NSPE Board of Ethical Review Cases on Public Welfare and Honest Professional Communication
Firm DBA states that these practices are consistent with prior projects undertaken for the City
City leaders, citing economic, political, and social considerations, specifically instructed Firm DBA to perform the public engagement sessions in the way that Firm DBA completed them
Engineer M and ethics reviewers analyzing the case
Prior BER cases addressing engineer obligations to the public, honest reporting, and conflicts between client instructions and public welfare provide analogical reasoning patterns applicable to Engineer M's situation
In BER Case 09-10, Engineer A owned ABC Engineering in State P. Engineer X owned XYZ Engineering in State Q.
The BER found that Engineer A should communicate with Engineer X to obtain clarification regarding the matter in question.
The BER further found that if Engineer A was not sufficiently satisfied with Engineer X's explanation, Engineer A may be required to report this matter to the state engineering licensure board.
BER in establishing Engineer M's procedural obligations when confronting Firm DBA's potential violations
Cited as precedent establishing that when an engineer discovers potential ethical or licensure violations by another firm, the engineer has an obligation to first communicate with the other party for clarification and, if not satisfied, may be required to report the matter to the state engineering licensure board; applied to Engineer M's obligations regarding Firm DBA's conduct
In BER Case 21-7, the question put to the BER was as follows: should an Engineer include information about the utility generation mix and rolling blackouts in the report to an organization?
A report that does not contain relevant information will not help stakeholders make an informed decision and does not protect public safety, health, and welfare.
Likewise, in this case, pertinent information was missing from the report.
The BER found that as a registered professional, that Engineer was obliged to include relevant and pertinent information in a report to the organization.
BER in establishing the professional report completeness obligation and Engineer M's duty to challenge the DBA report
Cited as precedent establishing that a registered professional engineer is obliged to include all relevant and pertinent information in a report so that stakeholders can make informed decisions and public safety is protected; applied to establish that Firm DBA's omission of material facts from the community engagement report was an ethical violation, and that Engineer M has both the right and duty to challenge the report
In BER Case 60-3, the facts indicated that an engineering firm was providing sub-professional services and, because of that, the firm was not required to abide by the provisions of the Canons of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct.
The conclusion by the BER in BER Case 60-3 was that the Canons and Rules did not apply. However, the Code has been revised since that time.
BER in analyzing whether the NSPE Code applies to Firm DBA's public relations services
Cited as prior precedent holding that an engineering firm providing sub-professional services was not required to abide by the Canons of Ethics and Rules of Professional Conduct; distinguished in the current case because the Code has since been revised and Firm DBA has licensed PEs in supervisory and ownership roles
BER Case 60-3 decision before NSPE Code of Ethics revision
However, the Code has been revised since that time [since BER Case 60-3].
In BER Case 88-6, Engineer A had the responsibility for a city's waste disposal plant and is also directly responsible to City Administrator C.
As in this case, Engineer M, therefore also has a duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
The BER found that Engineer A did not fulfill ethical obligations of holding paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
BER in establishing Engineer M's affirmative duty to act on public safety concerns
Cited as precedent establishing that an engineer who fails to take further action after being silenced by a supervisor regarding a public safety risk does not fulfill the ethical obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public; applied analogically to Engineer M's duty to act despite pressure from the City or Firm DBA
BER Case 98-2 addressed the ethical concerns of an international NSPE member that encountered separate and conflicting legal and ethical issues working in a county other than the U.S.
it was determined that the Code applied to members universally.
it would be a major error for NSPE to apply one standard of conduct to one set of NSPE members and another standard of conduct to another set of NSPE members.
BER in establishing universal applicability of the Code to Firm DBA
Cited as precedent establishing that the NSPE Code applies universally to all NSPE members regardless of geographic or contextual variation, supporting the conclusion that the Code applies to Firm DBA regardless of the type of services provided
CausalLink_Engineer M Confronts Firm DBA
CausalLink_Excluding Written and Virtual
CausalLink_Producing Misleading Outreach
CausalLink_Scheduling Sessions Inaccessib
Certified Public Relations Professional Code of Ethics
Public relations professional society (e.g., PRSA or equivalent credentialing body)
Code of Ethics for Certified Public Relations Professionals
If the individuals most heavily involved in the project at Firm DBA are Certified Public Relations Professionals, they would be held to a code of ethics that provides for honest and truthful conduct.
However, the BER will not comment on these potential obligations, as it is beyond the BER's duties to review other codes.
BER in contextualizing the ethical obligations of non-engineer staff at Firm DBA
Referenced as a parallel professional code that would bind Certified Public Relations Professionals at Firm DBA to honest and truthful conduct obligations, though the BER declines to evaluate obligations under this code as outside its jurisdiction
City Administrator C instructing Engineer A to limit discussion before City Administrator C removing Engineer A from responsibility
City Administrator C told Engineer A to discuss this matter only with him and, subsequentially, removed Engineer A from responsibility of the disposal plant.
City Administrator C instructing Engineer A to limit discussion
City Administrator C removing Engineer A from responsibility
City Administrator C removing Engineer A from responsibility before critical scenario occurring and wastewater release
Engineer A took no further action. The critical scenario did, in fact, happen and a release of partially-treated wastewater occurred.
critical scenario occurring and wastewater release
Delegation of outreach design to a third party reduces direct City oversight of session quality and accessibility
Risk that Firm DBA's implementation choices may not equitably serve all affected communities
Procedural requirement to conduct public engagement before infrastructure decisions
Client accountability for delegated functions
Fulfill procedural public engagement requirements and advance the highway project through an organized outreach process
Duty to ensure equitable access to public participation for historically underserved communities
Obligation to exercise adequate oversight of contracted outreach activities affecting public welfare
Contract scope definition for outreach services
Procurement and vendor selection judgment
Understanding of equitable public engagement standards
The City decides to require public engagement sessions and selects Firm DBA as the outreach coordination partner for the highway infrastructure project affecting Community P. This decision establishes the structural conditions under which subsequent outreach failures occur.
City Engages Firm DBA → Project Record Integrity Compromised
The City decides to require public engagement sessions and selects Firm DBA as the outreach coordina
Had the City established clear accessibility requirements, monitored outreach execution, and required independent verification of participation claims, Firm DBA's exclusionary practices would have been constrained or detected before corrupting the project record
City's absence of ongoing oversight of Firm DBA's outreach execution
City's failure to establish enforceable accessibility and participation standards as conditions of engagement
City's selection of Firm DBA without adequate vetting of outreach methodology
The City's delegation of outreach coordination to Firm DBA without accountability structures was a necessary precondition, but alone insufficient, it became sufficient only in combination with Firm DBA's subsequent exclusionary decisions and misrepresentations
City instructions to Firm DBA before Firm DBA organizing sessions at inaccessible times/locations
Firm DBA states that City leaders, citing economic, political, and social considerations, specifically instructed Firm DBA to perform the public engagement sessions in the way that Firm DBA completed them.
Firm DBA organizing sessions at inaccessible times/locations
Client-Directed Ethical Violation Non-Compliance — City Instructions to Firm DBA
City leaders specifically instructed Firm DBA to conduct engagement sessions in the manner that excluded Community P, citing economic, political, and social considerations. Firm DBA complied and Engineer M failed to prevent the implementation of these instructions.
Client-Directed Ethical Violation Non-Compliance Constraint
Firm DBA and Engineer M were constrained from complying with the City's instructions to conduct public engagement in a structurally exclusionary manner, even when the City cited economic, political, and social justifications, because those instructions directed conduct that violated professional ethical obligations regarding honest and equitable public engagement.
NSPE Code of Ethics Canon 1, Section II.2; BER Case 88-6; Client Loyalty vs. Public Safety Priority Constraint
City leaders, citing economic, political, and social considerations, specifically instructed Firm DBA to perform the public engagement sessions in the way that Firm DBA completed them.
During the public engagement phase when City instructions were received and implemented
Firm DBA states that these practices are consistent with prior projects undertaken for the City.
Community P Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder
{'community_status': 'Historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened', 'participation_barrier': 'Sessions held during work hours at inaccessible locations without transit access', 'concerns_expressed': ['Resident displacement', 'Local business disruption'], 'input_misrepresented': True}
Residents of the historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood through which the highway upgrade is proposed to run; systematically excluded from public engagement sessions through inaccessible scheduling and locations; those who did participate expressed concerns about displacement and business disruption; their input was misrepresented in Firm DBA's report as support for the project.
{'type': 'affected_by', 'target': 'Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer'}
{'type': 'excluded_by', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Outreach Engineering Consultant'}
{'type': 'subject_to_decisions_of', 'target': 'City Municipal Infrastructure Client'}
Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder
Community P, a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood
Few Community P members participate, and those who do express concerns about the project's potential to displace residents and disrupt local businesses
Firm DBA submits a report claiming Community P's support for the project, citing a lack of significant opposition
Public record now reflects skewed participation; Community P's concerns are structurally absent from the planning record; project legitimacy is compromised
During public outreach phase, concurrent with session scheduling
Due to inaccessible scheduling and location choices, few Community P residents are able to participate in the public outreach sessions, resulting in a near-total exclusion of the historically underserved neighborhood from the planning process.
{'community_status': 'Alternate route community', 'session_location': 'Sessions held in Community Q despite Community P being the primary affected area', 'comments_received': 'Many comments supporting routing through Community P rather than Community Q'}
The community in which Firm DBA held the public outreach sessions, which is an alternate routing option for the highway upgrade; residents of Community Q provided comments supporting the upgrade through Community P rather than through their own neighborhood, yet their area was selected as the venue for public engagement sessions.
{'type': 'alternate_route_to', 'target': 'Community P Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder'}
{'type': 'session_venue_selected_by', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Outreach Engineering Consultant'}
The area in which Firm DBA holds the public outreach sessions, Community Q, is an alternate route for the major public infrastructure project
Many comments are received that support the upgrade through the historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood (Community P) and not through Community Q
Informal remediation pathway is closed; Engineer M's obligation to escalate is now activated; the City is implicated as a potential co-author of the inequitable process
After Engineer M raises concerns to Firm DBA
After Engineer M raises concerns about the inequitable outreach process, Firm DBA's dismissal becomes an official organizational response, citing prior City practice and direct City instructions as justification, effectively closing off informal resolution and escalating the ethical stakes.
Beyond the Board's finding that Firm DBA's actions are unethical because its services were provided under the supervision and ownership of licensed professional engineers, the ethical violation is compounded by the deliberate structural arrangement Firm DBA employed. By routing the substantive public engagement work through its communications and public relations department while maintaining licensed PE supervisors in nominal oversight roles, Firm DBA created an accountability gap that obscured — but did not eliminate — the professional responsibility of those licensed engineers. The Code's universality does not permit licensed engineers to insulate themselves from ethical obligations by delegating communicative or outreach functions to unlicensed staff. Because the public engagement report was a professional work product submitted in connection with a licensed engineering project, and because licensed PEs held supervisory and ownership authority over the department that produced it, those engineers bore an unconditional duty to ensure the report was complete, accurate, and non-deceptive. Their failure to exercise that duty — whether through deliberate acquiescence or willful inattention — constitutes an independent ethical violation beyond the mere fact of supervision.
The Board's conclusion that Firm DBA's actions are unethical does not fully address the independent ethical significance of the City's explicit direction to conduct the public engagement sessions in the manner Firm DBA completed them. Client direction — even from a municipal authority with legitimate governmental standing — does not constitute a valid ethical defense for a licensed engineering firm that produces a materially incomplete and misleading professional report. The Code imposes obligations on engineers that are independent of and superior to client instructions, and those obligations cannot be waived by contractual or political direction. Firm DBA's defense that it was following City instructions therefore fails as an ethical matter: the obligation not to engage in deceptive acts and not to issue misleading reports is categorical, not conditional on client approval. Furthermore, the City's conduct in directing the inequitable engagement process raises an independent ethical concern that Engineer M was obligated to identify and communicate to the City as a matter of professional duty, separate from any challenge to Firm DBA's report. The City's direction, if accurately characterized by Firm DBA, itself constitutes an attempt to use a licensed engineering firm as an instrument of procedural manipulation affecting the safety, health, and welfare of Community P residents.
The Board's conclusion that Firm DBA's actions are unethical implicitly establishes that Engineer M's continued association with the project — after raising concerns that were dismissed by Firm DBA and potentially by the City — requires affirmative action to avoid Engineer M's own ethical exposure. The Code prohibits engineers from associating in business ventures with persons or firms engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise, and from permitting the use of their name in connection with such ventures. Once Firm DBA's misleading report entered the official public record and Engineer M's verbal concerns had been dismissed, Engineer M's continued participation in the project without formal written objection to the City, and without escalation to the state licensure board if the City failed to act, would itself constitute impermissible association with a fraudulent enterprise. The triggering condition for Engineer M's obligation to formally disassociate is not merely the submission of the misleading report, but the exhaustion of the graduated escalation pathway — first confronting Firm DBA, then notifying the City in writing, and finally reporting to the licensure board — without remediation. Engineer M's failure to escalate beyond a verbal concern to Firm DBA, prior to the report entering the record, represents an incomplete discharge of the professional duty to protect the public welfare and to avoid association with deceptive conduct.
In response to Q101: The City's explicit instruction to Firm DBA to conduct public engagement in a manner that structurally excluded Community P residents constitutes an independent ethical violation that Engineer M cannot simply absorb into a private notification to the City. When a client actively directs a fraudulent process — rather than merely failing to prevent one — the client itself becomes a party to the deception. Engineer M's obligation under Code Section I.1 to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, and under Section II.1.f to report alleged Code violations to appropriate professional bodies, is not discharged by notifying the wrongdoer of its own wrongdoing. If the City, after being notified by Engineer M, declines to correct the public record, Engineer M faces a residual obligation to report the matter to the state engineering licensure board and, depending on jurisdiction, to environmental justice or civil rights oversight bodies. The City's direction does not insulate it from ethical scrutiny; it elevates the severity of the violation by introducing deliberate institutional intent into what might otherwise be characterized as negligent outreach design.
In response to Q102: Engineer M's continued association with the project crosses into impermissible territory under Code Section II.1.d when two conditions are jointly satisfied: first, Engineer M has raised concerns with Firm DBA and those concerns have been formally dismissed; and second, Engineer M has escalated to the City and the City has either ratified the fraudulent report or declined to correct the public record. At that point, the misleading report is not merely a subconsultant's error that Engineer M is working to remedy — it is an established element of the official project record that Engineer M's continued participation implicitly endorses. The triggering condition for formal disassociation is not the mere existence of the fraudulent report but the exhaustion of internal escalation pathways without remediation. Engineer M should document each escalation step in writing, issue a formal written objection to the City stating that the public engagement record is materially incomplete and misleading, and notify the City that continued association is contingent on correction of the record. If the City refuses, Engineer M's obligation to avoid association with a fraudulent enterprise under Section II.1.d requires disassociation, accompanied by notification to the licensure board under Section II.1.f.
In response to Q103: The deliberate routing of public engagement sessions to Community Q — the alternate route community — rather than to Community P, the primary affected community, creates a structural conflict of interest that Engineer M was independently obligated to identify and disclose to the City before Firm DBA's report was submitted. Community Q residents have a direct financial and residential interest in the routing decision favoring Community P as the project corridor, meaning that their supportive comments cannot be treated as neutral public input. By conducting sessions in Community Q and reporting the results as representative of Community P's views, Firm DBA produced a report that is not merely incomplete but affirmatively misleading as to the source and character of the input received. Engineer M, as lead engineer with oversight responsibility for subconsultant conduct, had both the capability and the obligation under Code Sections II.3.a and III.3.a to recognize this structural bias and to advise the City that the engagement process was designed in a manner that systematically substituted the preferences of an interested alternate-route community for the views of the directly affected community. Failure to raise this specific concern — as distinct from the general concern about session accessibility — represents an independent gap in Engineer M's ethical performance.
