a faithful agent of the employer, while recognizing that the obligation to protect public health and safety is paramount in comparison to other ethical obligations.
MWC refused to implement concurrent water treatment; Engineer B escalated to state regulatory authority; state authority approved with five-year plan
Engineer B (Public Health Risk Reporter)
Public Welfare Safety Escalation Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to escalate the public health and safety risk beyond the client relationship — to the State Department of the Environment — when MWC refused to act on the disclosed risk, and to evaluate whether further escalation was warranted after the state regulatory approval.
Following MWC's refusal to implement concurrent treatment and continuing after state regulatory approval
Engineer B continued to be concerned that public health and safety would be at risk and considered whether there were continuing ethical obligations
Regulatory Authority Adequacy Assessment Capability
Engineer B possessed the capability to assess whether the State Department of the Environment's approval of the water source change with only a five-year implementation timeline for water treatment improvements constituted adequate protection of public health and safety
State Department of Environment approved water source change with five-year delay on treatment improvements despite Engineer B's safety reports; Engineer B must assess whether this regulatory response is adequate
Assessment of whether the regulatory authority's conditional approval adequately addressed the public health risks identified in Engineer B's reports, and whether residual risks warranted further escalation
Engineer B and ABC Engineers were discharged from the project after raising safety concerns; XYZ Consultants were retained as replacement
Discharged Engineer Continued Public Safety Reporting Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, following discharge from the project, to report the public health and safety risk to the state regulatory authority — the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment — by submitting the original report and a cover letter, notwithstanding the termination of the client relationship.
Following discharge from the project by MWC
Engineer B submitted the original report with a letter to the state regulatory authority. The completeness of that submission was critical to enabling the regulatory authority to make an informed decision about the water source change.
Engineer B was constrained, in the letter and report submitted to the State Department of the Environment, to include all relevant and pertinent factual information about the public health risk — including the specific risk of lead leaching from old service pipes, the risk to children from short-term exposure, and the basis for recommending concurrent rather than deferred water treatment — prohibiting selective omission of known risk factors even if verbally communicated to MWC.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.2; Written Report Completeness Constraint
During preparation and submission of Engineer B's report and letter to the State Department of the Environment
Discharged Engineer Post-Termination Reporting Persistence Capability
Engineer Doe possessed the capability to recognize that discharge from the industry client and instructions not to write a report did not extinguish the professional obligation to report findings to the applicable regulatory authority
Engineer Doe retained by industry to evaluate manufacturing process change; concluded it would not meet water quality standards; client severed contract and instructed Doe not to write a report; BER concluded Doe had obligation to report to regulatory authority
Recognition that the obligation to report that the proposed manufacturing process change would not meet minimum water quality standards persisted despite contract termination and client instructions to the contrary
Engineer Doe possessed the capability to recognize that the engineer presenting at the public hearing was unaware of material technical factors that Doe had recognized — representing an informational gap rather than a legitimate professional opinion disagreement — thereby triggering the obligation to report to the regulatory authority
Engineer Doe aware that another engineer, unaware of factors Doe had recognized, presented contradicting view at public hearing; BER concluded Doe had obligation to report to regulatory authority
Recognition that the public hearing engineer's view that the industry would meet minimum standards was based on incomplete information, not a different professional judgment from the same facts
Subsequently, another engineer unaware of factors that Doe had recognized, presented the view at a public hearing that the industry would meet minimum standards.
Engineer presented at public hearing that industry would meet minimum water quality standards, unaware of factors recognized by Engineer Doe
Unaware Engineer (Public Hearing Design Engineer)
The engineer who presented at the public hearing that the industry would meet minimum water quality standards was obligated to address all material technical concerns — including concerns about factors they were unaware of — and to qualify their testimony to reflect the limits of their knowledge, so that the public board's decision was based on complete and accurate engineering information.
An engineer unaware of factors recognized by Engineer Doe who presented at a public hearing the view that the industry would meet minimum water quality standards.
Engineer Doe evaluated industry manufacturing process change and concluded it would not meet minimum water quality standards; another engineer presented contrary view at public hearing
Engineer Doe (Industry Process Evaluator)
Public Interest Environmental Testimony Obligation
Engineer Doe, having concluded that the proposed manufacturing process change would not meet minimum water quality standards, was obligated to bring those concerns forward at the public regulatory hearing and, if the formal presentation failed to produce corrective action, to escalate the concern to a higher regulatory authority.
Engineer Doe Industry Process Evaluator -- Retained by an industry to evaluate whether a proposed manufacturing process change would meet minimum water quality standards; concluded it would not meet minimum standards.
Upon completion of evaluation and at public regulatory hearing
Engineer B Citizen Action Stakeholder Consideration MWC Water Source
Engineer B considering additional escalation steps beyond formal reporting to Water Commission and State Department of the Environment, while ABC Engineers retains City M as a major client
Citizen Action Stakeholder Consideration Constraint
Engineer B was constrained, when considering additional citizen-role advocacy actions beyond formal professional reporting — including communication with political bodies, media, or the public — to carefully consider the interests of all affected stakeholders, including ABC Engineers' business and legal interests, and to take such steps only with full knowledge and concurrence of ABC Engineers.
