BER 07-10 Modified Barn Collapse Risk State
From Engineer A learning of the extension through written notification to new owner and town action
Engineer A was concerned that the modified structure could be in danger of collapse due to severe snow loads.
Modified barn structure with removed columns and footings creating collapse risk under severe snow loads
Written notification to new owner and town taking remedial action
Engineer A should also have notified the new owner in writing about the perceived deficiency.
Jones removed portions of columns and footings supporting the roof as part of barn extension, creating snow load collapse risk
BER 17-3 Systemic Tract Home Design Defect State
From Engineer A's identification of the under-designed beam through notification of building officials, homeowners, and community associations
Engineer A also observed that, since the residence was a tract residence, there were other identical designs in the subdivision.
Systemic Design Defect Beyond Immediate Project Scope State
Under-designed structural beam identified in one tract residence with identical designs in multiple other subdivision homes
Notification of local building officials, individual homeowners, and homeowners'/community civic association
Engineer A had ethical obligations under the NSPE Code of Ethics beyond providing the report to the retaining insurance company.
Engineer A had further responsibilities to take additional steps, including contacting local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association
Engineer A observed that the residence was a tract residence with identical designs in the subdivision, meaning the structural defect likely existed in multiple homes
BER 19-10 County Building Official Non-Response State
From Engineer A's phone call to county building official through the period requiring escalation to supervisory authorities
The county building official did not return Engineer A's phone call.
Regulatory Authority Inaction on Reported Safety Risk State
County building official's failure to respond to Engineer A's structural safety notification
Escalation to supervisor of county official, fire marshal, or other agency with jurisdiction
Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter by working with Client B and by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction
County building official did not return Engineer A's phone call regarding structurally unstable building
BER 19-10 Structurally Unstable Building Safety Risk State
From Engineer A's preliminary investigation through remediation or regulatory intervention
Engineer A observed the building to be structurally unstable.
Structurally unstable building with potential for collapse due to insufficient lateral restraint
Physical bracing of building or regulatory intervention requiring structural remediation
Engineer A believed collapse of the building was a danger.
Engineer A recommended to the owners that they should brace the building to prevent its collapse.
Engineer A observed building to be structurally unstable with sagging roof and outward-leaning walls following construction modifications
BER 98-5 Politically Conditioned Safety Compliance State
From chairman's conditional proposal through Engineer A's refusal or escalation
Building occupants subject to grandfathered code
The chairman indicated a willingness to hire additional code inspectors, if Engineer A will concur with a proposed ordinance that would permit buildings already under construction to be 'grandfathered' under the older code requirements.
Politically Conditioned Safety Compliance State
City council chairman's conditional offer of additional inspectors contingent on Engineer A endorsing grandfathering ordinance
Engineer A's refusal of the conditional arrangement and refusal to sign inadequate inspection reports
The Board determined that it was not ethical either for Engineer A to agree to concur with the chairman's proposal or to sign inadequate inspection reports.
Chairman indicated willingness to hire additional code inspectors only if Engineer A would concur with proposed ordinance permitting buildings under construction to be grandfathered under older, less protective code requirements
BER 98-5 Resource Constrained Inspection Program State
From implementation of budget cuts through resolution of staffing adequacy
Engineer A, a PE responsible for the City's building inspection program, was pressed between reductions in staff due to budget cuts and implementation of new, more rigid code requirements which greatly enhanced and protected the public's health and safety.
City building inspection program facing staff reductions due to budget cuts while implementing more rigorous code requirements
Adequate staffing restored through legitimate means or alternative compliance pathway identified
Reductions in staff due to budget cuts coinciding with implementation of new, more rigid code requirements
In BER Case 07-10, the Board was faced with a case in which Engineer A had designed and built a barn with horse stalls on his property
Engineer A should also have notified the new owner in writing about the perceived deficiency
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analogical reasoning about Engineer Intern A's reporting obligations
Cited as precedent establishing that an engineer who identifies a structural safety concern must notify relevant parties in writing, not merely verbally, even after the engineer's direct connection to the project has ended
In BER Case 17-3, Engineer A was a professional engineer and registered architect with extensive design and forensic engineering experience
Engineer A had ethical obligations under the NSPE Code of Ethics beyond providing the report to the retaining insurance company
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analogical reasoning about the scope of Engineer Intern A's disclosure obligations
Cited as precedent establishing that an engineer who discovers a systemic design defect affecting multiple structures has ethical obligations beyond reporting to the retaining client, including contacting building officials, individual owners, and community associations
An illustration of how the Board has addressed this issue can be found in BER Case 19-10
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analogical reasoning about Engineer Intern A's escalation obligations
Cited as precedent establishing that an engineer who identifies a structural safety concern has an obligation to continue pursuing resolution by contacting supervisors and other agencies having jurisdiction, even when collapse is not imminent
Similarly, in BER Case 98-5, Engineer A, a PE responsible for the City's building inspection program, was pressed between reductions in staff due to budget cuts and implementation of new, more rigid code requirements
The Board determined that it was not ethical either for Engineer A to agree to concur with the chairman's proposal or to sign inadequate inspection reports
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analogical reasoning about the integrity of inspection reporting obligations
Cited as precedent establishing that an engineer responsible for a public inspection program may not agree to compromise inspection standards or sign inadequate inspection reports, even under institutional or political pressure
From at least five years prior to Engineer Intern A's discovery through the present, as the defect remains unaddressed in the full supervisory chain
an inspector under the supervision of Engineer Intern A had failed to report a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member
Concrete bridge member with visibly obvious defect unreported for at least five years
Not yet terminated — defect has been reported to Engineer B but full historical scope has not been disclosed
the same inspector had failed to report the same defect for at least five years
Inspector's initial failure to report the visibly obvious defect in the first inspection cycle where it was present
Bridge Inspection Reporting Standard - FHWA/AASHTO
Federal Highway Administration, AASHTO, state DOT regulatory frameworks
Federal and State Bridge Inspection Documentation Requirements
inspector under the supervision of Engineer Intern A had failed to report a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member
Engineer Intern A as inspection supervisor; Engineer B as DOT director overseeing the bridge inspection program
Establishes the professional and regulatory obligation to report all observed defects in bridge inspection reports, grounding the ethical significance of the inspector's five-year failure to document a visibly obvious concrete member defect and Engineer Intern A's supervisory responsibility
CausalLink_Inspector Omits Defect Report
CausalLink_Intern Conducts Retrospective
CausalLink_Intern Foregoes Further Escala
CausalLink_Intern Reports Defect Partiall
{'license': 'Elected official', 'specialty': 'Municipal legislative authority'}
Offered to hire additional code inspectors in exchange for Engineer A's concurrence with a grandfathering ordinance allowing buildings under construction to be exempt from new code requirements; Board found this arrangement unethical.