In response to Q104: The structural arrangement in which Firm DBA's communications and public relations department — rather than its licensed professional engineers — directly executed the public engagement work raises a legitimate question about the scope of professional practice and the adequacy of PE supervision. However, the case facts establish that Firm DBA's licensed PEs hold supervisory and ownership roles over all departments, including the communications department. Under this structure, the licensed PEs are in responsible charge of the work product regardless of which department physically produced it. The ethical violation is therefore not primarily one of unlicensed practice — because the PEs' supervisory authority means the work is legally attributable to them — but rather one of supervisory failure: the licensed PEs allowed a materially deficient and deceptive report to be submitted under their professional umbrella without correction. Engineer M's independent obligation was not necessarily to flag the departmental structure as a licensure compliance concern, but rather to recognize that the licensed PEs' supervisory authority made them fully accountable for the report's contents, and that Firm DBA's defense that the communications department — rather than its engineers — was responsible for the report's framing is ethically unavailing. The Code's universality, as reflected in the obligation that all engineers avoid deceptive acts under Section I.5, binds the licensed PE supervisors unconditionally.
In response to Q201: The tension between Engineer M's duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public and the duty of loyalty to the City as client is resolved by the Code's explicit hierarchy: public welfare is paramount and is not subordinate to client instructions. Code Section I.1 places public safety, health, and welfare above all other obligations, and Code Section III.1.b requires engineers to advise clients when a project will not be successful. When the City's explicit instructions to Firm DBA are the mechanism by which public welfare is being harmed — through the systematic exclusion of Community P residents from a process that will determine whether their neighborhood bears the burden of a major infrastructure corridor — Engineer M's duty of loyalty to the City does not extend to compliance with those instructions. Loyalty to a client is a professional obligation that operates within ethical boundaries; it does not authorize an engineer to facilitate a process that produces a fraudulent public record. Engineer M's obligation is to advise the City clearly and in writing that the engagement process as conducted does not satisfy professional or legal standards, that the report as submitted is materially misleading, and that Engineer M cannot continue to associate with the project unless the record is corrected. This is not a betrayal of the client relationship — it is the fulfillment of the engineer's highest professional duty.
In response to Q202: The graduated escalation principle — first raising concerns with Firm DBA, then with the City, and finally with the licensure board — is a procedurally sound default that reflects the Code's preference for resolving disputes at the lowest possible level. However, this principle is not absolute and does not require Engineer M to exhaust each level sequentially when the harm being perpetuated is ongoing, material, and irreversible in its immediate effects. Once Firm DBA's misleading report entered the official project record, each day that passed without correction increased the probability that the City would rely on the fraudulent record to advance a routing decision affecting Community P. At that point, the urgency of the public welfare harm begins to compress the timeline for escalation. Engineer M should not interpret the graduated escalation principle as requiring weeks or months of internal negotiation while a fraudulent public record shapes an infrastructure decision affecting a historically underserved community. A reasonable interpretation of the Code requires Engineer M to escalate to the City promptly — within days, not weeks — after Firm DBA dismisses the concerns, and to escalate to the licensure board promptly after the City fails to act. The paramountcy of public welfare under Section I.1 sets the tempo of escalation; procedural gradualism does not override it.
In response to Q203: The tension between the obligation to avoid injuring the professional reputation of others under Code Section III.7 and the obligation to report Firm DBA's ethical violations is resolved by the qualifying language of Section III.7 itself, which prohibits malicious or false injury to professional reputation — not factually grounded, professionally necessary reporting. When Engineer M reports Firm DBA's conduct to the City and the licensure board, the report is not malicious — it is compelled by the Code — and it is not false — it is supported by documented facts including the inaccessible session locations, the absence of written comment mechanisms, the absence of virtual participation options, and the material omissions in Firm DBA's submitted report. Section III.7 was designed to prevent engineers from weaponizing the reporting mechanism to harm competitors or adversaries; it was not designed to insulate engineers who commit genuine ethical violations from professional accountability. Engineer M's reporting obligation under Section II.1.f is not merely permitted despite Section III.7 — it is required. The two provisions are reconciled by the factual grounding and professional necessity of the report, not by subordinating one to the other.
In response to Q204: Client direction does not constitute a valid ethical defense for a licensed engineering firm that produces a materially incomplete and misleading public engagement report. The Code's obligations are imposed on engineers as individual licensed professionals and on firms whose licensed PEs hold supervisory and ownership authority; they are not suspended by client instructions. Firm DBA's defense — that it was following explicit City instructions — might mitigate the moral culpability of a non-licensed employee who lacked independent professional authority to refuse, but it cannot mitigate the culpability of licensed professional engineers who held supervisory and ownership roles and who therefore had both the authority and the obligation to refuse to submit a deceptive report. Code Section I.5 requires engineers to avoid deceptive acts unconditionally; it does not contain a client-direction exception. Code Section II.3.a requires engineers to be objective and truthful in professional reports; it does not yield to client preferences. The obligation to serve the client faithfully operates within the boundaries of professional ethics, not above them. A licensed engineering firm that follows client instructions to produce a fraudulent public record has not fulfilled its duty to the client — it has betrayed its duty to the public and to the profession, and the client's instruction is an aggravating factor, not an exculpatory one.
In response to Q301: From a deontological perspective, Engineer M did not fully discharge the categorical duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public by raising concerns only with Firm DBA. The Kantian framework requires that Engineer M act according to a maxim that could be universalized: if all lead engineers on public infrastructure projects responded to subconsultant fraud by raising a verbal concern and then deferring to the subconsultant's dismissal, the public engagement process for infrastructure projects affecting underserved communities would be systematically corrupted without professional accountability. Engineer M's verbal concern to Firm DBA was a necessary first step but not a sufficient discharge of the categorical duty. The duty required Engineer M to escalate to the City in writing, to formally object to the submission of the misleading report, and — upon the City's failure to act — to report the violation to the licensure board. Each of these steps is independently required by the Code and is consistent with the deontological principle that the duty to protect the public is unconditional and cannot be discharged by a gesture that the engineer knows will be ineffective.
In response to Q302: From a consequentialist perspective, the cumulative harm to Community P residents — including potential permanent displacement, loss of local businesses, and the long-term burden of a major highway corridor through a historically underserved neighborhood — substantially outweighs any procedural convenience, political expediency, or economic benefit the City cited in directing the inequitable engagement process. The consequentialist calculus is further weighted by the irreversibility of infrastructure routing decisions: once a highway corridor is established through Community P on the basis of a fraudulent public engagement record, the harm to residents is not merely temporary or correctable. The distribution of harms also matters under a utilitarian analysis — the benefits of the routing decision accrue diffusely to the City and to Community Q, while the concentrated, severe, and long-term harms fall on Community P, a community already identified as historically underserved and overburdened. This distributional asymmetry strengthens the consequentialist case for Engineer M's refusal to continue association with the project unless the fraudulent record is corrected, because the expected harm of continued participation — a permanently unjust infrastructure outcome — exceeds the expected harm of disassociation — project delay and professional friction.
In response to Q303: From a virtue ethics perspective, Firm DBA's licensed professional engineers — who held supervisory and ownership roles over the communications department — failed to demonstrate the professional integrity and moral courage that the virtue of engineering professionalism requires. A virtuous engineer, in the Aristotelian sense, does not merely comply with the minimum requirements of the Code when compliance is convenient; a virtuous engineer exercises practical wisdom — phronesis — to identify when institutional pressures are leading toward outcomes that betray the profession's foundational commitments. Firm DBA's licensed PEs possessed the authority, the knowledge, and the professional standing to refuse to submit a carefully-framed, materially incomplete report. Their failure to exercise that authority — whether from deference to City instructions, institutional inertia, or commercial self-interest — reflects a deficit of the moral courage that virtue ethics identifies as essential to professional character. The fact that the report was carefully framed rather than carelessly incomplete makes the ethical failure more serious, not less: it demonstrates that the licensed PEs were aware of the report's deficiencies and chose to obscure them rather than correct them.
In response to Q304: From a deontological perspective, the NSPE Code's universality imposes an unconditional duty on Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors to ensure the public engagement report is complete and truthful, irrespective of City instructions to the contrary. The Code does not distinguish between engineers performing technical design work and engineers supervising communications or public relations work — the ethical obligations attach to the licensed professional, not to the nature of the task being performed. Because Firm DBA's licensed PEs held supervisory and ownership authority over the communications department, the public engagement report was produced under their professional responsibility. Code Section II.3.a requires engineers to be objective and truthful in professional reports and to include all relevant and pertinent information; Code Section I.5 requires engineers to avoid deceptive acts; and Code Section I.3 requires engineers to issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner. None of these provisions contain exceptions for reports produced at client direction. The universality of the Code's application means that Firm DBA's licensed PEs were bound by these obligations regardless of the City's instructions, and their failure to ensure the report's completeness and truthfulness constitutes an unconditional ethical violation.
In response to Q401: If Engineer M had formally objected in writing to the City at the moment Firm DBA dismissed Engineer M's initial verbal concerns — before the misleading report was submitted — the public record would likely have remained uncorrupted, or at minimum, the City would have been placed on formal notice of the report's deficiencies before relying on it. A written objection submitted prior to the report's entry into the official record would have created a documented professional disagreement that the City could not subsequently claim ignorance of, would have preserved Engineer M's ethical standing by demonstrating timely and unambiguous action, and would have given the City an opportunity to require Firm DBA to revise the report before it became the basis for a routing decision. The counterfactual highlights a critical gap in Engineer M's response: the transition from verbal concern to formal written objection is not merely a procedural formality — it is the mechanism by which an engineer's professional judgment enters the official record and acquires the force necessary to compel institutional response. Engineer M's failure to formalize the objection before the report was submitted allowed the misleading report to establish itself as the unchallenged official record, significantly increasing the difficulty of subsequent correction.
In response to Q402: The counterfactual in which Firm DBA held accessible sessions in Community P, accepted written and virtual comments, and reported results accurately is analytically significant because the case facts already reveal the answer: the sessions that were held — however inaccessibly — produced comments from Community P residents expressing concern about displacement and business disruption, and the broader pattern of comments supported routing the project through Community P rather than Community Q. This means that even the distorted engagement process generated opposition from Community P residents when they were able to participate. A fully equitable process — with accessible locations, written comment mechanisms, and virtual participation — would almost certainly have produced a substantially larger volume of opposition from Community P. The routing decision, if made on the basis of an accurate and complete public engagement record, would have faced a materially different evidentiary foundation. This analysis supports the conclusion that the inequitable engagement process was not procedurally neutral but outcome-determinative: it was designed to suppress Community P opposition and manufacture apparent consent. This finding strengthens the characterization of Firm DBA's report as fraudulent rather than merely incomplete, and it reinforces Engineer M's obligation to challenge the report's validity with the City.
In response to Q403: The existence of City direction to Firm DBA does not reduce — let alone eliminate — Firm DBA's independent ethical culpability under the Code. The counterfactual question of whether Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors would have independently designed an equitable outreach process absent City direction is relevant to assessing the character of Firm DBA's institutional culture, but it is not relevant to the ethical analysis of what Firm DBA was obligated to do once the City's instructions were received. The Code does not create a hierarchy in which client instructions override professional obligations; it creates a hierarchy in which professional obligations — particularly the paramount duty to protect public welfare — override client instructions. Firm DBA's licensed PEs, upon receiving City instructions to conduct engagement in a manner that would systematically exclude Community P residents, were obligated to advise the City that those instructions could not be followed as given, to propose an equitable alternative, and — if the City refused — to decline the engagement or withdraw from the project. The fact that Firm DBA instead complied with the City's instructions and then produced a misleading report demonstrates that Firm DBA's ethical failure was not merely situational but reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of — or disregard for — the Code's requirements.
In response to Q404: If Engineer M had exercised authority as lead engineer to formally refuse to allow Firm DBA's report to be submitted to the City without correction — or had credibly threatened professional disassociation from the project — that leverage may well have been sufficient to compel Firm DBA to revise the report before the misleading public record was established. As lead engineer, Engineer M occupied a position of professional authority over the project's overall integrity, and a formal refusal to endorse or allow submission of a subconsultant's report would have created institutional pressure that a verbal concern did not. The counterfactual reveals that Engineer M possessed leverage that was not exercised: the threat of disassociation by the lead engineer — with the attendant professional, contractual, and reputational consequences for Firm DBA — represents a meaningful compliance mechanism that the Code implicitly authorizes through the non-association obligation in Section II.1.d. Engineer M's failure to deploy this leverage before the report was submitted, rather than after, represents a missed opportunity to prevent the corruption of the public record at the point when prevention was most feasible. This analysis does not assign primary culpability to Engineer M — Firm DBA's ethical violations are independent and unconditional — but it identifies a gap in Engineer M's exercise of the professional authority that the lead engineer role conferred.
In response to Q404: Even if virtual meetings and written comment mechanisms had been provided alongside the in-person sessions held in Community Q, the participation gap between Community P and Community Q would not have been fully remedied, because the session locations themselves were so fundamentally exclusionary that supplemental access measures would have addressed only part of the structural inequity. The in-person sessions were held during work hours at venues far from Community P and not easily accessible via public transit — conditions that systematically disadvantaged Community P residents regardless of whether virtual alternatives were also available. Virtual participation requires reliable internet access, digital literacy, and time — resources that are often disproportionately scarce in historically underserved communities. Written comment mechanisms, while valuable, do not substitute for the deliberative quality of in-person engagement, particularly for communities with lower rates of formal written communication with government institutions. A genuinely representative engagement process for Community P would have required sessions held within or immediately adjacent to Community P, at times accessible to working residents, with multiple participation modalities including in-person, virtual, and written options. The supplemental measures alone, without correcting the fundamental location and timing exclusions, would have produced a more accessible process but not a legitimately representative one.
The actions of Firm DBA are not ethical under the Code as the services provided were under the supervision and ownership of licensed professional engineers.
The tension between client loyalty and public welfare paramountcy was resolved decisively in favor of public welfare, but the resolution was incomplete because it stopped at identifying Firm DBA's ethical violation without fully tracing the obligation chain back to Engineer M's independent duties. The Code's hierarchy is unambiguous: the obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public is not a principle that yields to client direction, contractual relationships, or institutional pressure. When the City explicitly instructed Firm DBA to conduct inequitable engagement sessions, and when Firm DBA complied and produced a materially incomplete report, both actors violated the paramountcy principle. Engineer M's obligation to serve the City as client did not dissolve, but it became subordinate to the obligation to notify the City that the project was proceeding on a fraudulent basis — and, if the City failed to act, to escalate further. Client loyalty is a real professional duty, but it is a conditional one: it operates only within the space that public welfare leaves open. This case teaches that when a client's explicit instructions are themselves the source of the ethical violation, the engineer cannot satisfy the duty of client service by following those instructions. The duty of client service is fulfilled, paradoxically, by refusing to follow instructions that corrupt the public record on which the client's own decision-making depends.
The principle requiring graduated escalation — resolving disputes at the lowest possible level before ascending to higher authorities — exists in genuine tension with the urgency created by a fraudulent report that has already entered the public record. This case reveals that the graduated escalation principle is not infinitely patient: it is calibrated to the severity and irreversibility of the harm being perpetuated. Once Firm DBA dismissed Engineer M's verbal concerns and submitted the misleading report, the harm was no longer prospective but active — the public record was corrupted, Community P residents had been effectively silenced, and the project routing decision was being shaped by fabricated consent. At that point, the graduated escalation principle did not require Engineer M to wait indefinitely for Firm DBA to self-correct. It required Engineer M to escalate immediately to the City, and if the City failed to act, to the state licensure board. The principle against injuring the professional reputation of others — which might counsel restraint in reporting Firm DBA — does not prohibit factually grounded, professionally necessary disclosures. It prohibits malicious or false injury, not truthful reporting of documented violations. These two principles, properly understood, do not conflict: Engineer M can report Firm DBA's conduct accurately and without malice, satisfying both the duty to report and the duty not to injure falsely.