NSPE Code of Ethics faithful agent provisions; BER current case analysis
Following discharge from MWC project and completion of formal regulatory reporting obligations
Any such steps should only be taken with full knowledge and concurrence of the employer, since Engineer B has an ethical obligation to act as a faithful agent of the employer
and should be taken in consideration of the many stakeholders affected by the matter and the engineer's continuing ethical obligations where pertinent
Engineer B Communication Clarity Assessment Obligation
After completion of formal reporting, during Engineer B's self-assessment of whether communications were adequate
Engineer B's uncertainty about whether prior regulatory communications were sufficiently clear to preclude misunderstanding
Engineer B's determination that communications were clear and unambiguous, or identification that clarification is needed
BER guidance that Engineer B should carefully assess whether verbal and written reports were sufficiently clear and whether the health and safety risk might reasonably be interpreted otherwise by another engineer
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'employer': 'ABC Engineers', 'status': 'No longer representing MWC', 'potential_actions': ['Additional communication with MWC', 'Communication with higher DOE management', 'Communication with political bodies', 'Communication with public', 'Whistleblower action']}
Having discharged professional obligations by reporting to appropriate authorities, Engineer B considers whether to pursue additional personal advocacy actions including further communication with MWC, higher levels of Department of the Environment management, other political bodies, or the public; BER concludes such actions are personal rather than professional choices requiring employer concurrence
{'type': 'citizen_concern', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority'}
{'type': 'citizen_concern', 'target': 'State Environmental Regulatory Engineer'}
{'type': 'employer', 'target': 'ABC Engineers'}
Whether Engineer B wishes to consider additional alternative courses of action on a personal basis raises other ethical considerations
All of these potential actions beyond Engineer B's professional obligations would be as a concerned citizen
Nothing herein should be construed as a constraint to any engineer functioning as a 'Whistleblower'
Engineer B Conflict of Interest as City M Resident and MWC Consultant
Throughout the engagement and continuing after discharge
Engineer B, a resident of City M and a consulting engineer with ABC Engineers, was retained to evaluate changing the Metropolitan Water Commission's public water source
Engineer B's dual role as City M resident and MWC consulting engineer
Engineer B retained to evaluate water source change for the city in which they reside
Engineer B Deferred Safety Implementation Adequacy Assessment MWC Water Source
State Department of the Environment approved water source change with only a five-year implementation timeline for water treatment improvements, rather than requiring concurrent implementation as Engineer B had recommended
Engineer B was constrained to assess whether the State Department of the Environment's approval with a five-year deferred water treatment implementation timeline adequately protected public health during the interim period, and could not treat the regulatory approval with deferred implementation as equivalent to approval with adequate concurrent safety measures.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER current case analysis
the State Department of the Environment approved the water source change with only a five-year implementation of the water treatment improvements
Following State Department of the Environment approval with five-year deferred treatment timeline
Engineer B Discharge Following Safety Escalation
From MWC discharge of Engineer B through the end of the case facts
Post-Discharge Continuing Safety Obligation State
Engineer B's status following discharge by MWC
MWC discharge of Engineer B and ABC Engineers after Engineer B escalated safety concerns publicly and to the State Department of the Environment
Engineer B Employer Concurrence Citizen Advocacy MWC Water Source
ABC Engineers holds City M as a major client; Engineer B considering public advocacy steps that could adversely affect that relationship
Engineer B was constrained from pursuing additional citizen-role advocacy actions — including communication with other levels of the Department of the Environment, political bodies, or the public — without first obtaining full knowledge and concurrence of ABC Engineers, given Engineer B's faithful agent obligation and ABC Engineers' significant client relationship with City M.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section IV.1; BER current case analysis
Following discharge from MWC project, while Engineer B remains employed by ABC Engineers
Engineer B Employer Faithful Agent Constraint on Citizen Action
During Engineer B's consideration of additional escalation steps beyond formal professional reporting obligations, while still employed by ABC Engineers
Engineer B's obligation to obtain ABC Engineers' concurrence before taking further public action as a citizen
Engineer B obtaining employer concurrence, Engineer B's departure from ABC Engineers, or Engineer B's decision not to take further action
Engineer B's consideration of additional actions (communication with higher DOE management, political bodies, or public) that could affect ABC Engineers' business interests and legal liabilities
Engineer B Formal Reporting Obligation Discharge Sufficiency Recognition MWC Water Source
Engineer B reported public health and safety risks to both the client and the appropriate regulatory authority; the BER concluded that clear notification to appropriate authorities satisfies the engineer's ethical obligation and that subsequent steps are personal rather than professional choices.
Formal Reporting Obligation Discharge Sufficiency Recognition Obligation
Upon confirming that verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the State Department of the Environment were clear, complete, and technically unambiguous, Engineer B was entitled to recognize that formal professional ethical obligations had been fully discharged, and that any subsequent advocacy steps were a matter of personal choice rather than professional requirement.
If Engineer B has clearly communicated the public health and safety risks both to the client and the regulatory agency, the BER concludes that Engineer B has fulfilled the Code's ethical and professional obligations since Engineer B and ABC Engineers are no longer representing the MWC.
After confirming sufficiency of prior reports to appropriate authorities
The BER concludes that clear notification of public health and safety risk to appropriate authorities satisfies an engineer's ethical obligation, and that subsequent steps are a personal, rather than a professional choice.
Engineer B Post-Discharge Continuing Safety Obligation - Regulatory Inaction
After Engineer B and ABC Engineers ceased representing the MWC, while the public health risk from deferred water treatment improvements remained active
Engineer B's ongoing ethical consideration of public health risk after discharge from MWC project and completion of formal reporting
Resolution of the underlying public health risk or Engineer B's determination that no further action is warranted
Regulatory authority's approval of deferred safety measures combined with Engineer B's discharge from the project
Engineer B Post-Employment Employer Concurrence Mootness MWC Water Source
BER explicitly noting that the employer concurrence constraint is contingent on the employment relationship remaining active
If Engineer B is no longer employed by ABC Engineers, the employer concurrence constraint on citizen-role advocacy actions becomes moot, and Engineer B may pursue additional escalation steps as a private citizen without the faithful agent limitation that would otherwise apply.
Contingent on termination of employment relationship with ABC Engineers
Engineer B Post-Obligation Citizen Advocacy ABC Engineers Concurrence MWC Water Source
Engineer B, having fulfilled formal reporting obligations to the MWC and State Department of the Environment, considered additional advocacy as a concerned citizen; ABC Engineers is a major contractor to City M and has significant business interests implicated by any additional advocacy steps.
Post-Obligation Citizen Advocacy Employer Concurrence Obligation
Engineer B was obligated, before pursuing any additional advocacy steps beyond formal professional reporting obligations — including communication with higher levels of the Department of the Environment, political bodies, or the public — to obtain the full knowledge and concurrence of ABC Engineers, recognizing that ABC Engineers has legitimate business and legal interests in any such additional steps.
Before taking any citizen advocacy steps beyond formal professional reporting obligations, while still employed by ABC Engineers
Engineer B Prior Report Clarity Self-Assessment MWC Water Source
Engineer B assessing whether State Department of the Environment's approval with five-year deferred treatment adequately addressed the documented lead leaching risk, and whether prior communications were sufficiently clear
Prior Report Clarity Self-Assessment Constraint
Before concluding that the State Department of the Environment's approval with deferred implementation constitutes a failure to act on clear safety evidence, Engineer B was constrained to first assess whether prior verbal and written communications were sufficiently clear and unambiguous, and whether the risk could reasonably be interpreted differently by another qualified engineer.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER analysis of current case
Prior to determining whether further escalation beyond formal reporting is warranted
Engineer B reported public health and safety risks from changing the water source without concurrent treatment to the MWC and the State Department of the Environment; the regulatory authority approved the course of action Engineer B believed was unsafe; Engineer B must assess whether prior reports were adequate before treating further steps as personal choice.