{'type': 'political_pressure_on', 'target': 'Engineer A Building Inspection Program PE BER 98-5'}
The chairman indicated a willingness to hire additional code inspectors, if Engineer A will concur with a proposed ordinance that would permit buildings already under construction to be 'grandfathered' under the older code requirements
Client B Building Safety Investigation Client BER 19-10
{'license': 'N/A', 'specialty': 'Property owner or insurer retaining forensic engineering services'}
Retained Engineer A to investigate fire origin and cause; received Engineer A's structural safety warning; subject to engineer's escalation obligations to public authorities.
{'type': 'engineer', 'target': 'Engineer A Forensic Building Investigation Engineer BER 19-10'}
Engineer A was hired by Client B to conduct a building investigation to determine the origin and cause of a fire resulting in financial loss
Complete Unfiltered Upward Reporting Violated By Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection
Bridge inspection program in which Engineer Intern A discovered both a current defect and a five-year history of the same defect being missed by a supervised inspector; Engineer Intern A reported only the current defect to supervising PE Engineer B.
Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation
Engineer Intern A was obligated to report to Engineer B not only the current bridge defect but also the material fact that the same visibly obvious defect had been missed by the same inspector for at least five consecutive years, so that Engineer B could make an informed determination about the scope of corrective action and the systemic adequacy of the inspection program.
Engineer Intern A reported the defect to Engineer B but did not report the fact that the defect had been visibly obvious for at least five years.
At the time Engineer Intern A reported the current defect to Engineer B — contemporaneously with or immediately following the historical records review
Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years and discovered that the same inspector had failed to report the same defect for at least five years.
Complete Upward Reporting Constraint Engineer Intern A Five Year Pattern
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective review of inspection records and photographs that the same visibly obvious bridge defect had been present and unreported for at least five years, but reported only the current defect to Engineer B, constituting incomplete upward disclosure of a systemic pattern.
Systemic Pattern Upward Disclosure Constraint
Engineer Intern A was required to disclose to Engineer B not only the current bridge defect but also the five-year pattern of systematic non-reporting of the same visibly obvious defect, and was prohibited from omitting the historical pattern from the report regardless of any personal assessment of its materiality or urgency implications.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Professional Report Integrity Standard; BER Case analysis of present case
Engineer Intern A failed to report the material information that the visibly obvious defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years.
At the time of reporting the bridge defect to Engineer B
Engineer Intern A had a responsibility to report all material facts related to the visibly obvious defect.
Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation Invoked Present Case Discussion
Report to Engineer B about visibly obvious bridge defect
Intern Epistemic Humility and Materiality Deference Obligation
Engineer Intern A reported the current defect but omitted the material contextual fact that the defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years, constituting an incomplete upward report
The obligation to report all material facts without filtering applies with particular force to interns, who must recognize that contextual and historical information — even if seemingly mitigating — must be included in upward reports
The complete reporting obligation required disclosure of the five-year inspection failure history regardless of the intern's assessment of its effect on urgency
Engineer Intern A failed to report the material information that the visibly obvious defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years
Engineer Intern A had a responsibility to report all material facts related to the visibly obvious defect
Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation Violated By Engineer Intern A
Upward report to Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE
Possible protective instinct toward subordinate inspector
Uncertainty about scope of reporting obligation as an intern
Engineer Intern A reported the current bridge defect to Engineer B but omitted the material fact that the same defect had been visibly obvious and unreported for at least five years, thereby depriving Engineer B of information necessary to assess the severity of the systemic inspection failure and determine appropriate remedial action
The five-year history of missed inspections is not merely background context — it is material information that transforms the report from a routine defect notification into evidence of a systemic inspection program failure; omitting it renders the report incomplete and potentially misleading
Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection Program Engineer Intern
Engineer Intern A reported the defect to Engineer B but did not report the fact that the defect had been visibly obvious for at least five years
The materiality of the five-year history to Engineer B's ability to assess and respond to the situation required its disclosure; no competing consideration justifies its omission
It was not ethical for Engineer Intern A to fail to report to Engineer B that the defect had been missed for at least five years.
Beyond the Board's finding that Engineer Intern A's failure to report the five-year non-reporting pattern was unethical, the omission constitutes more than mere incompleteness — it functionally operated as a material misrepresentation. By reporting the defect in isolation, Engineer Intern A implicitly framed the failure as a singular, recent oversight rather than a systemic, multi-year breakdown. Engineer B, receiving only the current defect report, had no basis to question the duration or pattern of the failure and would reasonably have treated it as an isolated incident requiring routine remediation. This selective framing satisfies the conditions for a material omission under Code provision III.3.a, which prohibits statements containing omissions that leave a false impression, regardless of whether the omission was intended to deceive. The ethical violation therefore carries the weight of active misrepresentation, not merely incomplete disclosure, because the partial report affirmatively shaped Engineer B's understanding of the situation in a way that diverged from the facts Engineer Intern A actually possessed.
The Board's conclusion that Engineer Intern A acted unethically applies with full force despite Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status. The NSPE Code's paramount obligation to hold public safety above all other considerations is not conditioned on licensure; it attaches to any individual who participates in a professional engineering program affecting public welfare. Engineer Intern A was not a passive bystander but an active participant in a federally relevant bridge inspection program, exercising supervisory authority over the inspector whose non-reporting pattern was discovered. That supervisory role, combined with Engineer Intern A's demonstrated capability to conduct the retrospective five-year review, establishes that Engineer Intern A possessed both the authority and the knowledge necessary to trigger the reporting obligation. The argument that intern status diminishes ethical culpability is further undermined by the fact that the obligation at issue — reporting known facts upward to a supervising PE — is precisely the kind of obligation that requires no independent professional judgment or licensed competence to fulfill. Engineer Intern A needed only to transmit what was already known, not to interpret or certify it. Unlicensed status therefore provides no ethical shelter for the omission.