The most significant principle interaction this case exposes is the relationship between the universality of the Code and the structural defense of client direction. Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners attempted — implicitly through their conduct and explicitly through their response to Engineer M — to treat the City's instructions as a complete ethical defense. This defense fails under the Code for a fundamental reason: the Code's obligations are universal and unconditional. They bind licensed engineers regardless of whether the work being performed is technical, communicative, or administrative, and regardless of whether a client has directed the conduct in question. The principle that engineers shall issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner, that they shall not engage in deceptive acts, and that their reports shall be complete and not omit material facts, does not contain a carve-out for client-directed omissions. Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors held supervisory and ownership authority over the communications department that produced the report. That structural authority created a corresponding ethical responsibility: they were not passive conduits for City instructions but active professional agents whose names and licenses were implicitly attached to the work product. The case teaches that client direction reduces neither the applicability of the Code nor the culpability of the licensed engineer who follows instructions that violate it. The only ethically available response to a client instruction that requires producing a deceptive report is refusal, correction, or — if those fail — disassociation and escalation.
Should Engineer fulfill the M Non-Association Fraudulent Enterprise Firm DBA given the circumstances?
Engineer: Engineer M Non-Association Fraudulent Enterprise Firm DBA
Alternative approach to Engineer M Confronts Firm DBA Formally
Should Engineer fulfill the M Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight Firm DBA given the circumstances?
Engineer: Engineer M Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight Firm DBA
Should Engineer fulfill the M Graduated Escalation City After Firm DBA Non-Compliance given the circumstances?
Engineer: Engineer M Graduated Escalation City After Firm DBA Non-Compliance
Did Firm DBA's licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles violate the NSPE Code of Ethics by approving and permitting the submission of a materially false and incomplete public engagement report, and does the routing of execution through a communications department insulate those licensed PEs from ethical accountability?
The ethical culpability of Firm DBA's licensed professional engineers for designing and approving a public engagement process that systematically excluded Community P and submitting a materially misrepresentative report, given that the NSPE Code applies universally through the PE supervisory and ownership structure regardless of whether the executing personnel were licensed engineers.
Find that Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners violated the NSPE Code by approving and permitting submission of a materially false public engagement report, and hold that the communications department structure does not insulate them from ethical accountability under the Code
Find that Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors bear reduced or no ethical culpability because the public engagement work was executed by non-licensed communications staff and the process was directed by the City client
If the City declines to correct the fraudulent public engagement record after Engineer M's formal escalation, should Engineer M report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future, even if such reporting risks disrupting the infrastructure project timeline?
Engineer M's obligation to report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board after the City — itself implicated as a directing party — fails to take corrective action, and whether such reporting produces better long-term outcomes for public welfare and professional integrity than limiting escalation to the City alone.
Report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board after the City declines to take corrective action, documenting the full escalation sequence and the specific deficiencies in the public engagement report
Limit escalation to the City and refrain from reporting to the licensure board, on the grounds that external reporting would disrupt the project timeline and harm Community P by delaying infrastructure improvements
Does the City's explicit instruction to conduct inequitable public engagement sessions constitute a client directive that Engineer M is obligated to refuse, and does Engineer M's paramount duty to hold public safety, health, and welfare paramount require refusing to allow the project to proceed on the basis of a fraudulent engagement record regardless of the City's economic, political, and social justifications?
The City's ethical culpability as a directing party that explicitly instructed Firm DBA to conduct public engagement sessions in a manner foreseeably excluding Community P, and whether Engineer M bears an independent obligation to refuse City directives that foreseeably channel harm toward a historically underserved community — irrespective of economic, political, or social justifications offered by the City.
Refuse to allow the project to proceed on the basis of the fraudulent engagement record, advise the City formally in writing that the engagement process as directed cannot produce a report Engineer M can professionally endorse, and treat the City's economic, political, and social justifications as insufficient to override the paramount public welfare obligation
Defer to the City's economic, political, and social justifications for the inequitable engagement process and continue serving the City's interest in advancing the project, treating the client directive as a legitimate exercise of client authority that Engineer M is obligated to follow
A formal, if incomplete, record of Community P objections now exists; these concerns become a benchmark against which the subsequent outreach report can be evaluated for accuracy
During public outreach sessions, after Community P participation failure
The small number of Community P residents who do manage to participate in outreach sessions raise concerns about displacement and business disruption caused by the proposed highway project, creating an official, if thin, record of community objection.
Engineer M Code Universality Application Highway Upgrade
Code Universality Application Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to recognize that the NSPE Code of Ethics applied to Firm DBA despite Firm DBA providing public relations rather than traditional engineering services, because Firm DBA employed licensed PEs in supervisory and ownership roles
Highway upgrade project public engagement phase; Engineer M evaluating whether to confront Firm DBA about code violations in public engagement report
Engineer M's recognition that Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners were bound by the Code and should be involved in compliance discussions
The licensed professional engineers of Firm DBA, because of their supervisory and ownership roles, should be involved in these discussions as they have the ultimate responsibility to see that ethical practices are followed.
Therefore, the Code applies to Firm DBA.
Firm DBA may again refuse, necessitating City-level escalation
Firm DBA's PE supervisors may align with the firm's prior position rather than correct it
The formal invocation of Code obligations may damage the working relationship with Firm DBA
Duty not to associate with fraudulent or dishonest enterprises (Code II.1.d)
Duty to advise when project integrity is compromised (Code III.1.b)
NSPE Code obligation to hold paramount public safety, health, and welfare (Code I.1)
Obligation to take action when aware of Code violations by other engineers
Graduated escalation before external reporting
Proportionality in professional response
Public welfare protection through active intervention
Compel Firm DBA to correct the misleading report and outreach record by invoking formal professional obligations and engaging firm leadership with licensure accountability, avoiding the need for City-level or board-level escalation
Ability to identify and engage PE-licensed supervisors within Firm DBA
Knowledge of NSPE Code provisions applicable to reporting and public welfare
Lead engineer authority and standing to challenge collaborating firm conduct
Professional advocacy and formal communication
Recommended future action 1 (post-report, forward-looking)
Engineer M is directed to immediately confer with Firm DBA, invoking NSPE Code obligations explicitly and engaging Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and firm owners to demand correction of the misleading report and outreach record. This is the first step in a prescribed escalation sequence.
Engineer M Environmental Justice Awareness
Environmental Justice Awareness Capability
Engineer M demonstrated environmental justice awareness by recognizing that Community P is a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood and that the engagement process was failing to adequately represent its residents.
Engineer M's concern about engagement accessibility reflects awareness of the heightened obligations arising when infrastructure projects affect historically underserved communities.
Recognition that session logistics were inaccessible to Community P residents and expression of concern about the adequacy of outreach to the affected community
Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer
Engineer M is retained by the City as the lead engineer on a major public infrastructure project to upgrade a highway system that runs through Community P, a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood.
Engineer M expresses concern to Firm DBA about the public outreach and session locations
Engineer M Equitable Public Engagement Design
Equitable Public Engagement Design Capability
Engineer M demonstrated awareness of equitable public engagement design requirements by recognizing that Firm DBA's session logistics were inaccessible to Community P residents and raising concerns accordingly.
Engineer M identified that sessions held during work hours at venues inaccessible by public transit would exclude the affected community, demonstrating awareness of equitable engagement design standards.
Expression of concern to Firm DBA about public outreach session locations and times that were inaccessible to Community P residents
Engineer M risks being perceived as obstructing the project and may face professional retaliation
If the City takes no action, Engineer M will face the difficult decision of whether to report to the licensure board
The City may side with Firm DBA, creating direct conflict between Engineer M and the client
Duty to advise clients when a project may not be successful or when integrity is compromised (Code III.1.b)
Duty to take escalating action when peer-level correction has failed
Obligation not to associate with fraudulent or dishonest enterprises (Code II.1.d)
Graduated escalation to client authority
Public welfare protection through systemic intervention
Transparency with client about professional concerns
Compel the City to direct Firm DBA to correct the misleading report and conduct remedial outreach for Community P, using the client relationship as leverage when peer-level intervention has failed
Client communication and professional advocacy at senior level
Ethical judgment under NSPE Code in client-conflict situations
Evidence presentation and documentation of outreach deficiencies
Lead engineer standing to raise systemic project integrity concerns with client
Recommended future action 2 (conditional, forward-looking)
If Firm DBA refuses to correct the report discrepancies, Engineer M must confer directly with the City, potentially with Firm DBA present, presenting the evidence of outreach deficiencies and report inaccuracies and demanding corrective action from the client. This is the second step in the prescribed escalation sequence.
Engineer M False Community Consent Recognition
False Community Consent Recognition Capability
Engineer M had the capability to recognize that Firm DBA's report falsely implied Community P support based on a flawed engagement process that systematically excluded Community P residents.
Engineer M's prior concerns about session accessibility positioned him to recognize that the report's claim of Community P support was based on a manufactured absence of opposition rather than genuine community consent.
Prior expression of concern about engagement accessibility, providing basis for recognizing that low Community P participation reflected exclusion rather than genuine support
Few Community P members participate, and those who do express concerns about the project's potential to displace residents and disrupt local businesses.
Firm DBA submits a report claiming Community P's support for the project, citing a lack of significant opposition and comments in support of the project.
Engineer M Graduated Escalation Navigation
Graduated Escalation Navigation Capability
Engineer M faced the need to apply graduated escalation capability after Firm DBA dismissed his concerns by citing City directives, requiring navigation of escalation pathways from Firm DBA to the City and potentially to the state licensure board.
After Firm DBA's non-responsive reply citing City direction, Engineer M faced the obligation to escalate concerns through appropriate channels including City leadership and potentially the state licensure board.
Initial concern-raising with Firm DBA as first escalation step; case raises question of whether further escalation to City leadership and licensure board was required
Engineer M expresses concern to Firm DBA about the public outreach and session locations, but Firm DBA states that these practices are consistent with prior projects undertaken for the City.
Engineer M Graduated Escalation Sequence — Firm DBA to City to Licensure Board
The BER prescribed a specific graduated escalation pathway for Engineer M, requiring direct engagement with Firm DBA first, then the City, then potential licensure board reporting.
Graduated Subconsultant Escalation Procedural Constraint
Engineer M was required to follow a graduated escalation sequence: first conferring directly with Firm DBA to state objections and demand correction; then, if Firm DBA refused, conferring with the City with Firm DBA's knowledge and potential presence; and only thereafter deciding whether to report Firm DBA to the state engineering licensure board — prohibiting both premature external reporting and indefinite deferral of escalation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 09-10; BER Case 88-6
As to a course of action, the BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA.
From discovery of Firm DBA's report deficiencies through resolution or project withdrawal
After this meeting, if the City decided to do nothing, Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board.
Should Firm DBA choose not to correct the discrepancies, Engineer M would need to also confer with the City (with the knowledge and potential presence of Firm DBA) and have a discussion of the ethical obligations of all involved.
Engineer M Institutional Pressure Resistance
Institutional Pressure Resistance in Public Engagement Capability
Engineer M demonstrated partial application of institutional pressure resistance capability by raising concerns about engagement practices despite Firm DBA's citation of City directives and prior project consistency.
Engineer M resisted accepting Firm DBA's rationalization based on City direction and prior practice, though the case raises questions about whether further escalation was required.
Expression of concern to Firm DBA about session locations despite being told City leaders had directed the approach
Engineer M Internal Compliance Reporting
Internal Compliance Reporting Capability
Engineer M needed to apply internal compliance reporting capability to formally document and communicate to the City the findings that Firm DBA's engagement report contained material omissions and false community consent claims.
After Firm DBA dismissed Engineer M's concerns and submitted a misleading report, Engineer M faced the obligation to formally report the compliance failure to the City as the client.
Initial concern-raising with Firm DBA; case raises question of whether formal documented reporting to City leadership was required after Firm DBA's dismissal of concerns
Firm DBA submits a report claiming Community P's support for the project
Engineer M Licensure Board Reporting Assessment Firm DBA
Licensure Board Self-Reporting Assessment Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to assess whether Firm DBA's ethical violations — after City inaction — rose to the level requiring reporting to the state engineering licensure board, drawing on BER Case 09-10 precedent regarding reporting obligations when a colleague's conduct raises serious professional ethics concerns
Final escalation decision point after City inaction on Firm DBA's false public engagement report
BER determination that Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board if the City takes no corrective action
In BER Case 09-10... The BER further found that if Engineer A was not sufficiently satisfied with Engineer X's explanation, Engineer A may be required to report this matter to the state engineering licensure board.
Engineer M Licensure Board Self-Reporting Assessment
Engineer M needed to assess whether Firm DBA's submission of a materially misleading public engagement report — and the City's direction to conduct exclusionary sessions — rose to the level requiring reporting to the state engineering licensure board.
After Firm DBA dismissed concerns and submitted a misleading report, Engineer M faced the obligation to assess whether the conduct of Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors required licensure board reporting.
Case raises the question of whether Engineer M's professional obligations required escalation to the state licensure board after internal concerns were dismissed
Engineer M Material Omission Recognition Public Engagement Report
Public Engagement Report Accuracy Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to identify the specific material omissions in Firm DBA's public engagement report — including omitted session locations, times, prohibition on written comments, and unsupported claims of Community P support — and to recognize these as violations of professional obligations to issue statements in an objective and truthful manner
Review of Firm DBA's public engagement report for the highway upgrade project
Engineer M's identification of discrepancies in Firm DBA's report and expression of concern to Firm DBA about inaccessible public engagement sessions
Firm DBA provided a report that omitted details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted.
Additionally, Firm DBA's report claimed Community P supported the project, without any evidence to support that claim.
These actions likely violated the NSPE Code of Ethics (Code) regarding issuing statements in an objective and truthful manner, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omitting a material fact.
Engineer M Non-Association Fraudulent Enterprise Recognition
Engineer M possessed the capability to recognize that Firm DBA's report — which falsely claimed Community P supported the project without evidence and omitted material participation barriers — constituted a fraudulent or dishonest enterprise triggering Engineer M's obligation under Code section II.1.d to refrain from associating with or permitting use of their name in connection with such enterprise
Engineer M's evaluation of continued project involvement after identifying Firm DBA's materially false public engagement report
BER determination that Engineer M must consider their involvement in the project given Firm DBA's false and incomplete report, and must not permit use of their name in association with a fraudulent enterprise
Engineer M not only has the right to challenge the validity of the DBA report but also must consider their involvement in the project as they shall not permit the use of their name or associate in business ventures with any person or firm that they believe is engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise as stated in Code section II.1.d.
Engineer M Precedent-Based Ethical Reasoning BER Cases
Precedent-Based Ethical Reasoning Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to identify and apply relevant BER precedents — including BER Cases 60-3, 98-2, 88-6, 09-10, and 21-7 — to analyze the novel ethical dilemma presented by Firm DBA's false public engagement report and to reach justified conclusions about obligations and courses of action
BER analysis of Engineer M's ethical obligations in the highway upgrade project
BER's application of five prior case precedents to establish Engineer M's obligations regarding code applicability, public welfare, collegial reporting, and report completeness
In BER Case 60-3, the facts indicated that an engineering firm was providing sub-professional services...
BER Case 98-2 addressed the ethical concerns of an international NSPE member...
In BER Case 09-10, Engineer A owned ABC Engineering in State P...
In BER Case 21-7, the question put to the BER was as follows: should an Engineer include information about the utility generation mix...
In BER Case 88-6, Engineer A had the responsibility for a city's waste disposal plant...
Engineer M Project Non-Success Advisory City Highway Upgrade
Engineer M possessed the capability to recognize that the highway upgrade project would not be successful if it proceeded on the basis of Firm DBA's false and incomplete public engagement report, and to advise the City of this risk as required by Code section III.1.b
Escalation to City after Firm DBA's refusal to correct discrepancies in public engagement report
BER determination that Engineer M was obligated to advise the City that the project would not be successful if it proceeded on the basis of Firm DBA's false report
Engineer M has an additional obligation to advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful as stated in Code section III.1.b.
The result of going forward with the project could also have disastrous consequences. If the facts come out later that relevant information was not disclosed in the report, the impact of such could be very negative.
Engineer M Project Success Adverse Notification — City Highway Upgrade
The BER found that if the facts about the deficient report came out later, the impact would be very negative, making Engineer M's notification obligation to the City a professional duty.
Project Success Adverse Notification Constraint
Engineer M was required to advise the City that the highway upgrade project would not be successful if it proceeded on the basis of Firm DBA's false and incomplete public engagement report, prohibiting Engineer M from remaining silent about the anticipated negative consequences of proceeding on a fraudulent evidentiary basis.