Prior Safety Report Sufficiency Self-Assessment Obligation
Engineer B was obligated to critically self-assess whether the verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the State Department of the Environment were sufficiently clear and technically unambiguous — and whether the risk could reasonably be interpreted differently by another engineer — before concluding that professional reporting obligations had been fully discharged.
After receiving notice that the regulatory authority had approved the water source change without concurrent treatment, and before concluding that professional obligations were discharged
Engineer B Professional-Citizen Boundary Determination
After Engineer B completed formal regulatory reporting and was discharged from the MWC project, while the public health risk remained unresolved
State Department of the Environment higher management
Professional Obligation Boundary Determination State
Engineer B's decision about whether to pursue additional escalation beyond formal regulatory reporting
Engineer B's determination (with employer concurrence if still employed) about whether and how to pursue further action as a citizen
In the project described in this case, such other actions might include additional communication with the MWC, with other levels of management of the Department of the Environment, communication with other political bodies beyond the MWC, or communication with the public.
The BER concludes that clear notification of public health and safety risk to appropriate authorities satisfies an engineer's ethical obligation, and that subsequent steps are a personal, rather than a professional choice
Regulatory authority's failure to require adequate concurrent safety measures, combined with Engineer B's discharge from the project, creating the question of whether further action is professionally required
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'employer': 'ABC Engineers', 'case_reference': 'BER Cases 20-4 and current case', 'reporting_actions': ['Verbal report to Water Commission', 'Written report to Water Commission', 'Written report to State Department of the Environment water supply division']}
Consulting engineer to the MWC who provided reports and testimony that water treatment changes were necessary before changing water source; MWC proceeded without treatment improvements; reported risk verbally and in writing to Water Commission and in writing to State Department of the Environment water supply division; BER concluded professional obligations were fulfilled upon clear notification to appropriate authorities
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'State Environmental Regulatory Engineer'}
Engineer B did report the matter to the regulatory authority; namely, the Water Commission (both verbally and in writing) and to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment (in writing)
Engineer B has clearly communicated the public health and safety risks both to the client and the regulatory agency, the BER concludes that Engineer B has fulfilled the Code's ethical and professional obligations
Engineer B Public Health Risk Reporting Engineer
{'license': 'Professional Engineer (consulting)', 'employer': 'ABC Engineers', 'residency': 'City M resident', 'specialty': 'Water supply engineering'}
Retained to evaluate changing MWC water source; recommended water treatment concurrent with change to prevent lead leaching; warned Water Commissioners publicly and in writing; reported to State Department of the Environment after being discharged; continued to consider obligations after state regulatory approval was granted
{'type': 'community_member', 'target': 'City M'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'State Department of the Environment Water Supply Division'}
Engineer B provided the Water Commissioners with a letter detailing the risk to public health and safety
Engineer B subsequently sent the original report with a letter to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment
Engineer B's report recommended to the MWC the need for appropriate water treatment prior to making the change
Engineer B Public Safety Paramount Over Employer Loyalty MWC Water Source
Engineer B balancing ABC Engineers' significant client relationship with City M against the continuing public health risk from deferred water treatment implementation
Client Loyalty vs. Public Safety Priority Constraint
While Engineer B was constrained by the faithful agent obligation to ABC Engineers to obtain employer concurrence before citizen-role advocacy, that faithful agent constraint was itself bounded by the paramount public safety obligation — establishing that if public health and safety risk remained unmitigated and material, the public safety obligation would take precedence over employer loyalty considerations.
since Engineer B has an ethical obligation to act as a faithful agent of the employer, while recognizing that the obligation to protect public health and safety is paramount in comparison to other ethical obligations.
Throughout Engineer B's consideration of additional escalation steps following formal reporting obligation discharge
Engineer B Regulatory Authority Inaction Escalation Boundary MWC Water Source
Engineer B reported public health risk of water source change without concurrent treatment to MWC and State Department of the Environment; State Department approved project with five-year deferred treatment timeline; Engineer B considering further escalation
Regulatory Authority Inaction Escalation Boundary Constraint
Engineer B's formal professional ethical obligations were satisfied upon clear written and verbal notification to the Water Commission and written notification to the State Department of the Environment; further escalation beyond that threshold constitutes personal citizen action rather than professional obligation, and Engineer B was constrained from treating regulatory inaction as an automatic trigger for indefinite professional escalation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 20-4; BER Case 76-4
Following completion of written report to State Department of the Environment and discharge from MWC project
Engineer B Regulatory Reporting Completed - Authority Inaction
From Engineer B's written and verbal reports to the Water Commission and written report to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment, through the regulatory authority's failure to require adequate protective measures concurrent with the water source change
The facts of the present case show Engineer B did report the matter to the regulatory authority; namely, the Water Commission (both verbally and in writing) and to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment (in writing).
Regulatory Authority Inaction on Reported Safety Risk State
Engineer B's post-reporting situation with Water Commission and State Department of the Environment
Resolution of the underlying public health risk, or Engineer B's determination that professional obligations are satisfied and any further action is a personal citizen choice
Engineer B completed formal reporting to both the Water Commission (verbally and in writing) and the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment (in writing), but the regulatory authority approved the project with deferred water treatment improvements rather than requiring concurrent safety measures
Engineer B Sufficiency Assessment Prior Reports State Department Environment MWC
Engineer B submitted a written report to the State Department of the Environment; the regulatory authority approved the water source change without concurrent treatment despite Engineer B's warnings; Engineer B must determine whether the regulatory response reflects adequate understanding of the risk before concluding obligations are discharged.
Engineer B was obligated to assess whether the written report to the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment was sufficiently clear and technically complete to constitute adequate notification of the public health and safety risk, and to consider whether the regulatory authority's approval of the water source change reflected a professional disagreement or a misunderstanding of the technical facts.