The Board's finding, while correctly identifying Engineer Intern A's ethical failure, does not fully resolve the question of whether Engineer Intern A bore an independent obligation to escalate the inspector's systematic non-reporting as a programmatic integrity issue distinct from the defect report itself. The five-year pattern of non-reporting by a supervised inspector is not merely a historical footnote to the current defect — it is evidence of a potential systemic failure in the bridge inspection program that may implicate other bridges, other inspectors, and the adequacy of the program's oversight protocols. Under the principle of Systemic Failure Escalation, Engineer Intern A's obligation extended beyond informing Engineer B of the duration of the specific defect to flagging the inspector's conduct as a pattern requiring independent investigation. Reporting the five-year history to Engineer B would have been necessary but not necessarily sufficient: if Engineer Intern A recognized the pattern as systemic rather than isolated, the ethical obligation under Code provisions I.1 and I.6 arguably required Engineer Intern A to ensure that the escalation path was adequate to address the full scope of the discovered failure, not merely the single bridge in question. This dimension of the obligation was not addressed by the Board and represents a significant analytical gap in the case's resolution.
A critical nuance the Board did not address is the tension between Engineer Intern A's genuine epistemic limitations as an unlicensed intern and the unconditional nature of the upward reporting obligation. If Engineer Intern A believed in good faith that the five-year history was not material — perhaps reasoning that the defect's current existence was the operative safety concern and that its historical duration was a matter for Engineer B to investigate independently — this belief, however incorrect, raises the question of whether a good-faith but mistaken materiality judgment can partially mitigate the ethical violation. The answer under the NSPE Code is that it cannot fully excuse the omission, but it does bear on the character analysis. The Intern Epistemic Humility principle counsels interns to defer materiality judgments to supervising engineers — but that principle, properly understood, cuts against Engineer Intern A's omission rather than in favor of it: precisely because Engineer Intern A lacked the competence to assess the significance of the five-year pattern, the obligation was to transmit all discovered facts to Engineer B and allow the licensed PE to make the materiality determination. The intern's epistemic humility argument thus collapses into a reaffirmation of the complete upward reporting obligation rather than a defense against it. The Board's conclusion is therefore correct, but the reasoning should explicitly foreclose the good-faith materiality judgment defense to prevent its misapplication in future cases involving supervised interns.
The Board's conclusion focuses exclusively on Engineer Intern A's ethical failure, but the case also implicates Engineer B's supervisory obligations in a way that, while not redistributing Engineer Intern A's culpability, identifies a secondary ethical dimension the Board left unexamined. Upon receiving a report of a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member from a supervised intern, a PE exercising responsible charge over a bridge inspection program bears an active inquiry obligation — not merely a passive receipt function. The defect's visibility and the fact that it was discovered through a review of an inspector's reports should have prompted Engineer B to ask whether the defect had been present in prior inspections, particularly given that Engineer Intern A had conducted a retrospective review. Engineer B's failure to ask that question does not diminish Engineer Intern A's independent obligation to volunteer the five-year history, but it does suggest that the ethical failure in this case has a dual character: Engineer Intern A failed to report completely, and Engineer B failed to supervise actively. Treating the case as solely Engineer Intern A's failure risks creating a supervisory model in which PEs in responsible charge are relieved of probing inquiry obligations whenever a subordinate's report appears facially complete. The NSPE Code's responsible charge standard, combined with the public safety paramount obligation, requires more of Engineer B than passive acceptance of an intern's partial report.
Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status does not diminish ethical culpability for the incomplete disclosure. Participation in a public safety inspection program — particularly one involving bridge infrastructure where defects can cause catastrophic harm — imposes full ethical obligations regardless of licensure. The NSPE Code's mandate to hold public safety paramount (Section I.1) is not conditioned on professional licensure; it applies to all persons operating within the engineering profession's sphere of practice. Engineer Intern A was not a passive bystander but an active participant who conducted a retrospective five-year review, confirmed a pattern of systematic non-reporting, and then made a deliberate choice about what to disclose. That deliberate choice is an ethical act subject to ethical evaluation. The unlicensed status is relevant to the scope of independent professional judgment Engineer Intern A may exercise, but it is not a shield against the obligation to transmit complete and accurate information upward to a supervising PE. If anything, the intern's subordinate position strengthens the upward reporting obligation because the supervising PE depends entirely on the intern's candor to exercise responsible charge effectively.
Engineer Intern A's omission of the five-year non-reporting pattern constitutes a form of active deception under the NSPE Code, not merely an incomplete disclosure, and this distinction carries significant ethical weight. A purely incomplete disclosure might arise from ignorance, oversight, or ambiguity about what is relevant. Here, Engineer Intern A had affirmatively conducted a retrospective review, had confirmed the pattern, and therefore possessed the information at the moment of reporting. The deliberate withholding of known, material facts from a professional report to a supervising PE falls within the prohibition on statements containing material omissions that create false impressions (Section III.3.a) and the broader prohibition on deceptive acts (Section I.5). By reporting only the current defect, Engineer Intern A created the false impression that this was a singular, newly discovered failure rather than a five-year systemic breakdown. That false impression is not a byproduct of ignorance — it is the predictable and foreseeable result of the selective disclosure. The ethical weight of this distinction is substantial: active deception through material omission is categorically more serious than inadvertent incompleteness, and the Board's conclusion that the omission was unethical is fully consistent with treating it as a deceptive act rather than a mere gap in reporting.
Beyond reporting the five-year pattern to Engineer B, Engineer Intern A had an independent obligation to flag the inspector's systematic non-reporting as a potential programmatic integrity issue requiring separate escalation. The discovery of a five-year pattern of non-reporting of a visibly obvious defect is not merely a defect remediation matter — it is evidence of either gross incompetence or deliberate concealment by the inspector, and it raises questions about the integrity of the entire bridge inspection program. The NSPE Code's obligation to hold public safety paramount (Section I.1) and to conduct oneself responsibly and ethically (Section I.6) together require that Engineer Intern A treat the systemic pattern as a distinct and independently reportable finding. Reporting only the physical defect to Engineer B addresses the bridge; it does not address the inspector's fitness for continued service, the reliability of that inspector's other reports across other bridges, or the adequacy of the program's oversight mechanisms. While Engineer Intern A's subordinate position appropriately channels this escalation through Engineer B rather than directly to external authorities, the obligation to surface the systemic dimension of the failure — not just the physical defect — was a separate and non-delegable ethical duty that Engineer Intern A failed to discharge.
Engineer B bore a meaningful obligation to ask probing follow-up questions upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report, and Engineer B's failure to do so represents a shared — though not equivalent — ethical failure. A supervising PE exercising responsible charge over a bridge inspection program is not entitled to passively receive reports and act only on what is volunteered. The Responsible Charge Engagement principle requires Engineer B to actively engage with the information presented, to probe for context, and to ask the obvious question: how long has this defect been present, and was it visible in prior inspections? Engineer B's failure to ask that question does not relieve Engineer Intern A of the primary obligation to disclose the five-year history, but it does mean that the ethical failure in this case is not entirely unilateral. The Board's conclusion appropriately focuses on Engineer Intern A's obligation because Engineer Intern A possessed the information and chose not to disclose it. However, a complete ethical accounting of the situation must recognize that Engineer B's supervisory passivity created conditions in which Engineer Intern A's omission went unchallenged, and that this passivity is itself an ethical shortcoming under the NSPE Code's standards for responsible professional conduct.