Upon identification of the deficiencies in Firm DBA's report and prior to project proceeding to next phase
Engineer M Public Safety Paramount — Community P Highway Upgrade
BER Case 88-6 established that an engineer who fails to take further action after being silenced regarding a public safety risk fails ethical obligations. The BER applied this precedent to Engineer M's situation.
Engineer M was required to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including Community P residents — prohibiting Engineer M from passively accepting Firm DBA's fraudulent report and allowing the project to proceed in a manner that could cause disastrous consequences to the historically underserved community.
NSPE Code of Ethics Canon 1; BER Case 88-6
The most fundamental and primary Canon of the Code is to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Throughout the project, particularly upon discovery of Firm DBA's report deficiencies
Engineer A did not fulfill ethical obligations of holding paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Engineer M Public Welfare Paramountcy Highway Upgrade Community P
Public Welfare Paramountcy Recognition Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to recognize that the obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including the historically underserved Community P — overrode client loyalty and required action against Firm DBA's false reporting, consistent with BER Case 88-6 precedent
Engineer M's overall ethical obligations in the highway upgrade project involving Community P
BER determination that Engineer M has a duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, analogous to Engineer A's unfulfilled obligation in BER Case 88-6
In BER Case 88-6, Engineer A had the responsibility for a city's waste disposal plant... The BER found that Engineer A did not fulfill ethical obligations of holding paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Engineer M Public Welfare Paramountcy Recognition
Engineer M demonstrated public welfare paramountcy recognition by identifying that the exclusionary engagement process and false community consent report threatened the welfare of Community P residents who faced displacement and business disruption.
Engineer M's concerns about engagement accessibility reflect recognition that public welfare — particularly of vulnerable community members — must take precedence over client convenience and political considerations.
Recognition that engagement failures and false reporting harmed the interests of Community P, a historically underserved community facing potential displacement
those who do express concerns about the project's potential to displace residents and disrupt local businesses.
Possible escalation of conflict if Firm DBA dismisses concerns
Risk of being perceived by the City as obstructing project progress
Risk of professional friction with Firm DBA
Duty to notify appropriate parties of potential project failures or ethical violations (Code III.1.b)
Obligation not to remain passive when aware of practices that misrepresent public input
Duty to speak up when aware of harmful or dishonest practices
Prompt Firm DBA to correct the outreach deficiencies, ensure Community P receives genuine engagement opportunities, and protect the integrity of the project record
Knowledge of public engagement standards
Lead engineer authority to challenge collaborating firm conduct
Engineer M, serving as lead engineer, decides to express concern to Firm DBA about the outreach practices and session locations after observing the low and unrepresentative participation from Community P. This is a direct professional challenge to a collaborating firm's conduct.
Engineer M Stakeholder Interest Balancing
Stakeholder Interest Balancing Capability
Engineer M faced the need to balance the interests of multiple stakeholders — the City client, Community P residents, Community Q residents, and the public interest in accurate engagement reporting — when responding to Firm DBA's exclusionary engagement practices.
Engineer M's position required balancing duties to the City client against obligations to Community P residents and the public interest in genuine community participation.
Recognition that engagement practices favored Community Q over Community P and that the City's political interests were being prioritized over Community P's welfare
The area in which Firm DBA holds the public outreach sessions, Community Q, is an alternate route for the major public infrastructure project.
Engineer M Stakeholder Interest Balancing — Graduated Response Firm DBA City
The BER's recommended course of action reflects the principle that compliance action should be measured and multi-stakeholder in approach, involving Firm DBA in the City meeting rather than bypassing them.
Stakeholder Interest Balancing Constraint in Compliance Action
Engineer M was required to proceed advisedly, carefully, and sensitively in taking compliance action against Firm DBA's ethical violations — pursuing direct engagement with Firm DBA first, then involving the City with Firm DBA's knowledge and potential presence — to promote the interests of all stakeholders to the extent possible before resorting to external licensure board reporting.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER graduated escalation guidance
Throughout the escalation process from discovery of report deficiencies to resolution
Engineer M Subcontractor Code Compliance Confrontation Firm DBA
Subcontractor Ethical Oversight Capability
Engineer M possessed the capability to confer immediately with Firm DBA, state specific objections to the materially false and incomplete public engagement report, invoke the code obligations applicable to Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners, and require correction of the discrepancies
Initial confrontation with Firm DBA after identifying material omissions and false claims in the public engagement report
BER recommendation that Engineer M confer immediately with Firm DBA, state objections, and involve Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners in compliance discussions
As to a course of action, the BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA. Engineer M should state their objections with Firm DBA and express all ethical obligations under the Code.
Engineer M Subcontractor Ethical Oversight
Engineer M exercised subcontractor ethical oversight capability by identifying and raising concerns about Firm DBA's engagement practices, though the case raises questions about whether escalation beyond initial concern-raising was required.
As lead engineer, Engineer M retained professional responsibility for the overall project and exercised oversight by raising concerns about subcontractor conduct, though further escalation may have been required after Firm DBA's non-responsive reply.
Identification of ethical problems with Firm DBA's engagement design and direct communication of concerns to Firm DBA
Engineer M Unlicensed Practice Reporting — Firm DBA Licensure Board
BER Case 09-10 established that when an engineer discovers potential ethical or licensure violations by another firm and is not satisfied with the explanation, the engineer may be required to report to the state engineering licensure board.
Unlicensed Practice Reporting Constraint
After exhausting internal escalation pathways with Firm DBA and the City without corrective action, Engineer M was required to consider and potentially fulfill the duty to report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board, to prevent similar fraudulent conduct from occurring in future projects.
After City-level escalation fails to produce corrective action
Although seemingly extreme, reporting Firm DBA to the state's engineering licensure board may be necessary to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.
Engineer M conferring with Firm DBA (prescribed action) before Engineer M conferring with the City (prescribed action)
Should Firm DBA choose not to correct the discrepancies, Engineer M would need to also confer with the City (with the knowledge and potential presence of Firm DBA).
Engineer M conferring with Firm DBA (prescribed action)
Engineer M conferring with the City (prescribed action)
Engineer M conferring with the City (prescribed action) before Engineer M reporting to state engineering licensure board (prescribed action)
Engineer M reporting to state engineering licensure board (prescribed action)
Engineer M raising concerns to Firm DBA before Firm DBA preparing and submitting misleading report
Despite Engineer M's concerns, Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held.
Firm DBA preparing and submitting misleading report
Executive Office of the President; EPA; USDOT
Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations (Executive Order 12898) and Related Agency Guidance
Engineer M as basis for professional obligation; City as contracting authority
Provides legal and policy grounding for the obligation to ensure Community P — explicitly described as historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened — receives meaningful and equitable participation in infrastructure decisions affecting them
EO 12898 (1994) and subsequent agency implementations
Environmental Justice Community Protection — Community P Highway Project
Community P is explicitly identified as historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened. The highway upgrade runs through Community P. Engagement sessions were held in Community Q, an alternate route area, structurally shifting participation away from the most affected community.
Environmental Justice Community Protection Constraint
Both Firm DBA and Engineer M were constrained by federal and state environmental justice obligations to ensure that Community P — explicitly described as historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened — received meaningful and affirmative opportunity to participate in the public engagement process for an infrastructure project that would directly affect their neighborhood, prohibiting engagement designs that structurally disadvantaged Community P relative to Community Q.
Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898; Federal environmental justice policy; NSPE Code of Ethics Canon 1
Throughout the planning and public engagement phase of the highway upgrade project
Equitable Public Engagement — Firm DBA Community P Sessions
Firm DBA organized meetings during work hours at venues far from Community P and not accessible by public transit, held sessions in Community Q (an alternate route area), provided no written comment mechanism, and held no virtual meetings, structurally excluding Community P from meaningful participation.
Firm DBA was constrained to conduct public engagement sessions for the Community P highway project in a manner genuinely accessible to Community P residents, including accessible meeting times, proximate and transit-accessible locations, written comment mechanisms, and virtual participation options, prohibiting engagement designs that structurally excluded the primary affected community.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Environmental Justice Executive Order 12898; Public Engagement Standard for Infrastructure Projects; BER Community Engagement Precedents
Firm DBA organizes meetings at times and locations that are difficult for Community P residents to attend, such as during work hours at venues far from the area and not easily accessible via public transit.
During the public engagement phase of the highway upgrade planning process
Firm DBA's outreach and notices do not provide for a method for community members to submit written comments.
No virtual meetings are held to gather feedback from interested persons.
Excluding Written and Virtual Participation
Residents with work conflicts, disabilities, or transportation barriers would be entirely excluded
The absence of written comments would make it easier to omit or mischaracterize Community P input in the final report
The decision would later be concealed in the report by omitting mention of what was not offered
Accessibility as a professional standard
Objectivity and completeness in process design
Public welfare over procedural minimalism
Limit the volume and diversity of Community P input by restricting participation to a single, logistically burdensome channel, producing a thinner and more controllable participation record
Duty of truthfulness in professional practice
Duty to provide objective professional services not distorted by client political preferences
Obligation to ensure meaningful public participation in infrastructure decisions affecting underserved communities
Firm DBA decides not to provide written comment submission methods and not to hold virtual meetings, further narrowing participation channels to only those residents able to attend in-person sessions at inaccessible times and locations. This decision compounds the exclusionary effect of the scheduling decision.
Excluding Written and Virtual Participation → Community P Participation Failure
Firm DBA decides not to provide written comment submission methods and not to hold virtual meetings
Had written or virtual options been available, residents excluded by scheduling and location barriers could still have submitted input, substantially reducing the participation failure
No compensatory mechanism offered to residents unable to attend in person
Removal of written comment submission as a participation channel
Even if in-person sessions had been somewhat accessible, the elimination of written and virtual channels independently ensured that residents with work, mobility, or transportation constraints had no viable path to participation
Fact-Grounded Opinion — Firm DBA Community P Support Claim
Firm DBA claimed Community P support based on lack of significant opposition, when the lack of opposition was itself a product of structurally excluding Community P residents from the engagement process.
Firm DBA was constrained from claiming in its report that Community P supported the project unless that claim was grounded in a public engagement process that actually provided Community P residents with meaningful opportunity to participate, prohibiting the inference of community support from a structurally exclusionary process as if it were an established professional finding.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.3; BER Case 21-7; Professional Report Integrity Standard
At the time of preparation and submission of the public engagement report
Firm DBA Code Applicability Universal — PE Supervisory Ownership Roles
Firm DBA argued or could argue that as a public relations firm providing sub-professional services, the NSPE Code did not apply. The BER rejected this interpretation given PE supervisory and ownership roles.
Code of Ethics Universal Applicability Constraint
Firm DBA was bound by the NSPE Code of Ethics in its conduct of public engagement and reporting services because licensed professional engineers held supervisory and ownership roles throughout the firm, making the Code applicable regardless of whether the specific services provided were engineering design, calculation, or judgment work.
NSPE Code of Ethics Preamble; BER Case 98-2; BER Case 60-3 (as revised by current Code)
The facts in this case state that Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments in the firm as well as ownership.
Throughout the duration of the highway upgrade project engagement
It would be difficult to believe that through their duties as licensed professional engineers, the Code would be irrelevant to the Firm's business dealings simply because the services being provided were not engineering from a design, calculation, or engineering judgment perspective but were confined to communication and public relation services.
Engineer M would be compelled to escalate concerns to the City or licensure board
Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors and owners would not be engaged in the ethical review
The project record would remain distorted and legally and reputationally vulnerable
Independent professional judgment over client-driven precedent
Maintain current outreach approach without modification, preserve alignment with City instructions, and avoid reopening sessions or revising the participation record
Ethical self-assessment and peer accountability
Knowledge of NSPE Code obligations for outreach and reporting
Willingness to challenge client instructions when they conflict with professional obligations
Duty not to engage in deceptive professional practices
Duty to issue truthful and objective reports (Code II.3.b)
Obligation to respond in good faith to substantive ethical concerns raised by a peer engineer
Firm DBA decides to reject Engineer M's concerns about outreach practices, citing City instructions and prior project precedent as sufficient justification. This decision forecloses voluntary correction and forces Engineer M toward escalation.
Firm DBA Dismisses Concerns → Concerns Formally Dismissed
After Engineer M raises concerns about the inequitable outreach process, Firm DBA's dismissal become
Had Firm DBA engaged with Engineer M's concerns and initiated corrective action, the formal dismissal event would not have occurred and subsequent escalation would have been unnecessary
Engineer M having raised concerns formally
Firm DBA citing City instructions as cover for dismissal without independent verification
Firm DBA's active decision to reject those concerns
Firm DBA's authoritative rejection of Engineer M's concerns, combined with the institutional power differential between the coordinating firm and the lead engineer, was sufficient to formalize the dismissal and allow exclusionary practices to continue uncorrected
Firm DBA Equitable Public Engagement Design Failure
Firm DBA failed to apply equitable public engagement design capability, organizing sessions at inaccessible times and locations, omitting written comment mechanisms, and holding no virtual sessions, thereby systematically excluding Community P.
Firm DBA's engagement design systematically excluded the affected community, demonstrating absence or non-application of equitable engagement design competence.
Organization of sessions during work hours at venues far from Community P and not accessible by public transit, with no written comment or virtual participation options
Firm DBA Public Outreach Engineering Consultant
Finally, no virtual meetings are held to gather feedback from interested persons.
Further, Firm DBA's outreach and notices do not provide for a method for community members to submit written comments.
Firm DBA Institutional Pressure Resistance Failure
Firm DBA failed to apply institutional pressure resistance capability, acquiescing to City directives to conduct exclusionary engagement sessions and rationalizing compliance by reference to prior project practices.
Firm DBA accepted City directives citing economic, political, and social considerations as sufficient justification for engagement practices that excluded the affected community.
Compliance with City instructions to conduct inaccessible sessions and citation of prior project consistency as justification for exclusionary practices
Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors Code Universality Application
The licensed PE supervisors and owners at Firm DBA were required to possess the capability to recognize that the NSPE Code applied to their firm's public relations work by virtue of their supervisory and ownership roles, and to ensure ethical practices were followed accordingly
Firm DBA's preparation and submission of the public engagement report for the highway upgrade project
Failure to exercise this capability — Firm DBA's PEs did not prevent the issuance of a materially false and incomplete public engagement report
Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors and Owners
The facts in this case state that Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments in the firm as well as ownership. It would be difficult to believe that through their duties as licensed professional engineers, the Code would be irrelevant to the Firm's business dealings.
Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors Equitable Engagement Oversight
The licensed PE supervisors and owners at Firm DBA bore responsibility for ensuring equitable engagement design but failed to exercise this capability in overseeing the communications department's engagement planning.
As PE supervisors of all departments including the communications department, Firm DBA's licensed engineers were responsible for ensuring engagement design met professional standards.
Failure to correct inaccessible session logistics despite supervisory responsibility over all departments
Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments in the firm as well as in Firm DBA ownership.
It is this department that is directly charged with providing these services on behalf of Firm DBA.
Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors Report Accuracy Oversight
The licensed PE supervisors and owners at Firm DBA bore ultimate responsibility for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the public engagement report but failed to exercise this capability before submission.
As licensed PE supervisors of all departments, Firm DBA's engineers were responsible for the accuracy of professional deliverables including the public engagement report.
Failure to identify and correct material omissions and misleading characterizations in the engagement report prior to submission
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held
Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors Responsible Charge Engagement
Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability
The licensed PE supervisors and owners at Firm DBA failed to maintain active, substantive engagement in the public outreach process, allowing the communications department to conduct exclusionary sessions and produce a misleading report without adequate PE oversight.
Firm DBA's licensed engineers in supervisory and ownership roles bore responsible charge obligations over the communications department's professional work product but failed to exercise genuine direction and control.
Failure to actively supervise engagement design and report preparation despite holding supervisory and ownership roles over all departments
Firm DBA Non-Deception Constraint — Public Engagement Report
Firm DBA's report omitted where and when sessions were held, that written comments were not accepted, and claimed Community P supported the project without evidence.