After learning that the State Department of the Environment approved the water source change without concurrent treatment
Engineer B Whistleblower Non-Constraint Recognition MWC Water Source
The BER, having concluded that employer concurrence is required for post-obligation citizen advocacy, explicitly carved out whistleblower protection to ensure that the employer concurrence requirement is not misread as a prohibition on whistleblowing when public health and safety are at stake.
Engineering profession / BER / ABC Engineers
Whistleblower Non-Constraint Acknowledgment Obligation
The BER affirmed that no provision of the professional ethics analysis — including the employer concurrence requirement and the faithful agent obligation — should be construed as a constraint on Engineer B functioning as a whistleblower when public health and safety is at risk from the water source change without concurrent treatment.
Throughout the period of Engineer B's consideration of additional advocacy steps
Engineer B Whistleblower Non-Suppression MWC Water Source
BER explicitly affirming that its conclusions about professional obligation discharge and employer concurrence requirements do not suppress Engineer B's whistleblower pathway
Citizen Advocacy Whistleblower Non-Suppression Constraint
No provision of the BER's analysis — including the employer concurrence requirement, the faithful agent obligation, or the formal reporting discharge threshold — may be construed as constraining Engineer B from functioning as a whistleblower when public health and safety is at risk from the MWC water source change.
Throughout and following Engineer B's professional engagement with MWC
Engineer B's Water Source Change Risk Report
Engineer B's Report on Water Source Change and Corrosion Control Requirements
Engineer B, MWC, State Department of Environment
Primary technical document establishing the public health risk of proceeding without concurrent water treatment, providing the evidentiary basis for Engineer B's ethical obligations and subsequent escalation actions
Original report submitted to MWC and State Department of Environment
Engineer B's deliberation on continuing obligations after newspaper report of regulatory approval
Engineer B's report and letter to State Department of the Environment before MWC discharge of Engineer B and ABC Engineers
Engineer B's warning at public meeting before Engineer B's written letter to Water Commissioners
Engineer B's written letter to Water Commissioners before Engineer B's report and letter to State Department of the Environment
Engineer Citizen Action Standard - Stakeholder Consideration Framework
Professional guidance on engineer personal actions as concerned citizen beyond professional obligations
BER in advising Engineer B on post-obligation personal action options
Applied by the BER to evaluate the ethical considerations applicable when Engineer B considers additional actions beyond professional obligations, including employer concurrence, business impacts, legal liabilities, and stakeholder interests
Engineer Doe Discharge Non-Reporting Constraint BER 76-4
Engineer Doe retained to evaluate manufacturing process change, concluded it would not meet minimum water quality standards, was discharged and instructed not to write a report; another engineer subsequently presented contradictory view at public hearing
Engineer Doe was not constrained from reporting observations to the applicable regulatory authority by the client's instruction not to write a report following contract severance — the discharge and instruction created no legitimate constraint on Doe's obligation to report findings to regulatory authorities when another engineer presented contradictory views at a public hearing.
Following contract severance by industry client and prior to public hearing
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Environmental/water quality engineering', 'case_reference': 'BER Case 76-4'}
Retained by an industry to evaluate whether a proposed manufacturing process change would meet minimum water quality standards; concluded it would not; had contract severed and was asked not to write a report; BER concluded Doe had obligation to report findings to regulatory authority
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Industry Manufacturing Process Client'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'Applicable Regulatory Authority'}
Engineer Doe was retained by an industry to evaluate whether a proposed change in their manufacturing process would result in meeting minimum water quality standards
Doe concluded that the change would not meet minimum standards and apprised the client of that decision
The client severed Doe's contract and asked DOE not to write a report
the BER concluded that Doe had an obligation to report the observations to the applicable regulatory authority
Engineer Doe Public Hearing Reporting Obligation Industry Process Evaluation
Engineer Doe was retained to evaluate whether a manufacturing process change would meet minimum water quality standards; concluded it would not; client severed the contract and asked Doe not to write a report; another engineer unaware of Doe's findings presented at a public hearing that the industry would meet minimum standards.
Engineer Doe, having been discharged by the industry client and instructed not to write a report, was obligated to report the observations — that the proposed manufacturing process change would not meet minimum water quality standards — to the applicable regulatory authority, notwithstanding the client's instruction and the termination of the contract.
Engineer Doe was retained by an industry to evaluate whether a proposed change in their manufacturing process would result in meeting minimum water quality standards.
After contract severance and upon learning that another engineer had presented contrary findings at a public hearing
Doe concluded that the change would not meet minimum standards and apprised the client of that decision.