The tension between Intern Epistemic Humility and Materiality Deference on one hand and the Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation on the other resolves decisively in favor of complete upward reporting, and the two principles are not genuinely in conflict when properly understood. Intern Epistemic Humility counsels Engineer Intern A to defer judgments about the significance, urgency, and remediation implications of discovered facts to Engineer B — it does not counsel Engineer Intern A to filter which facts are transmitted upward. The principle of materiality deference means that Engineer Intern A should not independently decide what action to take based on the five-year history; it does not mean that Engineer Intern A should withhold the five-year history from the person who is authorized to make that determination. In fact, the two principles are mutually reinforcing: precisely because Engineer Intern A lacks the authority and expertise to assess the full implications of the five-year pattern, Engineer Intern A has an even stronger obligation to transmit all discovered facts to Engineer B so that Engineer B can exercise the professional judgment that Engineer Intern A is not qualified to exercise. Withholding the five-year history on the grounds that its significance was uncertain is not epistemic humility — it is an unauthorized and unilateral materiality determination that usurps Engineer B's supervisory function.
The Faithful Agent Obligation and the Proactive Risk Disclosure principle do not conflict in this case; rather, faithful agency within the chain of command affirmatively requires proactive disclosure of the five-year history to Engineer B. The Faithful Agent Obligation requires Engineer Intern A to act within the chain of command and support Engineer B's supervisory authority — but that authority can only be meaningfully exercised if Engineer B receives complete information. An intern who withholds material facts from a supervising PE is not acting as a faithful agent; the intern is undermining the supervisory relationship by depriving the supervisor of the informational foundation needed to discharge responsible charge. Proactive Risk Disclosure is therefore not in tension with faithful agency — it is a precondition for faithful agency to function. The apparent tension dissolves once it is recognized that the chain of command is an information-transmission structure, not a filter that permits subordinates to curate what supervisors learn. Engineer Intern A's omission was a failure of faithful agency, not an expression of it.
Assigning the Systemic Failure Escalation Obligation to Engineer Intern A does not inadvertently relieve Engineer B of independent supervisory responsibility to detect programmatic failures. These obligations operate on different planes and are not zero-sum. Engineer Intern A's obligation to report the five-year pattern arises from the duty of complete upward reporting and the prohibition on material omissions. Engineer B's obligation to probe for systemic failures arises from the duty of responsible charge and active supervisory engagement. Both obligations exist simultaneously and independently. The fact that Engineer Intern A failed to discharge the upward reporting obligation does not excuse Engineer B from the independent obligation to ask probing questions; conversely, the fact that Engineer B failed to ask probing questions does not excuse Engineer Intern A from the obligation to volunteer the complete factual record. Treating systemic escalation as Engineer Intern A's duty does not relieve Engineer B — it simply identifies one of the multiple points at which the ethical and programmatic failure could and should have been intercepted. A robust inspection program requires both complete upward reporting from subordinates and active supervisory inquiry from responsible PEs.
From a deontological perspective, Engineer Intern A violated a categorical duty of complete and honest upward reporting by selectively disclosing only the current defect while withholding the five-year pattern of non-reporting, and this violation is independent of whether the omission caused immediate harm. The deontological analysis under the NSPE Code does not require a showing of consequential harm to establish an ethical violation. The duty to be objective and truthful in professional reports (Section II.3.a) and to avoid material omissions that create false impressions (Section III.3.a) are categorical obligations — they apply regardless of outcome. Engineer Intern A possessed material information, transmitted a report to a supervising PE, and omitted that information from the report. The categorical duty was breached at the moment of omission. The fact that Engineer B may have ultimately discovered the five-year history through other means, or that the bridge may not have collapsed in the interim, is irrelevant to the deontological analysis. The ethical violation is complete upon the act of selective disclosure, not upon the occurrence of downstream harm.
From a consequentialist perspective, Engineer Intern A's partial disclosure to Engineer B created a materially worse expected outcome for public safety than full disclosure would have. Engineer B's remediation decisions were based on the false premise that the defect was a newly identified, singular failure. Had Engineer B known the defect had been visibly obvious for at least five years, the appropriate response would have expanded beyond remediating the current defect to include: a structural assessment of whether five years of unaddressed deterioration had compromised the bridge's load-bearing capacity beyond what the current inspection revealed; a review of the inspector's entire portfolio of reports across all bridges the inspector had examined during that period; a formal audit of the inspection program's oversight protocols; and potentially a review of other bridges inspected by the same inspector for analogous omissions. Each of these consequentially significant actions was foreclosed or delayed by Engineer Intern A's partial disclosure. The expected harm to public safety from this informational gap — measured across the full population of bridges potentially affected by the same inspector's systematic non-reporting — is substantially greater than the harm addressable by remediating a single defect on a single bridge.
From a virtue ethics perspective, Engineer Intern A's selective disclosure reflects a character disposition toward self-protective minimalism rather than honest stewardship of public safety, and this disposition falls short of the professional integrity and moral courage the NSPE Code demands. A person of genuine professional integrity, upon discovering that a subordinate inspector had concealed a visibly obvious defect for five years, would recognize that the full scope of the discovery — not just its most recent manifestation — is precisely what a supervising PE needs to know. The decision to report only the current defect while withholding the five-year history is most plausibly explained by a desire to minimize the complexity of the situation, avoid the discomfort of implicating a subordinate in a serious pattern of misconduct, or limit personal exposure to scrutiny. None of these motivations is consistent with the virtues of honesty, courage, and public stewardship that the NSPE Code identifies as constitutive of professional engineering character. The virtue ethics analysis does not require proof of bad intent — it requires only that we assess whether the character disposition revealed by Engineer Intern A's conduct is consistent with the professional virtues the Code demands. It is not.