Non-Deception (Constraint): Constraint established by ethics code provisions
Firm DBA was prohibited from issuing statements that were not objective and truthful, engaging in deceptive acts, misrepresenting facts, or omitting material facts in its public engagement report — including omission of session times, locations, written comment restrictions, and unsupported claims of community support.
NSPE Code of Ethics provisions on objective and truthful statements, deceptive acts, and misrepresentation of fact
These actions likely violated the NSPE Code of Ethics ( Code) regarding issuing statements in an objective and truthful manner, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omitting a material fact
Firm DBA Procurement Rationalization Resistance Failure
Procurement Rationalization Resistance Capability
Firm DBA failed to apply rationalization resistance capability, accepting City directives and prior project consistency as sufficient justification for exclusionary engagement practices that violated professional ethics obligations.
Firm DBA rationalized non-compliant engagement practices by reference to City direction and institutional precedent, failing to maintain ethical standards in the face of client pressure.
Acceptance of City political and social considerations as justification for exclusionary engagement design, and citation of prior project practices as normalizing the conduct
Firm DBA Public Engagement Report Accuracy Failure
Firm DBA failed to apply public engagement report accuracy capability, producing a carefully-framed report that omitted material facts about session logistics and falsely claimed Community P support.
Firm DBA's report omitted material facts and mischaracterized community participation, demonstrating failure to apply accurate reporting competence.
Submission of a report omitting session locations, times, and absence of written comment mechanisms, while claiming Community P support based on low participation from excluded residents
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted.
Firm DBA Public Engagement Report Completeness Accuracy Obligation Individual
Firm DBA was required to possess the capability to ensure its public engagement report accurately and completely disclosed all material facts — including session locations, times, prohibition on written comments, and the evidentiary basis for any claims of community support — but failed to exercise this capability
Firm DBA's failure to include session locations, times, prohibition on written comments, and evidence supporting claimed Community P support in its public engagement report
In BER Case 21-7, the BER found that as a registered professional, that Engineer was obliged to include relevant and pertinent information in a report to the organization.
{'license': 'Licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles', 'specialty': 'Communications, public relations, and community outreach', 'report_accuracy': 'Misleading — omitted session location, time, and absence of written comment mechanism', 'city_instruction_cited': True}
Engaged by Engineer M's firm to coordinate and conduct public engagement sessions for the highway upgrade project; organized sessions at inaccessible times and locations; omitted written comment mechanisms and virtual participation options; prepared a misleading report omitting material details about session accessibility and misrepresenting Community P's level of support.
{'type': 'client_instruction', 'target': 'City Municipal Infrastructure Client'}
{'type': 'impact_on', 'target': 'Community P Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder'}
{'type': 'subcontractor_to', 'target': 'Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer'}
Engineer M's firm partners with an engineering consultant, Firm DBA, to coordinate public outreach
Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments
Firm DBA organizes meetings at times and locations that are difficult for Community P residents to attend
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held
{'license': 'Has licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles across all departments', 'service_type': 'Public relations and community engagement communication services', 'code_applicability': 'Subject to NSPE Code of Ethics due to PE supervisory and ownership structure'}
Firm DBA provided a public engagement report that omitted material facts (session locations, times, prohibition on written comments) and falsely claimed Community P supported the project without evidence, raising NSPE Code violations regarding truthfulness, deception, and omission of material facts.
{'type': 'directed_by', 'target': 'City Municipal Infrastructure Client'}
{'type': 'subcontractor_to', 'target': 'Engineer M'}
{'type': 'subject_to_review_by', 'target': 'State Engineering Licensure Board'}
Firm DBA provided a report that omitted details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted
Firm DBA's report claimed Community P supported the project, without any evidence to support that claim
Firm DBA Subconsultant Ethical Non-Compliance — City Direction Defense Constraint
The BER anticipated that Firm DBA might take the position that it performed the work under the City's direction and was therefore unwilling to make corrections — a position the BER identified as ethically impermissible.
Firm DBA was prohibited from using the City's direction as a justification for refusing to correct the materially false and incomplete public engagement report, as client authority does not override the independent ethical obligations of a firm with licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles.
A more unfavorable result would be anticipated if Firm DBA takes the position that it performed the work under the direction of the City and are, therefore, unwilling to make the corrections.
Upon Engineer M's confrontation of Firm DBA regarding the report deficiencies
Firm DBA Written Report Completeness — Public Engagement Sessions Material Facts
BER Case 21-7 established that engineers are obliged to include relevant and pertinent information in reports so stakeholders can make informed decisions. The BER applied this precedent to Firm DBA's omissions.
Firm DBA was required to include all relevant and pertinent factual information in its public engagement report — including session times, locations, written comment restrictions, and accurate characterization of community support — prohibiting selective omission of material procedural facts that would prevent stakeholders from making informed decisions.
At the time of preparation and submission of the public engagement report to the City
Firm DBA conducting sessions in Community Q overlaps Community P residents attempting to participate
Firm DBA conducting sessions in Community Q
Community P residents attempting to participate
Entity1 starts before Entity2 and ends during Entity2
Firm DBA organizing sessions at inaccessible times/locations before Engineer M raising concerns to Firm DBA
Firm DBA submitting misleading report before Engineer M conferring with Firm DBA (prescribed action)
The BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA... Engineer M should state their objections with Firm DBA and express all ethical obligations under the Code.
Historically Underserved Community P Stakeholder
{'misrepresentation': "Falsely claimed to support the project in Firm DBA's report", 'exclusion': 'Excluded by inaccessible session times, locations, and prohibition on written comments'}
Community P is the affected community whose support was falsely claimed in Firm DBA's report without evidence, and whose members were excluded from meaningful participation through inaccessible session scheduling and prohibition on written comments.
{'type': 'affected_by', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Relations Subcontractor'}
{'type': 'protected_interest_of', 'target': 'Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer'}
omitted details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted
Incomplete Risk Disclosure — Firm DBA Omission of Engagement Conditions
Firm DBA's report omitted the times and locations of sessions, the accessibility limitations, and the absence of comment mechanisms, all of which were material to evaluating the validity of the claimed community support.
Firm DBA was prohibited from omitting from its public engagement report the material facts about the conditions under which engagement was conducted — including inaccessible meeting times and locations, absence of written comment mechanisms, and absence of virtual participation — as these omissions concealed known risks to the validity of the engagement process and the welfare of Community P.
Inequitable Public Engagement — Community P Sessions
From the conduct of the sessions through correction of the record or project cancellation
The public engagement sessions conducted by Firm DBA for the project affecting Community P
Correction of the public record or re-conduct of equitable engagement sessions
Sessions held at times and locations that excluded Community P, with written comments not accepted, and results misrepresented as community support
Internal Compliance Reporting Escalation — Engineer M Post-Firm DBA Non-Response
Engineer M expressed concern to Firm DBA, which was dismissed. The next required step under the internal escalation constraint is to bring the matter to the City, and if the City also fails to act, to escalate externally.
Internal Compliance Reporting Escalation Constraint
Engineer M was constrained to escalate the identified ethical violations by Firm DBA through internal channels — first to the City as the client authority — before pursuing external reporting to regulatory bodies, while simultaneously being prohibited from abandoning escalation if internal reporting was dismissed without corrective action.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.2; BER Case 88-6; BER Case 09-10
After Engineer M's initial concerns to Firm DBA were dismissed and the fraudulent report was submitted
Lowest-Level Resolution Priority — Engineer M Escalation Pathway
Engineer M raised concerns with Firm DBA (lowest level), which were dismissed. The constraint requires escalation to the City before external reporting, but given that the City itself directed the violations, external escalation becomes necessary if the City fails to act.
Lowest-Level Resolution Priority Constraint
Engineer M was constrained to attempt resolution of Firm DBA's ethical violations at the lowest possible organizational level — first with Firm DBA directly, then with the City — before escalating to external regulatory or oversight authorities, while not permitting indefinite deferral of escalation when internal resolution failed.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section III.2; BER Case 88-6
Throughout the escalation process following identification of Firm DBA's violations
Official project record is now corrupted with false information; all downstream project decisions risk being built on a fraudulent foundation; Engineer M's obligation to act is now at its highest urgency
After outreach sessions conclude and Firm DBA produces the report
Firm DBA's completed outreach report, omitting session location and timing details and falsely claiming Community P support, becomes part of the official project planning record, creating a false evidentiary foundation for subsequent project decisions.
Misrepresentative Public Record — Firm DBA Report
From submission of the report through correction or withdrawal
The official public engagement report produced by Firm DBA for the City
Report correction or withdrawal, or regulatory intervention
A report that does not contain relevant information will not help stakeholders make an informed decision and does not protect public safety, health, and welfare
pertinent information was missing from the report
Firm DBA submitted a report to the City omitting material procedural facts and affirmatively misrepresenting community support
National Society of Professional Engineers
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details
Engineer M in evaluating professional obligations; Firm DBA engineers in supervisory roles
Primary normative authority governing Engineer M's obligations regarding honest reporting, public welfare, and professional conduct when Firm DBA submits a misleading report and conducts exclusionary public engagement
NSPE Position Statements on Engineer Obligations to Public Welfare and Honest Professional Practice
Engineer M in evaluating whether to accept or challenge Firm DBA's report
NSPE position statements on the primacy of public welfare and honest professional communication provide authoritative interpretive guidance for Engineer M's obligations when client instructions conflict with public interest
These actions likely violated the NSPE Code of Ethics (Code) regarding issuing statements in an objective and truthful manner, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omitting a material fact
The Preamble of the Code states that professional behavior requires adherence to the highest principles of ethical conduct. Therefore, the Code applies to Firm DBA.
BER in analyzing obligations of Firm DBA and Engineer M
Primary normative authority applied to determine whether Firm DBA and Engineer M violated ethical obligations regarding truthful reporting, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omission of material facts; also invoked to establish Engineer M's duty to hold paramount public safety, health, and welfare
Current revision (post-BER Case 60-3 revision)
Non-Deception — Firm DBA Public Engagement Report Submission
The report claimed Community P support based on lack of opposition, when the lack of opposition was itself a product of structurally excluding Community P residents from meaningful participation.
Firm DBA was constrained by the non-deception obligation under the NSPE Code of Ethics from submitting a public engagement report that created a false impression of Community P's support for the project by omitting material facts about the structural inaccessibility of the engagement sessions and the absence of comment mechanisms.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.4; Non-Deception (Constraint) from ethics code provisions
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held.
Community P residents' documented concerns would be erased from the official record
Engineer M would be placed in the position of associating with a fraudulent report
The misleading report could influence infrastructure decisions harming Community P
The project would be legally and reputationally exposed if the report's omissions were later discovered
Non-deception as a foundational professional norm
Public welfare over client political convenience
Truthfulness and objectivity in professional documents
Create an official project record that appears to document legitimate Community P engagement and support, enabling the City to proceed with the preferred route while suppressing evidence of the outreach's structural exclusions
Accurate and complete technical report writing
Ethical judgment in representing participation data
Willingness to document process limitations and constraints
Duty not to misrepresent community input in public infrastructure planning
Duty of objectivity and truthfulness in professional reports
NSPE Code prohibition on associating with fraudulent or dishonest enterprises (Code II.1.d)
NSPE Code prohibition on issuing false, misleading, or deceptive statements (Code II.3.b)
Obligation to accurately represent the scope and limitations of professional work
Firm DBA decides to prepare and issue a report that omits material details about session locations, times, and the absence of written comment options, and affirmatively frames the report to falsely claim Community P support for the project. This is a deliberate act of professional dishonesty in an official project document.
Producing Misleading Outreach Report → Misleading Report Enters Record
Firm DBA's completed outreach report, omitting session location and timing details and falsely claimi
Had the report accurately disclosed session locations, timing, participation barriers, and the actual scope of community input, decision-makers would have had a materially different evidentiary basis and the record integrity would not have been compromised in this manner
Firm DBA's decision to misrepresent the extent or quality of community participation
Firm DBA's decision to omit material details about session locations and timing
The report being formally submitted and accepted into the official project record
The combination of material omissions and affirmative misrepresentations in a formally submitted document was sufficient to corrupt the evidentiary basis of the project record, regardless of whether decision-makers scrutinized the report
Professional Disassociation — Engineer M Continued Association with Fraudulent Project
Engineer M faces a professional disassociation decision after Firm DBA submits the fraudulent report and internal escalation has been exhausted, as continued association without action would make Engineer M complicit in the deception.
Engineer M was constrained from continuing to associate with the project in a manner that implicitly endorsed or facilitated the fraudulent public engagement report, as continued association without objection or corrective action would constitute participation in the deception of the City and the public regarding Community P's actual input.
NSPE Code of Ethics Section II.4, Canon 1; BER Case 88-6
Upon submission of Firm DBA's fraudulent report and failure of internal escalation to produce corrective action
The planning process has lost its legitimacy as a fair public participation exercise; any project decisions made on the basis of this record are built on a false foundation; Engineer M's role as lead engineer makes this Engineer M's professional responsibility to address
After misleading report enters official record; ongoing through planning phase
As a systemic outcome of the cumulative actions, biased sessions, excluded participation channels, dismissed concerns, and a false report, the entire official planning record for the highway project affecting Community P is rendered unreliable and ethically tainted.
Federal Highway Administration, state transportation agencies, and professional practice bodies
Public Participation Requirements for Transportation and Infrastructure Projects
Firm DBA organizes meetings at times and locations that are difficult for Community P residents to attend, such as during work hours at venues far from the area and not easily accessible via public transit
Firm DBA's outreach and notices do not provide for a method for community members to submit written comments
no virtual meetings are held to gather feedback from interested persons
Firm DBA (violated), Engineer M (basis for concern)
Establishes minimum requirements for accessible, inclusive public engagement including accessible meeting times and locations, written comment acceptance, and virtual participation options — all of which Firm DBA violated
Public Safety Paramount — Community P Project Proceeding on Fraudulent Basis
Community P residents who did participate expressed concerns about displacement and business disruption. The fraudulent report claiming Community P support could cause the project to proceed through Community P based on false premises, causing irreversible harm to the community.
Engineer M was constrained by the foundational engineering obligation to hold public safety, health, and welfare paramount from allowing the project to proceed on the basis of a fraudulent public engagement report that misrepresented Community P's input, given that project routing decisions based on that report could result in resident displacement, business disruption, and disproportionate harm to a historically underserved community.
NSPE Code of Ethics Canon 1; NSPE Position Statement on Public Welfare; BER Case 88-6
Those who do express concerns about the project's potential to displace residents and disrupt local businesses.
Upon discovery that Firm DBA's report misrepresented Community P's engagement and input
Professional engineering and planning practice
Community Impact and Displacement Risk Assessment Methodology
those who do express concerns about the project's potential to displace residents and disrupt local businesses
Engineer M in evaluating the significance of suppressed community concerns
A structured methodology for assessing the likelihood and magnitude of harm from infrastructure routing decisions — including resident displacement and business disruption in Community P — provides the analytical basis for evaluating the ethical stakes of the project routing decision
Should Engineer M challenge the validity of Firm DBA’s report?
Does the City's explicit instruction to Firm DBA to conduct public engagement in a manner that excluded Community P residents constitute an independent ethical violation by the City, and does Engineer M have an obligation to report the City's conduct to the licensure board or other authorities beyond simply notifying the City of its ethical obligations?
At what point does Engineer M's continued association with the project — after raising concerns that were dismissed by both Firm DBA and potentially the City — constitute impermissible association with a fraudulent enterprise, and what specific triggering conditions obligate Engineer M to formally disassociate from the project?
Does the deliberate routing of public engagement sessions to Community Q — an alternate route community — rather than Community P create a conflict of interest or appearance of bias that Engineer M was independently obligated to identify and disclose to the City before Firm DBA's report was submitted?
Does Firm DBA's communications and public relations department's direct execution of the public engagement work — as distinct from its licensed PE supervisors — raise questions about unlicensed practice of engineering or professional services, and should Engineer M have flagged this structural arrangement as a compliance concern independent of the report's substantive deficiencies?
Should Engineer M raise any concerns with the City, as the client, and, if so, how?