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard - Post-Authority-Inaction Obligations
NSPE Board of Ethical Review through accumulated case decisions
Professional norms governing engineer obligations when regulatory authorities fail to act on reported safety risks
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard
The current case goes beyond that, posing the question as to what an engineer's ethical obligations are if the 'appropriate authority' fails to act to adequately protect public health and safety in the opinion of the engineer
BER in determining the scope of Engineer B's continuing obligations
The BER uses this standard to analyze what additional obligations Engineer B has after having already reported to the Water Commission and State Department of the Environment, concluding that clear notification satisfies professional obligation and subsequent steps are personal choices
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard - Post-Discharge Obligations
NSPE / Professional engineering ethics community
Professional Norms Governing Engineer Obligations After Client Override of Safety Recommendations
Engineer B continued to be concerned that public health and safety would be at risk and considered whether there were continuing ethical obligations, and if so, what alternative courses of action as an engineer and/or as a citizen of City M might merit consideration
Engineer B in deliberating about continuing obligations
Governs Engineer B's continuing ethical obligations after being discharged from the project, including whether to pursue further action as an engineer and/or as a citizen of City M following state regulatory approval of the water source change
Engineer Reporting Obligation to State Board Standard - Water Safety Context
NSPE / State engineering licensing boards
Professional Norms Governing Engineer Duty to Report Public Safety Threats to Regulatory Authorities
Engineer Reporting Obligation to State Board Standard
Engineer B in deciding to contact state regulators
Grounds Engineer B's decision to send the original report to the State Department of Environment, establishing the professional obligation to notify regulatory authorities when a client proceeds with a course of action that endangers public health
Escalation Obligation When Initial Regulatory Report Insufficient Considered By Engineer B
Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority Body inaction
State Department of Environment Water Supply Division inaction
The case raises but does not fully resolve whether Engineer B's reports to the Water Commission and State Department of Environment — which were not acted upon — trigger an obligation to escalate to higher regulatory or political authorities, or whether the initial formal reporting satisfies the professional obligation
The BER's conclusion that post-reporting advocacy is a personal rather than professional choice suggests that the escalation obligation is satisfied by clear reporting to appropriate authorities, even if those authorities fail to act — distinguishing this case from scenarios where escalation remains mandatory
Escalation Obligation When Initial Regulatory Report Is Insufficient
The BER resolves the tension by holding that clear notification to appropriate authorities discharges the professional obligation, and further escalation is discretionary — but preserves whistleblower protections for engineers who choose to escalate
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits Invoked By Engineer B ABC Engineers
ABC Engineers' business and legal interests
Engineer B's post-reporting advocacy decisions
Engineer B's obligation to act as a faithful agent of ABC Engineers requires consulting the employer before taking additional advocacy steps, while retaining the professional authority and obligation to prioritize public welfare above employer business interests
The faithful agent obligation operates within the ethical limit that public welfare is paramount; Engineer B must balance employer loyalty against the overriding public safety obligation when deciding whether and how to pursue additional advocacy
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits
Faithful agent obligation governs discretionary post-obligation advocacy steps but cannot override the paramount public welfare obligation; the engineer retains authority to act on public welfare even against employer preferences
From MWC's decision to proceed through Engineer B's reporting to the State Department of the Environment
Engineer B's exhaustion of client-level escalation channels
Engineer B's escalation to State Department of the Environment
MWC's decision to proceed despite Engineer B's public meeting objection and follow-up letter
Lead Exposure Risk from Deferred Water Treatment
From MWC decision to proceed without concurrent treatment through the five-year deferred implementation period
City M water supply service area population, particularly children
Implementation of adequate corrosion control water treatment (not yet occurred within case facts)
MWC decision to change water source while deferring water treatment improvements
MWC Decision to Proceed Without Concurrent Treatment
From MWC meeting decision through regulatory approval and five-year implementation period
Client Authority Override of Safety Recommendation State
MWC's decision to proceed with water source change while deferring treatment
MWC vote to proceed with water source change but defer water treatment improvements
MWC Major Client Relationship with ABC Engineers
Prior to and throughout the water source evaluation engagement
Engineer B and ABC Engineers' relationship with City M / MWC
MWC discharge of Engineer B and ABC Engineers from the water source change project
ABC Engineers retained by MWC for water supply evaluation; ongoing relationship with City M on multiple public works projects
MWC decision to proceed without treatment before Engineer B's warning at public meeting
MWC discharge of Engineer B and ABC Engineers meets retention of XYZ Consultants
MWC discharge of Engineer B before newspaper report of regulatory approval
Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority Body
{'type': 'Public water authority', 'jurisdiction': 'City M metropolitan area'}
Public water authority that received Engineer B's safety recommendations, decided to proceed with water source change without concurrent treatment, discharged Engineer B and ABC Engineers, and retained XYZ Consultants
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'XYZ Consultants'}
{'type': 'serves', 'target': 'City M residents'}
Metropolitan Water Commission Decision Authority
the Metropolitan Water Commission's (MWC) public water source serving City M
The MWC discharged Engineer B and ABC Engineers from project involvement in the water source change
The MWC met and decided to proceed with the change in water source but to construct water treatment improvements at a later date
NSPE Code of Ethics - Paramount Public Safety Obligation
National Society of Professional Engineers
Engineer B in determining continuing ethical obligations after discharge
Grounds Engineer B's obligation to hold public health and safety paramount over client instructions, justifying escalation to state regulators and public notification after MWC overrode safety recommendations
NSPE Code of Ethics - Public Safety Reporting Obligation
Each of the above cases refer to what is clearly established in the NSPE Code of Ethics: there is an obligation to report public health and safety risks to 'appropriate authorities'
BER in analyzing Engineer B's obligations
Cited as establishing the obligation to report public health and safety risks to appropriate authorities, and as the normative anchor for all three BER cases discussed
Post-Approval Further Action Deliberation
Post-Approval Further Action Deliberation → Health Risk Information Gap
Post-Reporting Advocacy as Personal Choice Invoked By Engineer B Concerned Citizen Consideration
Potential additional communication with MWC
Potential communication with higher levels of Department of Environment
Potential communication with other political bodies
Having discharged professional reporting obligations, Engineer B's consideration of additional advocacy — communicating with higher levels of the Department of Environment, other political bodies, or the public — constitutes a personal rather than professional choice
The BER distinguishes between mandatory professional obligation (reporting to appropriate authorities) and discretionary personal advocacy (further escalation), holding that the latter is a matter of personal moral choice rather than professional ethical requirement
Once professional obligation is discharged through clear reporting to appropriate authorities, further action is discretionary; however, whistleblower protections preserve the engineer's right to escalate and public welfare remains paramount if escalation is chosen
The BER concludes that clear notification of public health and safety risk to appropriate authorities satisfies an engineer's ethical obligation, and that subsequent steps are a personal, rather than a professional choice, and should be taken in consideration of the many stakeholders affected by the matter and the engineer's continuing ethical obligations where pertinent.