If Engineer Intern A had fully disclosed the five-year pattern of non-reporting to Engineer B at the time of the initial report, Engineer B would have been obligated to escalate the matter beyond routine defect remediation to include a systemic audit of the inspector's entire inspection history and a formal review of the bridge inspection program's oversight protocols. This conclusion follows from the Responsible Charge Engagement principle and the public safety paramount obligation. A five-year pattern of non-reporting of a visibly obvious defect is not a defect remediation matter — it is a programmatic integrity failure that raises questions about every bridge the inspector has examined, every report the inspector has filed, and every oversight mechanism that failed to catch the pattern for five years. Engineer B, as the DOT bridge inspection program director and a PE, would have been obligated under Section I.1 and Section I.6 to treat the systemic disclosure as triggering a broader programmatic response. This counterfactual also illuminates why Engineer Intern A's omission was so consequential: by withholding the five-year history, Engineer Intern A effectively prevented Engineer B from recognizing the obligation to conduct a systemic audit, thereby compounding the original inspection failure with a second-order failure of programmatic oversight.
If Engineer Intern A had lacked the capability to conduct the retrospective five-year review and had therefore been genuinely unaware of the pattern of non-reporting, the ethical analysis of the partial disclosure would change fundamentally: there would be no ethical violation in failing to disclose information one does not possess. This counterfactual confirms that the ethical significance of Engineer Intern A's actual conduct is entirely dependent on the fact of actual knowledge. Engineer Intern A did conduct the retrospective review, did confirm the five-year pattern, and did possess the information at the moment of reporting. The ethical violation is therefore not a failure of capability or diligence — it is a failure of disclosure integrity by a person who had the relevant information and chose not to transmit it. This distinction also implies that the ethical obligation in this case is not primarily an obligation to investigate (though such an obligation may exist independently) but an obligation to disclose what has already been discovered. The case is not about whether Engineer Intern A should have looked harder; it is about whether Engineer Intern A was obligated to report what was already known. The answer is unambiguously yes.
If Engineer Intern A had reported the five-year non-reporting history but framed it as potentially attributable to ambiguous inspection criteria rather than clear inspector negligence, that qualified disclosure would have satisfied the obligation of complete and unfiltered upward reporting only if the factual record itself — the photographs, the reports, the visible nature of the defect — was transmitted without distortion. The obligation under Section II.3.a is to be objective and truthful in professional reports; it does not require Engineer Intern A to render a causal or culpability judgment about the inspector's conduct. Transmitting the factual record (five years of reports, photographs showing the defect, the defect's visible nature) while noting uncertainty about causation would be consistent with the intern's appropriate epistemic humility about causal attribution. However, if the framing as 'ambiguous inspection criteria' was not a genuine reflection of factual uncertainty but rather a deliberate softening of a clear factual record to protect the inspector or minimize the severity of the finding, it would introduce a different form of material misrepresentation — one that distorts the factual record through interpretive filtering rather than outright omission. The key distinction is whether the qualification reflects genuine factual uncertainty or constitutes an unauthorized editorial judgment that alters the meaning of the transmitted information.
If Engineer B had proactively asked whether the defect had been present in prior inspections and Engineer Intern A had then disclosed the five-year history, Engineer Intern A's initial omission would still constitute an ethical violation, though the practical consequences of that violation would have been mitigated by Engineer B's active inquiry. The ethical violation is complete at the moment of the initial partial report, not at the moment when the omission is or is not corrected. Section II.3.a's obligation to be objective and truthful in professional reports applies to the report as made; it is not satisfied retroactively by subsequent disclosure prompted by external questioning. However, this counterfactual does illuminate an important point about the distribution of ethical responsibility: Engineer B's active inquiry obligation, if discharged, would have functioned as a corrective mechanism that partially offset the harm caused by Engineer Intern A's initial omission. The fact that Engineer B did not ask the probing question means that Engineer B's supervisory passivity compounded Engineer Intern A's disclosure failure. Both failures are ethically real, but they are not equivalent: Engineer Intern A's failure is primary because it involved the deliberate withholding of known material information, while Engineer B's failure is secondary because it involved a failure to probe for information that should have been volunteered.
A good-faith but incorrect materiality judgment by Engineer Intern A does not excuse the omission that the Board deems unethical, for two independent reasons. First, the materiality of the five-year non-reporting pattern is not genuinely ambiguous: a visibly obvious structural defect in a bridge that went unreported for five years is self-evidently material to any supervising PE responsible for public safety, and no reasonable engineering professional operating in good faith could conclude otherwise. The claim of good-faith materiality uncertainty is therefore not credible on these facts. Second, and more fundamentally, the Intern Materiality Judgment Prohibition principle establishes that Engineer Intern A is not authorized to make independent materiality determinations about information discovered in the course of supervised professional work. The appropriate response to genuine uncertainty about materiality is not to withhold the information — it is to transmit the information and allow the supervising PE to make the materiality determination. Good faith does not license an intern to substitute their own materiality judgment for the supervising PE's judgment; it requires the intern to transmit the complete factual record and defer the materiality assessment to the person with the authority and expertise to make it. A good-faith error in the direction of over-disclosure is not an ethical violation; a good-faith error in the direction of under-disclosure, when the information is transmitted to a supervising PE who could have assessed its significance, is.
The tension between Intern Epistemic Humility and Materiality Deference on one side and the Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation on the other was resolved decisively in favor of complete upward reporting, and the Board's conclusion makes clear that this resolution is not context-dependent. Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status and subordinate role do not license a filtering function over discovered facts; they license deference to the supervising PE's judgment about what those facts mean and what action to take. The critical distinction is between deferring on interpretation — which is appropriate for an intern — and deferring on disclosure — which is not. By withholding the five-year non-reporting pattern, Engineer Intern A did not exercise epistemic humility; rather, Engineer Intern A made an affirmative materiality judgment that the historical pattern was not worth reporting, which is precisely the kind of judgment an intern is least qualified to make and most obligated to pass upward. The case therefore teaches that the intern's epistemic humility principle, properly understood, actually reinforces rather than conflicts with the complete upward reporting obligation: because the intern cannot reliably assess materiality, the intern must report everything and let the supervising PE perform that assessment.
The Faithful Agent Obligation — requiring Engineer Intern A to operate within the chain of command and defer to Engineer B's supervisory authority — does not conflict with the Proactive Risk Disclosure principle in this case; instead, the two principles converge on the same required action. Faithful agency toward a supervising PE is not satisfied by giving that PE a partial picture of a safety-relevant situation; it is satisfied by giving the PE the complete factual record needed to exercise responsible charge effectively. Engineer Intern A's partial report actually undermined Engineer B's supervisory authority by depriving Engineer B of the information necessary to make a fully informed remediation decision. The case therefore teaches that the Faithful Agent Obligation and the Proactive Risk Disclosure principle are not genuinely competing principles in the upward-reporting context: an intern who withholds material facts from a supervisor is not being a faithful agent but is instead substituting the intern's own incomplete judgment for the supervisor's informed authority. The apparent tension dissolves once faithful agency is understood as serving the supervisor's decision-making capacity rather than merely complying with the supervisor's explicit requests.