How should Engineer M balance the obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including Community P residents — against the competing duty of loyalty to the City as the client that has explicitly directed the flawed engagement process, when fulfilling the public welfare obligation may require acting against the client's stated instructions?
Does the obligation to resolve ethical disputes at the lowest possible level — first with Firm DBA, then with the City — conflict with the urgency of the public welfare harm being perpetuated by each day the fraudulent report remains in the official project record, and at what point does the graduated escalation principle yield to the paramountcy of immediate public safety disclosure?
Does the principle requiring engineers to avoid injuring the professional reputation of others conflict with the obligation to report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the City and the licensure board, and how should Engineer M navigate this tension when the report of violations is both factually grounded and professionally necessary?
Does Firm DBA's defense that it was following explicit City instructions create a tension between the obligation to serve the client faithfully and the independent professional obligation not to engage in deceptive acts or issue misleading reports — and does client direction ever constitute a valid ethical defense for a licensed engineering firm that produces a materially incomplete public engagement report?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer M fulfill their categorical duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public by raising concerns only with Firm DBA rather than immediately escalating to the City or the state licensure board once the misleading report entered the public record?
From a consequentialist perspective, did the cumulative harm to Community P residents — including potential displacement, loss of business, and permanent infrastructure burden — outweigh any procedural or political benefits the City cited in directing Firm DBA to conduct inequitable public engagement sessions, and does that calculus obligate Engineer M to refuse continued association with the project?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Firm DBA's licensed professional engineers — who held supervisory and ownership roles over the communications department — demonstrate the professional integrity and moral courage expected of licensed engineers when they allowed a carefully-framed, materially incomplete report to be submitted to the City without correction?
From a deontological perspective, does the NSPE Code's universality — binding all engineers regardless of whether their immediate task is technical or communicative — impose an unconditional duty on Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors to ensure the public engagement report is complete and truthful, irrespective of City instructions to the contrary?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer M demonstrate sufficient professional courage and integrity by expressing concern to Firm DBA but continuing to associate with the project after Firm DBA dismissed those concerns and submitted a misleading report, or did continued association compromise Engineer M's character as a trustworthy steward of the public welfare?
From a consequentialist perspective, would Engineer M's reporting of Firm DBA's violations to the state licensure board produce better long-term outcomes for public welfare and professional integrity — including deterrence of future inequitable engagement practices — than limiting escalation to the City alone, even if such reporting risks disrupting the infrastructure project timeline?
If Engineer M had formally objected in writing to the City at the moment Firm DBA dismissed Engineer M's initial verbal concerns — rather than waiting until after the misleading report was submitted — would the public record have remained uncorrupted and would Community P residents have retained a meaningful opportunity to influence the project routing decision?
What if Firm DBA had held the public engagement sessions in Community P at accessible times and locations, accepted written and virtual comments, and reported results accurately — would the project routing decision have changed, and does the answer to that question itself demonstrate that the inequitable engagement process was outcome-determinative rather than procedurally neutral?
If the City had not explicitly instructed Firm DBA to conduct the public engagement sessions in the manner it did, would Firm DBA's licensed PE supervisors have independently designed an equitable outreach process, and does the existence of client direction reduce — or entirely eliminate — Firm DBA's independent ethical culpability under the Code?
If Engineer M had exercised their authority as lead engineer to refuse to allow Firm DBA's report to be submitted to the City without correction — or had threatened professional disassociation from the project — would that leverage have been sufficient to compel Firm DBA to revise the report before the misleading public record was established?
Community P residents would be effectively excluded from meaningful participation
Engineer M and other stakeholders might raise objections
The resulting participation record would misrepresent community sentiment
Nominal procedural compliance with holding sessions (form only)
Conduct sessions that satisfy procedural outreach requirements while producing a participation record favorable to Community Q and the alternate route, consistent with City instructions
Demographic analysis of affected populations
Duty of equitable treatment of all affected community stakeholders
Duty to conduct objective and truthful professional services
NSPE Code obligation to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public (Code I.1)
Obligation to serve the public interest, not merely client political preferences
Firm DBA deliberately schedules public outreach sessions during work hours at locations inaccessible to Community P and situated in Community Q, the area favoring the alternate route. This structurally suppresses Community P participation while amplifying Community Q's voice.
Scheduling Sessions Inaccessibly → Community P Participation Failure
Due to inaccessible scheduling and location choices, few Community P residents are able to participa
Had sessions been scheduled outside work hours at accessible locations, Community P residents would have had a meaningful opportunity to participate, making the participation failure unlikely
Absence of alternative participation channels
Selection of locations inaccessible to Community P residents
Combination of work-hour scheduling + inaccessible locations + no virtual or written alternatives created a structurally exclusionary process sufficient to suppress Community P participation
Scope of Practice Boundary — Firm DBA Communications Department
Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments, including the communications department conducting the public outreach. This means the PE ethical obligations extend to the communications department's work.
The communications and public relations department within Firm DBA, while charged with conducting public outreach, remained bound by the professional ethical obligations of the licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles within Firm DBA, constraining the department from conducting engagement processes that violated those professional obligations even when directed by the client.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 60-3; BER Case 98-2; Certified Public Relations Professional Code of Ethics
Firm DBA has a department within its corporate structure that specializes in communications and public relations.
Throughout the public engagement phase of the project
Stakeholder Interest Balancing — Engineer M Escalation and Disassociation Decision
Engineer M must balance obligations to Community P's welfare, the City as client, Firm DBA as subconsultant partner, and the public interest in honest infrastructure planning, while taking measured and appropriate compliance action.
Engineer M was constrained to proceed advisedly, carefully, and sensitively in taking compliance action regarding Firm DBA's violations — including escalation to the City and potential external reporting — with a view to promoting the interests of all stakeholders to the extent possible, while not permitting this balancing obligation to indefinitely defer necessary corrective action when internal resolution failed.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case 88-6; BER Case 09-10
Throughout the escalation and compliance action process following identification of Firm DBA's violations
{'authority': 'State regulatory body with jurisdiction over PE licensure and ethical conduct', 'role_in_case': "Potential recipient of Engineer M's ethics complaint against Firm DBA"}
The state engineering licensure board is the appropriate authority to receive a report from Engineer M if Firm DBA and the City fail to correct the ethical violations in the public engagement report, serving as the regulatory backstop to prevent similar situations in the future.
{'type': 'regulatory_authority_over', 'target': 'Firm DBA Licensed PE Supervisors and Owners'}
{'type': 'report_recipient_from', 'target': 'Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer'}
Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board
reporting Firm DBA to the state's engineering licensure board may be necessary to prevent similar situations from happening in the future
Subconsultant Ethical Compliance Oversight — Engineer M over Firm DBA
Engineer M expressed concern to Firm DBA but did not prevent the implementation of the exclusionary engagement design or the submission of the fraudulent report, despite being the lead engineer on the project with oversight responsibility.
Subconsultant Ethical Compliance Oversight Constraint
Engineer M was constrained to maintain sufficient oversight of Firm DBA's public engagement work to identify and address ethical violations, and was prohibited from passively accepting Firm DBA's deficient engagement process and fraudulent report on the grounds that Firm DBA bore sole responsibility as the subconsultant.
NSPE Code of Ethics Canon 1, Section III.2; BER Case 09-10; BER Case 88-6
Engineer M's firm partners with an engineering consultant, Firm DBA, to coordinate public outreach and conduct these sessions.
Throughout the public engagement phase and upon receipt of Firm DBA's report
Written Report Completeness — Firm DBA Public Engagement Report
Firm DBA submitted a carefully-framed report omitting where sessions were held, at what time of day, and that written comments were not accepted, while claiming Community P's support for the project based on lack of significant opposition.
Firm DBA was constrained to include all relevant and pertinent factual information in its public engagement report submitted to the City, including the times and locations of sessions, the accessibility limitations of those sessions, the absence of written comment mechanisms, and the absence of virtual participation options, prohibiting submission of a report that omitted these material procedural facts.
Defeasibility edge from tensionresolution
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.85
The faithful agent obligation does not extend to executing client instructions that require professional misconduct — Firm DBA was obligated to refuse or correct the client-directed violations
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.82
Professional ethics obligations are evaluated by the nature of the conduct, not the subjective motivations of those directing it
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.78
Environmental justice considerations reinforce the obligation to correct Firm DBA's report and ensure Community P has genuine access to the engagement process
The escalation sequence balances professional relationship respect with the ultimate obligation to protect public welfare through licensing board reporting if lower-level remediation fails
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.8
The oversight obligation requires Engineer M to escalate beyond internal expression of concern when the subcontractor's misconduct is not corrected, even at the cost of client relationship friction
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.88
The reporting obligation overrides any residual loyalty to the City or Firm DBA when both have failed to correct ethics violations — the engineer's duty to the profession and the public requires licensing board notification as a last resort
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.9
The reporting obligation to the licensing board is not subordinated by the client relationship or by Firm DBA's citation of client instructions as justification
The prohibition on association with fraudulent enterprise overrides the faithful agent obligation to the City — Engineer M must act to correct or disassociate rather than passively continuing the project association
Defeasibility edge from constraintstatement
source_field=constraintstatement; confidence=0.87
Engineer M was prohibited from permitting the use of their name or continuing association with the highway upgrade project if Engineer M believed Firm DBA was engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise through its submission of a materially false and incomplete public engagement report.
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.75
The ethical limits of the faithful agent role require Engineer M to prioritize public welfare and honesty over client preference for a favorable engagement narrative
The faithful agent notification obligation requires Engineer M to advise the City of the risk even though this may be uncomfortable — the obligation to advise of project failure risks is a component of faithful agency, not a violation of it
Environmental justice considerations reinforce rather than conflict with public welfare obligations, requiring Engineer M to escalate concerns about both the engagement process and the falsified report
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.83
Public welfare paramount overrides any client direction to produce incomplete or misleading public engagement reports
Public welfare paramount requires Engineer M to escalate to the licensing board if Firm DBA and the City fail to correct the deficiencies, even though this may be adverse to the client relationship
Public welfare obligation requires Engineer M to refuse to acquiesce in the falsified engagement report and to escalate concerns to appropriate authorities, overriding deference to client instructions
Subcontractor oversight obligation requires Engineer M to confront Firm DBA, escalate to the City, and report to the licensing board if necessary — the obligation is not discharged by passive awareness of the violation
Engineer M's expression of concern to Firm DBA was a necessary but insufficient discharge of the oversight obligation — when Firm DBA declined to correct its conduct and submitted a falsified report, Engineer M's oversight obligation required escalation
source_field=tensionresolution; confidence=0.87
The prohibition on falsified public engagement reports is not subject to override by client direction — Firm DBA's position that it performed the work under the City's direction does not excuse the ethical violation
Public welfare paramount is the foundational basis for applying the ethics code to Firm DBA — the code's protective purpose would be undermined if PE-supervised firms could escape its requirements by characterizing their work as non-engineering
Client instructions to conduct exclusionary engagement do not override the obligation to design genuinely accessible processes for the affected community
Client direction is subordinate to professional ethics obligations — Firm DBA's PE supervisors and owners retain independent obligations that cannot be delegated to or overridden by the City
public engagement sessions before Firm DBA preparing and submitting misleading report
public engagement sessions (planning phase) before highway infrastructure project construction/upgrade
During the planning phase, the City requires a series of public engagement sessions to gather input from the affected community.
public engagement sessions (planning phase)
highway infrastructure project construction/upgrade
The City's citation of economic, political, and social considerations as justification for directing exclusionary public engagement does not render the procedural impropriety of those sessions ethically permissible — the constructive intent
The exclusion of Community P — a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened community — from accessible public engagement sessions, combined with the false claim of their support, represents a failure to give heightened co
The highway upgrade project routes through Community P, a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood, while public engagement sessions are held in Community Q — the alternate route — creating a pattern in whi
Engineer M has an obligation under NSPE Code section III.1.b to advise the City that the project will not be successful if it proceeds on the basis of Firm DBA's deficient and misleading public engagement report — the risk of later disclosu
Engineer M, having knowledge of Firm DBA's falsified public engagement report and having failed to obtain correction through direct engagement, bears an obligation to report Firm DBA's conduct to the state engineering licensure board
If Firm DBA and the City fail to correct the deficiencies in the public engagement report, Engineer M must report Firm DBA's conduct to the state engineering licensure board — the reporting obligation is triggered by Engineer M's knowledge
The public welfare of Community P residents — a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened community — is implicated by both the infrastructure project routing through their neighborhood and the systematic exclusion of the
Engineer M has a duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including Community P — and cannot treat the matter as closed after expressing concern to Firm DBA; Engineer M must escalate through the full confrontat
The City's citation of economic, political, and social considerations as justification for directing exclusionary public engagement does not render the resulting ethical violations permissible — the motivations behind the client directive d
Engineer M, as lead engineer of record who engaged Firm DBA as a subcontractor for public engagement services, bears an oversight obligation to ensure Firm DBA's work product complies with professional ethics standards, and must take affirm
Engineer M, as lead engineer of record, became aware of Firm DBA's exclusionary session design and was obligated to take affirmative action beyond expressing concern — including refusing to certify or submit the falsified report and escalat
Engineer M's faithful agent obligation to the City as client does not extend to acquiescing in or certifying a falsified public engagement report — the ethical limits of the faithful agent role require Engineer M to refuse to endorse the re
Engineer M must not permit the use of their name or continued association with the highway upgrade project in a manner that lends professional credibility to Firm DBA's fraudulent public engagement report — Engineer M's obligation to challe
Engineer M must follow a structured escalation sequence: first conferring with Firm DBA and its PE supervisors; then, if Firm DBA refuses correction, conferring with the City in Firm DBA's presence or with its knowledge; and finally, if the
Firm DBA's position that it performed the work under the direction of the City does not constitute an ethical justification for producing a misleading and incomplete public engagement report — the City's direction does not authorize Firm DB
Firm DBA prepared and submitted a public engagement report that omitted material procedural facts — session locations, times, and the prohibition on written comments — and falsely claimed Community P's support for the project based on manuf
The licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles at Firm DBA bear responsibility for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the public engagement report bearing on their professional work, and violated the honesty p
Firm DBA's report violated the honesty principle by issuing statements that were not objective and truthful — omitting material facts about session accessibility and falsely claiming Community P support without evidence
Firm DBA's claim of Community P's support for the project lacks an objective technical or evidentiary basis — it is derived from manufactured absence of opposition resulting from a systematically exclusionary engagement process rather than
Firm DBA's report failed to meet the objectivity standard by omitting material facts about session locations, times, and comment restrictions, and by making an unsupported claim of community support — the report was structured to support a
The licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles at Firm DBA bear ultimate professional accountability for the conduct of the communications and public relations department operating under their supervision, including
Firm DBA's omission of material facts about session locations, times, transit inaccessibility, and the prohibition on written comments from its public engagement report violated the transparency obligation by concealing from the City and ot
Because Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments and in ownership, the NSPE Code applies to Firm DBA's conduct in providing public relations and communication services, notwithstandin
Firm DBA's public engagement report violated the prohibition on falsified public engagement reports by omitting material facts about session locations, times, and the prohibition on written comments, and by falsely claiming Community P supp
Firm DBA designed public engagement sessions at times and locations inaccessible to Community P residents — during work hours, at venues far from the area and not accessible by public transit — and without written comment mechanisms or virt
The BER determined that the NSPE Code's paramount canon — holding public safety, health, and welfare above all other considerations — applies to Firm DBA because its PE supervisors and owners bear professional obligations that cannot be sus
Firm DBA's reliance on City leaders' instructions as justification for conducting exclusionary public engagement sessions and producing an omissive report does not constitute an ethical defense — client instructions to perform work in an et
The City was obligated to refrain from directing Firm DBA to produce a false or misleading public engagement report, and upon being informed of the report's deficiencies by Engineer M, to take corrective action rather than acquiescing in th
If the City decided to take no corrective action after Engineer M's escalation, Engineer M was obligated to consider and potentially fulfill the duty to report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board, to preve
If Firm DBA refused to correct the discrepancies in its public engagement report, Engineer M was obligated to escalate the matter to the City — with the knowledge and potential presence of Firm DBA — and to present the ethical obligations o
Engineer M was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including the historically underserved Community P — by taking affirmative action to address the false and incomplete public engagement report that e
Firm DBA was obligated to ensure that its public engagement report accurately and completely disclosed all material facts about the engagement process — including session locations, times, accessibility, and prohibition on written comments
Engineer M was obligated to refrain from permitting the use of their name or continuing professional association with Firm DBA if Engineer M believed Firm DBA was engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise through the submission of a mat
Engineer M was obligated to advise the City that the highway upgrade project would not be successful if it proceeded on the basis of Firm DBA's false and incomplete public engagement report, given the risk that material facts would later em
Engineer M was obligated to confer immediately with Firm DBA, state objections to the materially false and incomplete public engagement report, express all applicable ethical obligations under the NSPE Code, and ensure that the licensed PE
Engineer M Non-Association Fraudulent Enterprise — Firm DBA Project
Engineer M as lead engineer faced the decision of whether continued project association constituted implicit endorsement of Firm DBA's fraudulent reporting conduct.