Proactive Risk Disclosure Invoked By Engineer B Written and Verbal Reports
State Department of Environment Water Supply Division PE State Environmental Regulatory Engineer
Engineer B proactively communicated the public health risk of lead leaching to the Water Commission both verbally and in writing, and to the State Department of Environment in writing, without waiting for formal requests or harm to materialize
Proactive risk disclosure requires Engineer B to communicate identified risks to all relevant regulatory authorities, not merely to the immediate client, and to do so in multiple forms to ensure the risk is understood
Proactive disclosure obligation to regulatory authorities overrides client preference for non-disclosure; Engineer B reported despite MWC opposition
Professional Competence in Risk Assessment Invoked By Engineer B Lead Leaching Analysis
Lead leaching risk to City M drinking water consumers
Engineer B applied specialized technical competence to identify and assess the risk of lead leaching from changing the water source without concurrent treatment, and acted on that assessment by reporting to appropriate authorities even when the MWC proceeded without heeding the recommendation
Professional competence in risk assessment requires Engineer B not only to identify the risk but to communicate it clearly and completely to all relevant authorities, and to assess whether prior communications were sufficiently clear before concluding the obligation is discharged
Professional Competence in Risk Assessment
Competence-based risk assessment obligation requires action regardless of client or employer preferences; Engineer B reported to appropriate authorities despite MWC opposition
Public Interest Engineering Testimony Obligation Invoked By Engineer Doe Public Hearing
Public hearing on industry water quality standards compliance
Unaware Engineer Public Hearing Presenter's contrary testimony
Engineer Doe, having concluded that the manufacturing process change would not meet minimum water quality standards and having been discharged by the client, had an obligation to report observations to the applicable regulatory authority, particularly when another engineer unaware of Doe's findings presented contrary testimony at a public hearing
The public interest testimony obligation requires Engineer Doe to correct the public record when another engineer, unaware of material technical factors, presents a misleading view to a regulatory body — even after the client has severed the contract and requested no written report
Public Interest Engineering Testimony Obligation
Public interest testimony obligation overrides client instruction not to write a report; BER Case 76-4 concluded Doe had an obligation to report to the applicable regulatory authority
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked By Engineer B Reporting to MWC and State
Metropolitan Water Commission water source change decision
Engineer B reported the public health and safety risk posed by changing the water source without concurrent treatment to both the Water Commission and the State Department of Environment, holding public welfare paramount over client and employer interests
In this context, public welfare paramount requires Engineer B to report identified risks to appropriate regulatory authorities regardless of client opposition, discharge, or business consequences to ABC Engineers
The BER concludes that Engineer B had an ethical obligation to report the risk to public health and safety to the appropriate regulatory authority, regardless of whether the MWC consented to or opposed such a report.
Public welfare obligation overrides client loyalty and employer business interests; reporting to appropriate authorities is mandatory regardless of MWC consent or opposition
while recognizing that the obligation to protect public health and safety is paramount in comparison to other ethical obligations
Qualitative Risk Assessment - Lead Exposure Health Risk
Assessment of Public Health Risk from Lead Leaching in MWC Service Area
Engineer B in formulating recommendations and public communications
Provides the structured professional methodology for estimating and communicating the likelihood and magnitude of lead exposure harm to adults and children, forming the evidentiary core of Engineer B's ethical argument for concurrent water treatment
Engineer B ethically obligated to take further action to protect public health, safety and welfare?
Does the five-year deferred treatment implementation plan constitute a sufficiently adequate safeguard to meaningfully reduce the public health risk Engineer B documented, or does the extended timeline itself represent an unacceptable continuation of danger that changes Engineer B's ethical calculus?
What ethical obligations, if any, does XYZ Consultants bear for issuing a report that characterized the risk as indeterminate when Engineer B's prior documented analysis indicated a clear and specific danger, and does that contradictory report itself constitute a public safety harm requiring response?
Given that Engineer B was discharged specifically after escalating the safety concern, does the sequence of events — escalation followed by discharge — create a chilling effect on professional safety reporting that the ethical framework should address, and does Engineer B have any obligation to report this retaliatory pattern to a professional licensing board?
Did ABC Engineers, as the firm retaining Engineer B, have an independent institutional ethical obligation to support or continue Engineer B's safety escalation after Engineer B was discharged, or does the firm's financial relationship with City M as a major client effectively extinguish that obligation?
If Engineer B wishes to take further action to continue to correspond with the MWC or the regulatory agency regarding the public health and safety risk, or to notify the public, what are the ethical considerations in doing so?
Does the principle that public welfare is paramount conflict with the faithful agent obligation when ABC Engineers' financial dependence on City M as a major client creates institutional pressure that could suppress Engineer B's continued safety advocacy, and how should Engineer B navigate that tension after discharge?
Does the principle requiring employer concurrence before citizen advocacy conflict with the principle of proactive risk disclosure when the employer's financial interests are aligned with the client whose decision created the risk, effectively making employer concurrence structurally unavailable as a practical matter?
Does the principle that sufficiency of prior safety reports satisfies Engineer B's formal obligation conflict with the escalation obligation principle when a regulatory authority has approved a plan that Engineer B's technical analysis indicates remains dangerous, effectively rendering the prior reporting insufficient in outcome even if complete in form?
Does the principle of post-reporting advocacy as a personal citizen choice conflict with the principle of professional competence in risk assessment, given that Engineer B's unique technical knowledge of the specific lead leaching danger means that silence after regulatory inaction is not a neutral act but a withholding of information the public cannot obtain elsewhere?
From a deontological perspective, does Engineer B's duty to hold public safety paramount create a categorical obligation to continue escalating beyond formal regulatory reporting channels when those channels have demonstrably failed to prevent a known health risk, regardless of personal or professional cost?
From a consequentialist perspective, does the Board's conclusion that formal regulatory reporting satisfies Engineer B's obligation adequately weigh the foreseeable harm to children from lead exposure against the costs of further escalation, given that the approved five-year deferred treatment plan leaves the population at documented risk for an extended period?
From a virtue ethics perspective, does the distinction the Board draws between Engineer B's professional obligation and personal citizen choice reflect genuine professional integrity, or does it allow the engineer to retreat from the full expression of the virtue of courage that the paramount public safety obligation demands when regulatory channels have been exhausted without resolution?
From a deontological perspective, does Engineer B's faithful agent obligation to ABC Engineers constrain the scope of permissible citizen advocacy after discharge from the MWC project, and if so, does that constraint itself become ethically impermissible when it operates to suppress disclosure of a documented public health risk?
If Engineer B had explicitly conditioned acceptance of the water source evaluation engagement on a contractual commitment from the MWC to implement concurrent water treatment, would that precondition have been ethically permissible and practically effective in preventing the deferred treatment decision that created the public health risk?
If XYZ Consultants had fulfilled their independent professional obligation to provide an objective risk assessment rather than a report indicating insufficient information to predict risk severity, would the State Department of the Environment engineer have approved the water source change with only a five-year deferred treatment plan, and what does this counterfactual reveal about the systemic ethical failure in the case?
If Engineer B had proactively notified the public directly through media or community channels before the MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent treatment, rather than limiting initial escalation to the public meeting and written letter to commissioners, would that earlier public disclosure have been ethically justified and would it have altered the trajectory of the MWC's decision?
If Engineer B had not been discharged by the MWC and had remained the engineer of record during implementation of the water source change, would the ethical obligations regarding public notification and escalation have been substantially greater than those the Board identifies for a discharged engineer, and does the act of discharge itself function as a mechanism that reduces the engineer's formal accountability for foreseeable harm?