The Honesty in Professional Representations principle and the Public Welfare Paramount principle jointly establish that a material omission in an upward safety report is ethically equivalent to an affirmative misrepresentation, regardless of whether the omitting party subjectively believed the omitted information was immaterial. Engineer Intern A's selective disclosure — reporting the current defect while withholding the five-year non-reporting pattern — created a false impression in Engineer B's mind about the nature and duration of the safety failure. The NSPE Code's prohibition on statements containing material omissions under provision III.3.a. does not require proof of deceptive intent; it requires only that the omitted fact was material to the recipient's understanding of the situation. The five-year pattern was plainly material because it transformed the incident from an isolated inspector error into a systemic programmatic failure requiring a qualitatively different remedial response. This case therefore teaches that the Honesty in Professional Representations principle operates as a completeness standard, not merely a truthfulness standard, and that the Public Welfare Paramount principle amplifies this completeness requirement in safety-critical inspection contexts by treating any omission that degrades the supervising PE's ability to protect the public as an ethical violation independent of the intern's subjective intent or good-faith materiality judgment.
{'license': 'Public official', 'specialty': 'Building code enforcement, certificate of occupancy'}
Issued certificate of occupancy for structurally modified building; did not return Engineer A's phone call reporting structural hazard, triggering Engineer A's obligation to escalate to supervisor and other authorities.
{'type': 'notified_by', 'target': 'Engineer A Forensic Building Investigation Engineer BER 19-10'}
County Building Official Certificate of Occupancy Authority
the building was issued a certificate of occupancy by a county building official
Engineer A called the county building official. The county building official did not return Engineer A's phone call
When reporting the bridge defect to Engineer B, should Engineer Intern A have disclosed the full five-year history of the inspector's non-reporting, or was transmitting the current defect finding a sufficient discharge of the upward reporting obligation?
Engineer Intern A's obligation to disclose the five-year pattern of missed inspections to Engineer B — not merely the current defect — and whether that omission constitutes an ethical violation regardless of the intern's unlicensed status or good-faith materiality judgment
Report to Engineer B both the current bridge defect and the complete five-year history of the inspector's non-reporting, transmitting the factual record — reports, photographs, and the visible nature of the defect — without causal or culpability characterization, and defer to Engineer B the determination of what action the pattern requires
Report the current defect to Engineer B as the operative safety finding, note that a retrospective review was conducted, and indicate that prior inspection records are available for Engineer B's review if Engineer B wishes to examine them — placing the initiative for historical inquiry with the supervising PE rather than volunteering the pattern proactively
Report the current defect to Engineer B and include a qualified notation that prior inspection records appear to show the defect may have been present in earlier cycles, while framing the historical pattern as potentially attributable to ambiguous inspection criteria rather than clear non-reporting, on the grounds that causal attribution is beyond the intern's competence to certify
Upon discovering the five-year pattern of systematic non-reporting, should Engineer Intern A have treated the inspector's conduct as a distinct programmatic integrity issue requiring escalation beyond the defect report to Engineer B, or was channeling the full factual record upward to Engineer B a sufficient discharge of the systemic escalation obligation?
Whether Engineer Intern A's obligation extended beyond reporting the five-year pattern to Engineer B to independently flagging the inspector's systematic non-reporting as a programmatic integrity issue requiring separate escalation — and whether that systemic escalation duty coexists with, rather than displaces, Engineer B's independent supervisory obligation to probe for programmatic failures
Report to Engineer B both the current defect and the five-year non-reporting pattern, and explicitly characterize the inspector's conduct as a potential programmatic integrity issue warranting a separate review of the inspector's full inspection portfolio and the program's oversight protocols — framing the systemic dimension as a distinct finding alongside the physical defect finding
Report to Engineer B the current defect and the complete five-year factual record — reports, photographs, and the visible nature of the defect — without independently characterizing the pattern as a programmatic integrity issue, on the grounds that systemic program assessment is Engineer B's supervisory function and the intern's obligation is limited to transmitting the complete factual record rather than rendering programmatic conclusions
Report the current defect to Engineer B, flag the inspector's non-reporting as a personnel matter requiring Engineer B's attention, and separately document the five-year pattern in a written memorandum to Engineer B to create a formal record — treating the systemic and defect dimensions as parallel but separately documented findings rather than a single integrated report
Upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member, was Engineer B obligated to actively inquire into the history of prior inspections and the duration of the apparent defect, and does Engineer B's failure to do so constitute an independent ethical shortcoming under the responsible charge standard?
Engineer B's active inquiry obligation upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report — whether Engineer B's failure to probe for prior inspection history constitutes a shared ethical failure under the responsible charge standard, and how that failure interacts with Engineer Intern A's primary disclosure obligation
Upon receiving the defect report from Engineer Intern A, actively ask whether the defect had been present in prior inspections, request the underlying inspection records and photographs reviewed by Engineer Intern A, and independently assess the duration and pattern of the failure before determining the scope of remediation — treating the retrospective inquiry as a standard component of responsible charge over a bridge inspection program
Accept Engineer Intern A's defect report as a complete professional finding, initiate remediation of the identified defect, and rely on Engineer Intern A's supervisory role over the inspector to surface any additional historical context — treating the intern's report as the product of a supervised professional review that Engineer B is entitled to act upon without independent re-examination of the underlying records
Initiate remediation of the identified defect and separately direct Engineer Intern A to prepare a written summary of the retrospective review findings — including any observations about prior inspection records — within a defined timeframe, treating the follow-up inquiry as a scheduled supervisory task rather than an immediate probing question at the time of the initial report
Upon completing a retrospective review that confirmed a visibly obvious bridge defect had gone unreported for at least five annual inspections, was Engineer Intern A ethically obligated to disclose the full five-year non-reporting pattern to Engineer B, or was it permissible to report only the current defect and defer the historical significance judgment to the supervising PE's independent inquiry?