Non-Association with Fraudulent Enterprise Constraint
Upon Engineer M's discovery of the deficiencies in Firm DBA's public engagement report and throughout the resolution process
City Client-Directed Procedural Manipulation of Engagement
From City's issuance of instructions to Firm DBA through submission of the outreach report
Client-Directed Procedural Manipulation State
City's explicit instruction to Firm DBA regarding the conduct of public engagement sessions
City leaders explicitly instructing Firm DBA to conduct public engagement sessions in a manner designed to limit Community P participation, citing economic, political, and social considerations
Client-Directed Procedural Manipulation — City Direction to Firm DBA
From the City's direction through correction of the process or project cancellation
A more unfavorable result would be anticipated if Firm DBA takes the position that it performed the work under the direction of the City and are, therefore, unwilling to make the corrections
The City's direction to Firm DBA regarding the conduct of the public engagement process
City acknowledges and corrects the procedural manipulation, or regulatory intervention
Firm DBA takes the position that it performed the work under the direction of the City, suggesting the City directed the deficient engagement process
Community P Historically Underserved Community Impact
From project inception through planning phase and public engagement period
Historically Underserved Community Impact State
Community P neighborhood and its relationship to the highway upgrade project
Engineer M's retention as lead engineer on a project routed through Community P, a formally characterized historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood
Engineer M Competing Duties Between Client Authority and Public Welfare
From Engineer M's awareness of the inequitable engagement process through the case facts
Engineer M's professional obligations as lead engineer on the project
Despite Engineer M's concerns, Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details
Engineer M becoming aware that the City-directed and Firm DBA-executed public engagement process is inequitable and that the resulting report misrepresents Community P's input, while remaining the lead engineer with overall project responsibility
Engineer M Ethical Dilemma Regarding Report Endorsement
From submission of Firm DBA's report through the case facts
Firm DBA submits a report claiming Community P's support for the project, citing a lack of significant opposition and comments in support of the project
Engineer M's decision regarding the misrepresentative public engagement report
Despite Engineer M's concerns, Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report
Firm DBA submitting a misrepresentative report claiming Community P support, placing Engineer M in a position of choosing between accepting the report as part of the project record or challenging it at potential cost to the client relationship and project continuity
Engineer M Professional Disassociation Decision
From Engineer M's recognition of the report's fraudulent character through resolution of the ethical violations or Engineer M's formal action
Engineer M must consider their involvement in the project as they shall not permit the use of their name or associate in business ventures with any person or firm that they believe is engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise
Professional Disassociation Decision State
Engineer M's continued association with the project given Firm DBA's ethical violations
Firm DBA corrects report, City takes corrective action, Engineer M withdraws, or Engineer M reports to licensure board
After this meeting, if the City decided to do nothing, Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board
Engineer M has an additional obligation to advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful
Engineer M's recognition that continued association with the project implicates them in Firm DBA's fraudulent and dishonest conduct
From the initiation of the BER review through the BER's determination that the Code applies to Firm DBA
The ethical requirements of Firm DBA must be clarified before establishing what actions are required by Engineer M
Firm DBA's obligation status under the NSPE Code of Ethics
BER determination that the Code applies to Firm DBA because licensed professional engineers hold supervisory and ownership roles
It would be difficult to believe that through their duties as licensed professional engineers, the Code would be irrelevant to the Firm's business dealings
Question raised about whether NSPE Code applies to a firm providing public relations and communication services rather than engineering design services
Firm DBA Fraudulent Public Engagement Report
From submission of the deficient report through correction, withdrawal, or regulatory intervention
Firm DBA's public engagement report submitted in connection with the infrastructure project affecting Community P
Correction of report discrepancies, or Engineer M's disassociation, or licensure board intervention
These actions likely violated the NSPE Code of Ethics regarding issuing statements in an objective and truthful manner, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omitting a material fact
Firm DBA issued a report omitting session locations, times, and written comment restrictions, and affirmatively claiming Community P supported the project without evidentiary basis
Firm DBA Inequitable Public Engagement Sessions
From the organization of public engagement sessions through submission of the outreach report
Firm DBA's public outreach process for the highway upgrade project
The area in which Firm DBA holds the public outreach sessions, Community Q, is an alternate route
Firm DBA organizing sessions at times and locations inaccessible to Community P, without written comment mechanisms or virtual participation options, and holding sessions in Community Q rather than Community P
Firm DBA Misrepresentative Public Engagement Report
From preparation and submission of the report through the case facts
Firm DBA prepares a carefully-framed report, omitting details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted
Firm DBA's submitted report on Community P public engagement
Firm DBA preparing and submitting a report that omits material facts about session timing, location, and lack of written comment mechanisms, while affirmatively claiming Community P support for the project
Historically Underserved Community Impact — Community P Project
Throughout the project planning, engagement, and decision-making phases
Community P's status as the primary affected community for the infrastructure project
Project completion with equitable engagement, or project cancellation
The result of going forward with the project could also have disastrous consequences
Infrastructure project sited in or routed through Community P, a historically underserved community, with engagement processes that excluded meaningful participation
Public Safety and Welfare at Risk from Misrepresented Community Input
From submission of the misrepresentative report through project routing decisions
Community P residents' welfare in relation to project routing decisions based on misrepresented public input
Submission of a report misrepresenting Community P support, creating a false evidentiary basis for routing decisions that could result in displacement of residents and disruption of local businesses in a historically underserved community
Public Safety at Risk — Project Proceeding on Fraudulent Basis
From identification of the report's fraudulent character through correction or project cancellation
The welfare of Community P and the public if the project proceeds based on the fraudulent engagement report
Report corrected, project cancelled, or regulatory intervention
If the facts come out later that relevant information was not disclosed in the report, the impact of such could be very negative
Project risks proceeding to implementation based on a misrepresentative public engagement record that does not reflect actual community input or support
Subconsultant Ethical Non-Compliance — Firm DBA
From Engineer M's identification of the report deficiencies through resolution or disassociation
Engineer M not only has the right to challenge the validity of the DBA report
Subconsultant Ethical Non-Compliance State
Firm DBA's conduct in producing and defending the deficient public engagement report
Firm DBA corrects discrepancies, or Engineer M escalates to City and/or licensure board
Should Firm DBA choose not to correct the discrepancies, Engineer M would need to also confer with the City
The BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA
Engineer M identified that Firm DBA's report violated professional ethical obligations regarding truthfulness, material omissions, and misrepresentation
Environmental Justice Consideration - Community P Infrastructure Burden
Public engagement session location selection
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits
The highway upgrade project routes through Community P, a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood, while public engagement sessions are held in Community Q — the alternate route — creating a pattern in which the community bearing the infrastructure burden is systematically excluded from the planning process
Engineer M's obligation to consider environmental justice requires recognition that Community P's historical disadvantage makes the combination of infrastructure burden and process exclusion a compounded injustice requiring professional advocacy
Environmental Justice Consideration in Infrastructure Engineering
Many comments are received that support the upgrade through the historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened neighborhood (Community P) and not through Community Q.
{'entity_type': 'Municipal government', 'authority': 'Project commissioning, routing decisions, engagement mandate', 'alleged_conduct': 'Directed exclusionary public engagement to favor Community Q routing'}
Retained Engineer M as lead engineer for the highway upgrade project; mandated public engagement sessions; city leaders allegedly directed Firm DBA to conduct engagement sessions in an exclusionary manner citing economic, political, and social considerations related to routing the project through Community Q rather than Community P.
{'type': 'client_to', 'target': 'Engineer M Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer'}
{'type': 'directed', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Outreach Engineering Consultant'}
{'type': 'public_accountability_to', 'target': 'Community P Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder'}
Engineer M is retained by the City as the lead engineer
the City requires a series of public engagement sessions
Engineer M Subconsultant Ethical Non-Compliance with Firm DBA
From Engineer M's expression of concern to Firm DBA through submission of the outreach report
Engineer M expresses concern to Firm DBA about the public outreach and session locations, but Firm DBA states that these practices are consistent with prior projects undertaken for the City
Engineer M's professional relationship with Firm DBA regarding the public engagement process
Firm DBA dismissing Engineer M's concerns about the public outreach process by citing prior City practice and City instructions, and proceeding to submit a misrepresentative report
Falsified Public Engagement Report Prohibition - Firm DBA Report Omissions and False Claims
Public engagement report submitted to the City
Firm DBA prepared and submitted a public engagement report that omitted material procedural facts — session locations, times, and the prohibition on written comments — and falsely claimed Community P's support for the project based on manufactured absence of opposition rather than genuine participation
The report's careful framing to omit barriers to participation and to characterize manufactured silence as community support constitutes a material misrepresentation of the engagement process that corrupts the planning decision
Falsified Public Engagement Report Prohibition
The prohibition on falsified reporting admits no balancing — client instructions do not authorize misrepresentation of public engagement results
Good Intent Does Not Cure Procedural Impropriety - City's Economic Rationale
City instructions regarding public engagement session design and location
The City's citation of economic, political, and social considerations as justification for directing exclusionary public engagement does not render the procedural impropriety of those sessions ethically permissible — the constructive intent behind the directive does not cure the exclusionary design or the falsified reporting
Procedural integrity in public engagement processes must be maintained regardless of the client's subjective intent — the City's economic and political motivations do not authorize the systematic exclusion of the affected community from the planning process
Good Intent Does Not Cure Procedural Impropriety
The principle that good intent does not cure procedural impropriety applies with particular force in public engagement processes, where procedural integrity is itself a substantive public welfare requirement
Honesty - Firm DBA PE Supervisors Responsibility for Accurate Reporting
Public engagement report content and submission
The licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles at Firm DBA bear responsibility for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the public engagement report bearing on their professional work, and violated the honesty principle by allowing or directing a report that omitted material facts and made unsupported claims of community support
Honesty requires that professional reports accurately represent the facts of the process described, including barriers to participation and the actual basis for conclusions about community support
Honesty obligation is not overridden by client instructions or prior practice — the PE supervisors were obligated to ensure the report accurately described the engagement process
Honesty in Professional Representations - Firm DBA Report Truthfulness Obligation
Firm DBA's public engagement report submitted for the highway upgrade project
The honesty principle requires that professional reports issued by PE-supervised firms be truthful and not misleading by omission or false assertion — Firm DBA's report violated this principle in multiple respects
Honesty obligations are not subject to override by client direction — the City's alleged direction to conduct exclusionary sessions does not authorize false claims of community support
Internal Escalation Exhausted — Engineer M Post-City Meeting
From the point at which the City declines to act after being informed of the violations through Engineer M's decision on external reporting
Engineer M's escalation pathway after Firm DBA and City fail to correct violations
Engineer M reports to state engineering licensure board, or alternative resolution is achieved
Although seemingly extreme, reporting Firm DBA to the state's engineering licensure board may be necessary to prevent similar situations from happening in the future
City decides to do nothing after being informed of Firm DBA's ethical violations by Engineer M
Objectivity - Firm DBA Report Lacks Objective Basis for Community Support Claim
Public engagement report conclusions regarding community support
Firm DBA's claim of Community P's support for the project lacks an objective technical or evidentiary basis — it is derived from manufactured absence of opposition resulting from a systematically exclusionary engagement process rather than from genuine community participation
Objectivity requires that professional conclusions be grounded in genuine evidence — a claim of community support derived from an exclusionary process that prevented the community from participating is not an objective finding
Objectivity obligation requires Firm DBA to accurately characterize the basis and limitations of its community support conclusion, including the accessibility barriers that prevented genuine Community P participation
Objectivity - Firm DBA Report Objectivity Obligation
Firm DBA's public engagement report and its characterization of Community P's position
Firm DBA's report failed to meet the objectivity standard by omitting material facts about session locations, times, and comment restrictions, and by making an unsupported claim of community support — the report was structured to support a predetermined conclusion rather than to objectively document the public engagement process
Objectivity requires that professional reports present facts completely and without selective omission designed to support a client-preferred conclusion — Firm DBA's report violated objectivity by omitting facts that would have revealed the exclusionary nature of the engagement process
Objectivity is not subject to override by client direction — the obligation to issue objective reports applies regardless of client preferences
Professional Accountability - Firm DBA PE Supervisors Responsibility for Department Conduct
Firm DBA communications department conduct on the public engagement project
The licensed professional engineers in supervisory and ownership roles at Firm DBA bear ultimate professional accountability for the conduct of the communications and public relations department operating under their supervision, including the department's exclusionary session design and falsified reporting
Professional accountability requires that PE supervisors at Firm DBA take responsibility for ensuring that all departments under their supervision comply with professional ethics standards, and that they cannot disclaim responsibility for misconduct by citing the department's non-engineering character
Professional accountability requires PE supervisors to acknowledge and correct the department's misconduct rather than ratifying it through submission of the falsified report
Transparency - Firm DBA Concealment of Session Accessibility Barriers
Firm DBA's omission of material facts about session locations, times, transit inaccessibility, and the prohibition on written comments from its public engagement report violated the transparency obligation by concealing from the City and other decision-makers the procedural barriers that prevented genuine Community P participation
Transparency requires that professional reports disclose all material procedural facts that would affect a decision-maker's assessment of the report's conclusions — omission of accessibility barriers that explain the low Community P participation rate is a material transparency failure
Transparency obligation requires disclosure of the procedural facts regardless of client preference for a favorable narrative
Universal Code Applicability - Firm DBA PE Supervision
Firm DBA's public engagement report and public relations services on the highway upgrade project
Because Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments and in ownership, the NSPE Code applies to Firm DBA's conduct in providing public relations and communication services, notwithstanding that those services are not engineering in the design, calculation, or judgment sense
The code applies universally to NSPE members and to firms under their supervision — the service-type distinction drawn in BER Case 60-3 under the old code no longer holds under the revised code's preamble requiring adherence to the highest principles of ethical conduct
Universal Code Applicability to PE-Supervised Firms
The Preamble of the Code of states that professional behavior requires adherence to the highest principles of ethical conduct. Therefore, the Code applies to Firm DBA.
No genuine conflict — the principle establishes that code applicability is determined by PE supervisory role, not service type
it would be a major error for NSPE to apply one standard of conduct to one set of NSPE members and another standard of conduct to another set of NSPE members
Benevolent Motive Does Not Cure Ethical Violation - City Economic and Political Rationale
City instructions regarding public engagement session design
The City's citation of economic, political, and social considerations as justification for directing exclusionary public engagement does not render the resulting ethical violations permissible — the motivations behind the client directive do not cure the professional misconduct of the engineers who implemented it
Even if the City's motivations were genuinely aimed at beneficial economic or social outcomes, the means employed — exclusionary engagement and falsified reporting — constitute ethical violations that are not cured by the underlying intent
Benevolent Motive Does Not Cure Ethical Violation
Client Direction Does Not Authorize Ethical Violation - Firm DBA City Direction
Firm DBA's refusal to correct discrepancies on the grounds that work was performed under City direction
Firm DBA's position that it performed the work under the direction of the City does not constitute an ethical justification for producing a misleading and incomplete public engagement report — the City's direction does not authorize Firm DBA's PE supervisors and owners to violate their professional ethics obligations
A more unfavorable result would be anticipated if Firm DBA takes the position that it performed the work under the direction of the City and is therefore unwilling to make corrections — this position is ethically untenable because client direction does not authorize ethical violations
Client Direction Does Not Authorize Ethical Violation
Environmental Justice Consideration - Community P Exclusion
The public engagement process for the highway upgrade project affecting Community P
The exclusion of Community P — a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened community — from accessible public engagement sessions, combined with the false claim of their support, represents a failure to give heightened consideration to the disproportionate burdens that community already bears and a further marginalization of that community in the project planning process
The environmental justice principle requires engineers to ensure that historically underserved communities are not further marginalized through inaccessible engagement processes — the false claim of Community P's support without evidence compounds the injustice of their exclusion
Firm DBA provided a report that omitted details about where the sessions were held and at what time of day the sessions were held, including not identifying that written comments were not accepted. Additionally, Firm DBA's report claimed Community P supported the project, without any evidence to support that claim.