Regulatory Authority Notification → Regulatory Approval Granted
Regulatory Body Approval Despite Safety Documentation
From regulatory approval through the end of the case facts
Regulatory Body Override of Engineering Judgment State
State Department of the Environment's approval despite Engineer B's documented safety concerns
State Department of the Environment approval of water source change with deferred treatment despite Engineer B's submitted report documenting concurrent treatment necessity
Risk-Based Report Recommendation Issued → Water Source Change Decided
State regulatory engineer received Engineer B's report and subsequently approved water source change with five-year treatment implementation plan
State Department of Environment Water Supply Division PE (State Environmental Regulatory Engineer)
Objective and Complete Reporting Obligation
The state regulatory engineer was obligated, upon receiving Engineer B's report and letter, to conduct an objective and complete technical review of the public health and safety risk — including the risk of lead leaching from old service pipes — and to base the approval decision on complete technical analysis rather than on the replacement consultant's minimizing report alone.
Upon receipt of Engineer B's report and during review of MWC's proposed water source change
State Department Approval with Five-Year Deferred Treatment
From regulatory approval through the five-year implementation period
Regulatory Approval of Deferred Safety Measure State
State Department of the Environment's approval of water source change with deferred treatment timeline
State Department of the Environment approval of water source change with five-year water treatment implementation plan
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'agency': 'State Department of the Environment', 'division': 'Water supply division'}
Licensed professional engineer in charge of the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment who received Engineer B's report and letter, and subsequently approved the water source change with a five-year implementation plan for water treatment
{'type': 'receives_report_from', 'target': 'Engineer B'}
{'type': 'regulatory_authority_over', 'target': 'Metropolitan Water Commission'}
the professional engineer in charge of the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment had approved the change of water source, with a five-year implementation plan to provide updated water treatment
State Department of Environment Water Supply Division Regulatory Authority
State legislature / State Department of the Environment
State Environmental Regulatory Framework for Public Water Supply
the professional engineer in charge of the water supply division of the State Department of the Environment had approved the change of water source, with a five-year implementation plan
Engineer B in deciding to send report to state regulators; State PE in approving water source change
Provides the regulatory authority to which Engineer B escalated concerns, and whose professional engineer ultimately approved the five-year implementation plan, raising questions about the adequacy of regulatory oversight and Engineer B's continuing obligations
State Department of the Environment approval before five-year water treatment implementation
Structural engineer confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations by building owner prior to sale; made only brief mention in report
Structural Engineer (Building Sale Inspector)
The structural engineer who inspected the building prior to sale and was confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations was obligated to weigh the duty of confidentiality to the client against the duty to protect public safety, and to determine whether the code violations posed sufficient public health and safety risk to require disclosure beyond the brief mention made in the inspection report.
Structural Engineer Building Sale Inspector -- Inspected a building about to be sold; was confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations by the owner; made only brief mention of the violations in the report.
Upon learning of the code violations during the building inspection
The structural engineer possessed — but failed to adequately exercise — the capability to recognize that identified mechanical and electrical code violations constituted a safety risk requiring reporting to appropriate authorities beyond brief mention in the project report
Structural engineer inspected building prior to sale; confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations; made only brief mention in report; BER concluded duty to report to appropriate authority existed
BER conclusion that the engineer had a duty to report the potential code violations to the appropriate authority, despite the engineer making only brief mention in the project report and not reporting to any third party
Structural Engineer Building Sale Code Violation Reporting Obligation
A structural engineer inspected a building about to be sold; was confidentially informed by the owner of mechanical and electrical code violations required to be rectified prior to sale; made only brief mention of the violations in the project report and did not report to any third party; the BER concluded a duty to report existed.
The structural engineer who inspected the building prior to sale was obligated to report the potential mechanical and electrical code violations — of which the engineer had been confidentially informed by the owner — to the appropriate authority, notwithstanding the confidential nature of the communication, because the violations could constitute a safety violation affecting the public.
A structural engineer inspected a building that was about to be sold, and was apprised confidentially by the owner that, although the building was structurally sound, there were mechanical and electrical code violations that had not been addressed and that were required to be rectified prior to sale of the building and use by the public.
Upon becoming aware of the code violations during the inspection engagement
The structural engineer was not qualified to address mechanical and electrical engineering issues, but was aware that the code violations could constitute a safety violation.
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Structural engineering', 'limitation': 'Not qualified to address mechanical and electrical engineering issues', 'case_reference': 'BER Case 89-7'}
Inspected a building about to be sold; was confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations by the owner; made only brief mention of violations in report and did not report to third parties; BER concluded engineer had duty to report to appropriate authority
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Building Sale Inspection Client'}
{'type': 'reports_to', 'target': 'Appropriate Authority'}
a structural engineer inspected a building that was about to be sold
The structural engineer made only brief mention of the potential mechanical and electrical violations in the project report
the BER concluded that the engineer had a duty to report the potential code violations to the appropriate authority
was apprised confidentially by the owner that, although the building was structurally sound, there were mechanical and electrical code violations
Structural Engineer Confidentiality Non-Override Safety Reporting BER 89-7
Structural engineer confidentially informed of mechanical and electrical code violations required to be rectified prior to sale; made only brief mention in report and did not report to third party; BER concluded duty to report to appropriate authority
Peer Review Confidentiality Safety Override Constraint
The structural engineer's confidential receipt of information about mechanical and electrical code violations from the building owner did not create a legitimate constraint on the obligation to report those potential violations to the appropriate authority, as the public safety implications of the code violations overrode the confidentiality constraint.