Engineer Intern A's Disclosure Decision: Whether to report the full five-year non-reporting pattern to Engineer B or limit disclosure to the currently discovered defect
Report the full five-year non-reporting pattern to Engineer B in the initial disclosure, transmitting the complete factual record — including inspection reports, photographs, and the pattern of omissions — without rendering a causal or culpability judgment about the inspector, and flag the systemic dimension of the failure as a matter requiring Engineer B's independent assessment
Report only the currently discovered defect to Engineer B, treating the five-year historical pattern as a matter of professional significance assessment beyond the intern's competence to evaluate, and rely on Engineer B's supervisory authority and independent inquiry to surface the historical context if Engineer B deems it relevant
Report the current defect to Engineer B and separately note that a retrospective review was conducted, inviting Engineer B to request the full historical records if desired, while refraining from characterizing the five-year pattern as either material or immaterial pending Engineer B's direction
Upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of a visibly obvious structural defect discovered through a retrospective review of inspection records, did Engineer B have an independent ethical obligation to ask probing follow-up questions about the defect's history in prior inspections — and does Engineer B's failure to ask those questions constitute a secondary ethical failure under the NSPE Code's responsible charge standard, even though it does not diminish Engineer Intern A's primary culpability?
Engineer B's Supervisory Inquiry Decision: Whether Engineer B bore an active obligation to probe for the historical inspection record upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report, and whether Engineer B's failure to do so constitutes a shared ethical failure
Upon receiving the intern's defect report based on a retrospective review, actively ask whether the defect appeared in prior inspection records, request the full retrospective review findings, and treat the scope of the historical record as a necessary input to determining the appropriate remedial response before proceeding
Accept the intern's defect report as presented, initiate routine defect remediation for the identified structural issue, and rely on the intern's professional obligation to volunteer all material information rather than independently probing for historical context not signaled as missing in the report
Initiate defect remediation based on the intern's report while simultaneously requesting the complete retrospective review file as a standard supervisory practice for all intern-conducted reviews, without specifically framing the request as a probe for prior inspection omissions
Duty to Report Violated By Engineer Intern A Omission of Five Year History
Bridge inspection program; Engineer Intern A possessed knowledge of both the current defect and the five-year pattern of non-reporting but reported only the current defect to the supervising PE.
Engineer Intern A had a duty to report all material facts bearing on the bridge defect and the inspection program's failure to Engineer B, including the five-year history of the same inspector failing to report the same visibly obvious defect — a duty that was violated by the selective omission of that history.
At the time of reporting the current defect to Engineer B
Engineer A Building Inspection Program PE BER 98-5
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Building inspection program management, code enforcement'}
PE responsible for city building inspection program; faced budget cuts and new stricter code requirements; met with city council chairman who offered additional inspectors in exchange for concurrence with grandfathering ordinance; Board found it unethical to agree to the proposal or to sign inadequate inspection reports.
{'type': 'political_pressure_from', 'target': 'City Council Chairman BER 98-5'}
Building Inspection Program PE Under Political Pressure
Engineer A, a PE responsible for the City's building inspection program, was pressed between reductions in staff due to budget cuts and implementation of new, more rigid code requirements
Engineer A met with the chairman of the local city council to discuss his concerns
it was not ethical either for Engineer A to agree to concur with the chairman's proposal or to sign inadequate inspection reports
Engineer A Forensic Building Investigation Engineer BER 19-10
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Forensic building investigation, structural assessment'}
Retained by Client B to investigate fire origin and cause; discovered structural instability and non-imminent collapse risk; notified client and attempted to contact county building official who did not respond; Board found obligation to continue escalating to supervisor, fire marshal, and other authorities.
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Client B Building Safety Investigation Client'}
{'type': 'public_authority_contact', 'target': 'County Building Official BER 19-10'}
Forensic Building Investigation Engineer
Engineer A was hired by Client B to conduct a building investigation to determine the origin and cause of a fire
Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter
Engineer A immediately advised Client B and called the county building official
Engineer A observed the building to be structurally unstable
Engineer A Non-Subordination Political Bargain BER 98-5 Grandfathering Ordinance
Engineer A, responsible for the city building inspection program, faced budget cuts and new stricter code requirements; city council chairman offered additional inspectors in exchange for concurrence with a grandfathering ordinance; Board held the bargain was unethical.
Non-Subordination of Safety Reporting to Political Bargaining Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to refuse to concur with the proposed grandfathering ordinance and to refuse to sign inadequate inspection reports, notwithstanding the city council chairman's offer to hire additional code inspectors in exchange for that concurrence.
Upon being presented with the political bargain by the city council chairman
Engineer A Persistent Escalation BER 19-10 Structural Instability
Engineer A discovered structural instability in a building during a fire investigation; called the county building official who did not return the call; Board held escalation to supervisory officials was required.
Persistent Safety Escalation After Unresponsive Authority Obligation
Engineer A was obligated, after the county building official failed to return the phone call reporting structural instability, to continue pursuing resolution by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction.
Upon non-response from county building official following initial safety report
Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter by working with Client B and by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction to determine whether an investigation was warranted after the issuance of the certificate of occupancy.
Engineer A Persistent Safety Escalation BER 19-10 Building Official Non-Response
Persistent Safety Escalation Beyond Unresponsive Authority Capability
Engineer A was obligated to exercise the capability to escalate the structural instability concern beyond the initial unanswered call to the county building official, contacting the official's supervisor, the fire marshal, or other agencies with jurisdiction
Forensic building investigation revealing structural instability; county building official failed to return Engineer A's phone call reporting the hazard
Board determination that Engineer A had an obligation to continue pursuing resolution after the county building official failed to return the phone call, by contacting supervisory officials and alternative regulatory authorities
Engineer A Prior Design Engineer BER 07-10
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'specialty': 'Structural design, barn construction'}
Originally designed and built a barn on his own property; sold property four years later; learned new owner extended barn by removing structural columns and footings; concerned about collapse under snow loads; verbally contacted town supervisor but Board found should also have notified new owner in writing.
{'type': 'notified', 'target': 'Town Supervisor BER 07-10'}
{'type': 'should_have_notified', 'target': 'Jones New Property Owner BER 07-10'}
Prior Design Engineer with Post-Sale Safety Awareness
Engineer A had designed and built a barn with horse stalls on his property
Engineer A learned of the extension and was concerned that the modified structure could be in danger of collapse
Engineer A sold the property, including the barn to Jones
Engineer A verbally contacted the town supervisor
Engineer A Public Safety Escalation BER 19-10 Structural Instability
Engineer A exercised partial public safety escalation capability by notifying Client B and calling the county building official, but the Board found the capability needed to extend to escalation to supervisory officials and alternative regulatory authorities when the initial contact was unresponsive
Building investigation revealing structural instability and non-imminent collapse risk following construction modifications and certificate of occupancy issuance
Engineer A immediately advised Client B and called the county building official; Board found obligation to continue escalating to supervisor of county official, fire marshal, or other agencies with jurisdiction
Engineer A immediately advised Client B and called the county building official.