Faithful Agent Project Success Risk Notification - Engineer M City Notification
Engineer M's advisory obligation to the City regarding the project success risk created by Firm DBA's report
Engineer M has an obligation under NSPE Code section III.1.b to advise the City that the project will not be successful if it proceeds on the basis of Firm DBA's deficient and misleading public engagement report — the risk of later disclosure of the report's deficiencies could have very negative consequences for the project and the City
The faithful agent obligation encompasses non-technical project failure risks — Engineer M must advise the City that proceeding on a fraudulent public engagement foundation creates regulatory, legal, and reputational risks that threaten project success
Faithful Agent Notification Obligation for Project Success Risk
Falsified Public Engagement Report Prohibition - Firm DBA Report
Firm DBA's public engagement report submitted in connection with the highway upgrade project
Firm DBA's public engagement report violated the prohibition on falsified public engagement reports by omitting material facts about session locations, times, and the prohibition on written comments, and by falsely claiming Community P supported the project without any evidentiary basis
The report's omissions and false claim of community support constitute violations of the NSPE Code provisions regarding objective and truthful statements, deceptive acts, misrepresentation of fact, and omission of material facts
Inclusive Public Engagement Design Obligation - Firm DBA Session Design Failures
Public engagement session design and execution
Firm DBA designed public engagement sessions at times and locations inaccessible to Community P residents — during work hours, at venues far from the area and not accessible by public transit — and without written comment mechanisms or virtual participation options, systematically excluding the community most affected by the project
The obligation to design accessible engagement processes required Firm DBA to consider Community P's specific accessibility constraints — work schedules, transit access, geographic distance — and to provide multiple participation channels including written comments and virtual options
Inclusive Public Engagement Design Obligation
Public Welfare Paramount - Community P Displacement and Exclusion
Highway upgrade project routing through Community P
Public engagement process design and reporting
The public welfare of Community P residents — a historically underserved, underrepresented, and overburdened community — is implicated by both the infrastructure project routing through their neighborhood and the systematic exclusion of their voices from the mandated public engagement process
In this context, public welfare encompasses not only physical safety but also the procedural right of affected communities to participate meaningfully in infrastructure decisions that may displace residents and disrupt local businesses — and the substantive right not to have that participation falsely characterized
Client Direction Does Not Authorize Ethical Violation - City Instructions to Firm DBA
City instructions regarding public engagement session design and reporting
Firm DBA's reliance on City leaders' instructions as justification for conducting exclusionary public engagement sessions and producing an omissive report does not constitute an ethical defense — client instructions to perform work in an ethically impermissible manner do not authorize compliance
The principle that client direction does not authorize ethical violations applies here: Firm DBA's PE supervisors retained an independent obligation to refuse instructions that required falsified reporting and exclusionary engagement design
Non-Acquiescence to Unsafe Client Directives
Mandatory Competitor Misconduct Reporting - Engineer M's Obligation to Report Firm DBA
Firm DBA's falsified public engagement report and exclusionary session design
The reporting obligation applies when Engineer M has direct knowledge of professional misconduct by another engineering firm that has not been corrected after internal engagement — the obligation runs to the profession and the public, not merely to the client
Mandatory Competitor Misconduct Reporting Obligation
Public Welfare Paramount - Engineer M Escalation Obligation
Engineer M's response to Firm DBA's deficient and misleading public engagement report
Engineer M has a duty to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including Community P — and cannot treat the matter as closed after expressing concern to Firm DBA; Engineer M must escalate through the full confrontation-client-licensing board sequence to protect the public interest
As in BER Case 88-6, where an engineer who failed to escalate beyond an administrator was found to have violated public welfare obligations, Engineer M cannot treat a single expression of concern as discharging the paramount public welfare duty
In BER Case 88-6... The BER found that Engineer A did not fulfill ethical obligations of holding paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Public Welfare Paramount - Firm DBA Code Applicability
Firm DBA's public engagement report omitting material facts and falsely claiming Community P support
The BER determined that the NSPE Code's paramount canon — holding public safety, health, and welfare above all other considerations — applies to Firm DBA because its PE supervisors and owners bear professional obligations that cannot be suspended merely because the services rendered are communication and public relations rather than technical engineering
Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight - Engineer M Oversight of Firm DBA
Engineer M's oversight responsibility for Firm DBA's public engagement report
Engineer M, as lead engineer of record who engaged Firm DBA as a subcontractor for public engagement services, bears an oversight obligation to ensure Firm DBA's work product complies with professional ethics standards, and must take affirmative action — including confrontation, client escalation, and licensing board reporting — when Firm DBA's report is found to be materially deficient and misleading
Engineer M's professional responsibility to the client and the public is not discharged by delegation to Firm DBA — the discovery of Firm DBA's ethics violations creates a direct obligation on Engineer M to act
Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight Obligation
the BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA. Engineer M should state their objections with Firm DBA and express all ethical obligations under the Code.
Engineer M not only has the right to challenge the validity of the DBA report but also must consider their involvement in the project
Engineer M should state their objections with Firm DBA and express all ethical obligations under the Code.
the BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA.
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits - Engineer M's Bounded Duty to City
Engineer M's response to City instructions and Firm DBA's falsified report
Engineer M's faithful agent obligation to the City as client does not extend to acquiescing in or certifying a falsified public engagement report — the ethical limits of the faithful agent role require Engineer M to refuse to endorse the report and to escalate concerns when Firm DBA declines to correct its conduct
The faithful agent obligation is bounded by professional ethics — Engineer M may not execute the client's preferred narrative about community support when doing so requires certifying a materially false professional report
Mandatory Competitor Misconduct Reporting - Engineer M Licensing Board Report
Engineer M's potential obligation to report Firm DBA to the state engineering licensure board
If Firm DBA and the City fail to correct the deficiencies in the public engagement report, Engineer M must report Firm DBA's conduct to the state engineering licensure board — the reporting obligation is triggered by Engineer M's knowledge of Firm DBA's violations of the ethics code, and the fact that Firm DBA is a subcontractor rather than a competitor does not diminish the reporting obligation
The reporting obligation to the licensing board is the terminal step in the escalation sequence — it is triggered when confrontation with Firm DBA and the City have both failed to produce correction, and it is necessary to prevent similar situations from happening in the future
Professional Association Disengagement - Engineer M Name Use Prohibition
Engineer M's continued association with the highway upgrade project and Firm DBA's fraudulent report
Engineer M must not permit the use of their name or continued association with the highway upgrade project in a manner that lends professional credibility to Firm DBA's fraudulent public engagement report — Engineer M's obligation to challenge the report and escalate to correction or reporting is grounded in part in the prohibition on associating with dishonest enterprise
NSPE Code section II.1.d prohibits engineers from permitting use of their name or associating in business ventures with firms engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise — Firm DBA's production of a materially misleading public engagement report triggers this prohibition
Professional Association Disengagement Obligation for Fraudulent Enterprise
Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight - Engineer M's Obligation Regarding Firm DBA
Firm DBA's public engagement session design and reporting
Engineer M, as lead engineer of record, became aware of Firm DBA's exclusionary session design and was obligated to take affirmative action beyond expressing concern — including refusing to certify or submit the falsified report and escalating to appropriate authorities when Firm DBA declined to correct its conduct
Engineer M Non-Association Fraudulent Enterprise Firm DBA
Firm DBA submitted a public engagement report that omitted material facts about session accessibility and falsely claimed Community P supported the project; Engineer M is the lead engineer of record on the highway upgrade project.
Engineer M (Lead Infrastructure Project Engineer)
Non-Association with Fraudulent Enterprise Obligation
Engineer M was obligated to refrain from permitting the use of their name or continuing professional association with Firm DBA if Engineer M believed Firm DBA was engaged in fraudulent or dishonest enterprise through the submission of a materially false and incomplete public engagement report.
Upon Engineer M's discovery of the material omissions and false claims in Firm DBA's report
Escalating Confrontation Obligation - Engineer M Escalation Sequence
Engineer M's response to Firm DBA's deficient public engagement report and the City's potential failure to act
Engineer M must follow a structured escalation sequence: first conferring with Firm DBA and its PE supervisors; then, if Firm DBA refuses correction, conferring with the City in Firm DBA's presence or with its knowledge; and finally, if the City does nothing, reporting Firm DBA to the state engineering licensure board
Each escalation step is a necessary predicate to the next — Engineer M cannot skip to licensing board reporting without first exhausting the confrontation and client escalation steps, but also cannot treat an unanswered initial confrontation as a discharged obligation
Escalating Confrontation Obligation for Subcontractor Ethics Violations
Should Firm DBA choose not to correct the discrepancies, Engineer M would need to also confer with the City (with the knowledge and potential presence of Firm DBA) and have a discussion of the ethical obligations of all involved. After this meeting, if the City decided to do nothing, Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board.
Engineer M Project Success Notification City Highway Upgrade
Engineer M identified that Firm DBA's public engagement report contained material omissions and false claims; proceeding on this basis risked project failure and public harm if the facts later emerged.
Engineer M was obligated to advise the City that the highway upgrade project would not be successful if it proceeded on the basis of Firm DBA's false and incomplete public engagement report, given the risk that material facts would later emerge and cause significant negative consequences for the project.
If the facts come out later that relevant information was not disclosed in the report, the impact of such could be very negative. Again, Engineer M has an additional obligation to advise their clients or employers when they believe a project will not be successful as stated in Code section III.1.b.
Upon Engineer M's discovery of the deficiencies in Firm DBA's report and before the project advanced further
City Municipal Infrastructure Client Non-Direction Fraudulent Report
City leaders allegedly directed Firm DBA to hold sessions in Community Q rather than Community P; the City is the client with authority to require correction of the public engagement report.
The City was obligated to refrain from directing Firm DBA to produce a false or misleading public engagement report, and upon being informed of the report's deficiencies by Engineer M, to take corrective action rather than acquiescing in the continuation of the misrepresentation.
Throughout the public engagement process and upon notification by Engineer M of the report's deficiencies
Engineer M Licensure Board Reporting Firm DBA After City Inaction
After internal escalation to both Firm DBA and the City without corrective response, Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions — including material omissions and false claims in the public engagement report — to the state licensure board.
Licensure Board Reporting Obligation for Procurement Violations
If the City decided to take no corrective action after Engineer M's escalation, Engineer M was obligated to consider and potentially fulfill the duty to report Firm DBA's ethical violations to the state engineering licensure board, to prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
After this meeting, if the City decided to do nothing, Engineer M must decide whether to report Firm DBA's actions to the state's engineering licensure board. Although seemingly extreme, reporting Firm DBA to the state's engineering licensure board may be necessary to prevent similar situations from happening in the future.
After the City's decision to take no corrective action following Engineer M's escalation
Engineer M Subcontractor Ethical Compliance Oversight Firm DBA
Firm DBA's public engagement report omitted material facts and made unsupported claims of community support; Engineer M is the lead engineer of record and retained Firm DBA as a subcontractor.
Engineer M was obligated to confer immediately with Firm DBA, state objections to the materially false and incomplete public engagement report, express all applicable ethical obligations under the NSPE Code, and ensure that the licensed PE supervisors and owners of Firm DBA were involved in those discussions as the parties bearing ultimate responsibility for ethical compliance.
The BER recommends Engineer M to confer immediately with Firm DBA. Engineer M should state their objections with Firm DBA and express all ethical obligations under the Code. The licensed professional engineers of Firm DBA, because of their supervisory and ownership roles, should be involved in these discussions as they have the ultimate responsibility to see that ethical practices are followed.
Immediately upon Engineer M's discovery of the ethical violations in Firm DBA's report
Should Firm DBA acknowledge their ethical obligations after being confronted by Engineer M, a more immediate resolution to the issues may be realized and Firm DBA could correct the discrepancies.
{'license': 'Licensed Professional Engineers', 'position': 'Supervisory and ownership roles across all departments of Firm DBA'}
The licensed professional engineers holding supervisory and ownership roles at Firm DBA bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring the firm's reports comply with the NSPE Code of Ethics and must be involved in discussions with Engineer M to correct report discrepancies.
{'type': 'accountable_to', 'target': 'State Engineering Licensure Board'}
{'type': 'employed_by', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Relations Subcontractor'}
{'type': 'peer_obligation_to', 'target': 'Engineer M'}
PE-Supervised Public Relations Firm Principal
The licensed professional engineers of Firm DBA, because of their supervisory and ownership roles, should be involved in these discussions as they have the ultimate responsibility to see that ethical practices are followed
Firm DBA has licensed professional engineers in charge or in supervisory roles of all departments in the firm as well as ownership
Engineer M Graduated Escalation City After Firm DBA Non-Compliance
Firm DBA may take the position that it performed work under City direction and refuse to make corrections; Engineer M must then escalate to the City before reporting to the licensure board.
Graduated Escalation to Client After Subcontractor Non-Compliance Obligation
If Firm DBA refused to correct the discrepancies in its public engagement report, Engineer M was obligated to escalate the matter to the City — with the knowledge and potential presence of Firm DBA — and to present the ethical obligations of all parties before proceeding to external regulatory reporting.
After Firm DBA's refusal to correct discrepancies, and before or in conjunction with external reporting
{'license': 'Professional Engineer (implied by lead engineer role on public infrastructure)', 'specialty': 'Public infrastructure engineering', 'concern_raised': True, 'escalation_taken': False}
Retained by the City as lead engineer on the highway upgrade project; expressed concern to Firm DBA about inaccessible public engagement sessions but did not escalate further when concerns were dismissed; bears responsibility for oversight of Firm DBA's outreach activities and the accuracy of reports submitted to the City.
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'City Municipal Infrastructure Client'}
{'type': 'public_responsibility', 'target': 'Community P Historically Underserved Community Stakeholder'}
{'type': 'subcontractor_oversight', 'target': 'Firm DBA Public Outreach Engineering Consultant'}
Engineer M is retained by the City as the lead engineer on a major public infrastructure project
Engineer M Safety Obligation Public Welfare Highway Upgrade Community P
Community P is the historically underserved community through which the highway upgrade is proposed to run; Firm DBA's report excluded them from meaningful participation and falsely claimed their support; Engineer M has a paramount duty to protect public welfare.
Engineer M was obligated to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public — including the historically underserved Community P — by taking affirmative action to address the false and incomplete public engagement report that excluded Community P from meaningful participation in the highway upgrade project affecting their neighborhood.
Throughout the project, and specifically upon discovery of Community P's exclusion and the false claims in Firm DBA's report
Firm DBA Public Engagement Report Completeness Accuracy Highway Upgrade
Firm DBA submitted a public engagement report for the highway upgrade project that omitted session location and time details, failed to disclose that written comments were not accepted, and falsely claimed Community P supported the project without evidence.
Firm DBA (Public Outreach Engineering Consultant / Public Relations Subcontractor)
Public Engagement Report Completeness and Accuracy Obligation
Firm DBA was obligated to ensure that its public engagement report accurately and completely disclosed all material facts about the engagement process — including session locations, times, accessibility, and prohibition on written comments — and to refrain from claiming Community P supported the project without evidentiary basis.
pertinent information was missing from the report. By this reasoning, Engineer M not only has the right to challenge the validity of the DBA report