a structural engineer inspected a building that was about to be sold, and was apprised confidentially by the owner that, although the building was structurally sound, there were mechanical and electrical code violations
During and following building inspection prior to sale
Sufficiency Assessment of Prior Safety Reports Invoked By Engineer B Self-Review
Prior reports to Metropolitan Water Commission
Prior written report to State Department of Environment Water Supply Division
Engineer B must critically assess whether the verbal and written reports to the Water Commission and the written report to the State Department of Environment were sufficiently clear and technically complete before concluding that professional obligations have been discharged
Before concluding professional obligation is discharged, Engineer B must distinguish between a genuine disagreement of professional opinion (which may not require further action) and a failure of clarity or completeness in technical reporting (which would require supplemental communication)
Sufficiency Assessment of Prior Safety Reports
If reports were sufficiently clear, professional obligation is discharged; if not, Engineer B retains an obligation to clarify or supplement regardless of post-discharge advocacy considerations
Unaware Engineer Public Hearing Presenter
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'case_reference': 'BER Case 76-4', 'limitation': 'Unaware of factors recognized by Engineer Doe'}
An engineer unaware of factors recognized by Engineer Doe who presented at a public hearing the view that the industry would meet minimum water quality standards, contradicting Doe's findings; referenced as context for why reporting obligations exist even after contract termination
{'type': 'contradicts_findings_of', 'target': 'Engineer Doe Industry Process Evaluator'}
another engineer unaware of factors that Doe had recognized, presented the view at a public hearing that the industry would meet minimum standards
Verbal Warning to Commissioners → Engineer B Discharged
Whistleblower Protection Framework - Engineering Context
NSPE Board of Ethical Review and applicable legal statutes
Professional and legal framework protecting engineers who disclose public safety risks beyond formal channels
Nothing herein should be construed as a constraint to any engineer functioning as a 'Whistleblower' in an event where public health and safety is at risk
BER in qualifying its conclusions about the limits of professional obligation
Referenced by the BER to clarify that nothing in its conclusions constrains an engineer from functioning as a whistleblower when public health and safety is at risk
XYZ Consultants was retained by MWC after MWC discharged Engineer B following a safety dispute. XYZ Consultants' report concluded that insufficient information was available to predict risk severity — a conclusion that contradicted Engineer B's documented findings and that could be used by MWC to justify proceeding without concurrent water treatment.
Replacement Consultant Contradicting Assessment Non-Deception Constraint
XYZ Consultants was constrained from producing a report to the Water Commission that created a misleading impression of insufficient risk evidence when Engineer B's prior documented analysis had established a specific and credible public health risk from lead leaching — prohibiting the framing of 'insufficient information to predict severity' as a basis for proceeding without concurrent water treatment when the prior engineer's analysis had specifically documented the risk of lead exposure to adults and children.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.4; Non-Deception (Constraint); Intentional Information Disregard Prohibition Constraint; Contradicting Replacement Consultant Objective Reporting Obligation
During XYZ Consultants' preparation and submission of the replacement report to MWC
XYZ Consultants retained after MWC discharged Engineer B and ABC Engineers following safety warnings; XYZ provided report indicating insufficient information to predict severity of risk
XYZ Consultants (Contradicting Replacement Engineering Consultant)
Contradicting Replacement Consultant Objective Reporting Obligation
XYZ Consultants was obligated, upon being retained by MWC to replace Engineer B, to provide an objective and technically complete report addressing the public health and safety risks identified by Engineer B, and to refrain from providing a report that minimized those risks without adequate technical basis, even though MWC had discharged Engineer B precisely for raising those concerns.
Upon preparation and submission of report to MWC following retention as replacement consultant
XYZ Consultants retained as replacement consultant after Engineer B's discharge; provided report on public health risk severity
XYZ Consultants was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in preparing its report to MWC, including the duty to not minimize or obscure the public health risk from lead exposure to children and adults that Engineer B had identified, and to report any residual uncertainty in a manner that protected rather than undermined public safety decision-making.
Throughout engagement with MWC as replacement consultant
Replacement Consultant Objective Contradiction Resistance Capability
XYZ Consultants was required to possess the capability to resist client pressure to contradict Engineer B's safety findings and to provide an objective, technically complete report regardless of MWC's expectations
XYZ Consultants retained by MWC after discharge of Engineer B and ABC Engineers; obligated to provide objective assessment rather than report designed to justify MWC's decision to proceed without concurrent water treatment
Provision of report indicating 'insufficient information to predict severity of public health and safety risk' — a finding that, while not fully confirming Engineer B's conclusions, did not provide the clear exoneration MWC may have sought
XYZ Consultants was obligated, upon being retained by MWC to replace Engineer B, to provide an objective and technically complete report
XYZ Consultants was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public in preparing its report to MWC
XYZ Consultants Conflicting Risk Assessment Report
XYZ Consultants Report on Water Source Change Risk
XYZ Consultants provided a report to the Water Commission indicating that insufficient information was available to predict the severity of any potential public health and safety risk
MWC in proceeding with water source change; Engineer B in assessing continuing obligations
Contradicts Engineer B's findings by claiming insufficient information to predict risk severity, raising questions about professional report integrity and the ethical obligations of both XYZ Consultants and Engineer B in response
Report submitted to MWC following Engineer B's discharge
XYZ Consultants Contradicting Replacement Engineering Consultant
{'type': 'Engineering consulting firm', 'client': 'Metropolitan Water Commission'}
Retained by MWC after discharge of Engineer B; provided report indicating insufficient information to predict severity of public health and safety risk, contradicting Engineer B's findings
{'type': 'replaces', 'target': 'ABC Engineers / Engineer B'}
Contradicting Replacement Engineering Consultant
retained XYZ Consultants to assist with implementation
XYZ Consultants Contradicting Risk Assessment
From submission of XYZ Consultants' report through regulatory approval and beyond
Evidentiary conflict between Engineer B's risk assessment and XYZ Consultants' report
XYZ Consultants' report characterizing the risk as indeterminate, contradicting Engineer B's documented findings
XYZ Consultants Replacement Report Non-Deception MWC Water Source
XYZ Consultants retained after Engineer B's discharge; produced report claiming insufficient information to predict risk severity, contradicting Engineer B's documented lead leaching risk findings
XYZ Consultants, retained to replace Engineer B following discharge from the MWC project, was constrained from producing a report that contradicted Engineer B's documented safety findings through selective omission or insufficient investigation, and was obligated to provide an objective and technically complete assessment of the public health risk regardless of any implicit client expectation that the replacement report would validate MWC's decision to proceed.
XYZ Consultants was retained by the MWC to replace Engineer B
During preparation and submission of replacement report to MWC
XYZ Consultants reported that there was insufficient information to predict the severity of the risk
XYZ Consultants report after Engineer B's original report
XYZ Consultants report before State Department of the Environment approval
water source change before water treatment improvements (per MWC decision)
water treatment improvements before water source change