Engineer A Public Welfare Safety Escalation BER 19-10 Non-Imminent Collapse
Engineer A discovered structural instability in a building; believed collapse was a danger though not imminent; called county building official who did not respond; Board held escalation to supervisory officials and other jurisdictional agencies was required.
Public Welfare Safety Escalation Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to escalate the structural instability concern beyond the initial unanswered call to the county building official, to appropriate regulatory and supervisory authorities, notwithstanding that collapse was not believed to be imminent.
Although not imminent, Engineer A believed collapse of the building was a danger.
Upon non-response from county building official and continuing until resolution was achieved
Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter by working with Client B and by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction.
Engineer A Structural Engineering Forensic Competence BER 17-3 Beam Analysis
Structural Engineering Design Competence
Engineer A possessed advanced structural engineering competence enabling identification of the under-designed beam through tributary area measurement and structural calculations, and recognition of systemic replication risk across identical tract housing designs
Forensic engineering investigation of burned beam in tract housing; Engineer A was a professional engineer and registered architect with extensive design and forensic engineering experience
Engineer A measured the tributary area of the roof, floor, and wall bearing on the beam, ran structural calculations, and determined the beam was seriously under-designed; recognized identical designs existed throughout the subdivision
Engineer A was a professional engineer and registered architect with extensive design and forensic engineering experience.
Engineer A measured the tributary area of the roof, floor, and wall bearing on the beam and ran a series of structural calculations. Based upon the review, Engineer A determined that the beam was seriously under-designed.
Engineer A Subdivision Tract Defect Reporting Forensic Engineer BER 17-3
{'license': 'Professional Engineer and Registered Architect', 'specialty': 'Forensic engineering, structural design'}
Retained by insurance company to investigate a burned beam in a residence under construction; discovered beam was seriously under-designed; recognized that identical designs in the subdivision meant systemic defect; submitted report to insurance company but Board found additional obligations to contact building officials, homeowners, and community associations.
{'type': 'client', 'target': 'Insurance Company Client BER 17-3'}
{'type': 'should_notify', 'target': 'Homeowners Association BER 17-3'}
{'type': 'should_notify', 'target': 'Individual Homeowners BER 17-3'}
{'type': 'should_notify', 'target': 'Local Building Officials BER 17-3'}
Subdivision Tract Defect Reporting Forensic Engineer
Engineer A was a professional engineer and registered architect with extensive design and forensic engineering experience
Engineer A also observed that, since the residence was a tract residence, there were other identical designs in the subdivision
Engineer A determined that the beam was seriously under-designed
Engineer A wrote the report and identified the design defect and the larger concern
Engineer A Systemic Defect Multi-Party Notification BER 17-3 Tract Housing
Engineer A discovered a seriously under-designed beam in a tract residence under construction; recognized the defect was likely present in other identical homes in the subdivision; submitted report to retaining insurance company; Board held additional notification obligations existed.
Systemic Defect Multi-Party Notification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated, upon discovering that an under-designed beam was likely replicated across identical tract housing designs in the subdivision, to contact local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association — beyond submitting the report to the retaining insurance company.
Upon discovery that the structural defect was systemic across multiple identical tract residences
Engineer A had further responsibilities to take additional steps, including contacting local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association to advise them of the finding.
Engineer A Systemic Multi-Party Notification BER 17-3 Tract Housing Subdivision
Systemic Defect Multi-Party Notification Capability
Engineer A exercised the capability to recognize that the under-designed beam was likely replicated across identical tract housing designs, and was obligated to notify building officials, individual homeowners, and community associations beyond the retaining insurance company
Forensic investigation of burned beam in tract housing subdivision; Engineer A discovered beam was seriously under-designed and recognized identical designs existed throughout the subdivision
Engineer A identified the systemic replication risk and wrote a report identifying the larger concern; Board determined further notification obligations to building officials, homeowners, and community associations were required
Engineer A Written Notification New Owner BER 07-10 Barn Structural Deficiency
Engineer A learned that new owner Jones had removed structural columns and footings from a barn Engineer A originally designed; Engineer A verbally notified the town supervisor but did not provide written notification to Jones; Board held written notification to the new owner was required.
Written Third-Party Safety Notification Obligation
Engineer A was obligated to notify the new property owner Jones in writing about the perceived structural deficiency resulting from the barn extension, in addition to the verbal notification given to the town supervisor.
Upon learning of the structural modification and after verbal notification to town supervisor produced no action
Engineer A verbally contacted the town supervisor, who agreed to review the matter, but no action was taken.
Engineer A Written Third-Party Notification BER 07-10 New Owner Jones
Written Third-Party Safety Notification Capability
Engineer A was obligated to exercise the capability to notify the new property owner Jones directly and in writing about the perceived structural deficiency, beyond the verbal notification provided to the town supervisor
Prior design engineer who sold property and later learned new owner had modified the barn structure in a manner creating potential collapse risk under snow loads
Board determination that verbal notification to the town supervisor was insufficient and that Engineer A should also have notified the new owner Jones in writing about the perceived structural deficiency
Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE
{'license': 'Professional Engineer', 'title': 'State DOT Director', 'agency': 'State Department of Transportation', 'program': 'Bridge Inspection Program'}
Licensed PE and state DOT director who supervises Engineer Intern A in the bridge inspection program; received a partial report from Engineer Intern A about a concrete bridge defect without being informed that the defect had been visibly obvious and unreported for at least five years
{'type': 'employer_representative', 'target': 'State DOT'}
{'type': 'receives_reports_from', 'target': 'Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection Program Engineer Intern'}
{'type': 'supervises', 'target': 'Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection Program Engineer Intern'}
DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE
Engineer B Supervising PE Active Inquiry Bridge Inspection
Supervising PE Active Inquiry Upon Partial Safety Report Capability
Engineer B, as the supervising licensed PE and DOT director, was obligated to exercise the capability to actively inquire into the full scope of the bridge defect upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report — including asking whether the defect had been present in prior inspections — but the case indicates this active inquiry obligation was not fulfilled
Receipt of partial bridge defect report from Engineer Intern A at state DOT bridge inspection program
Obligation identified in case analysis: Engineer B received a partial report and was obligated to actively inquire into the inspection program's historical performance
Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE -- Licensed PE and state DOT director who supervises Engineer Intern A in the bridge inspection program; received a partial report from Engineer Intern A
Supervising PE Active Inquiry Obligation Upon Partial Report -- Engineer B, as the supervising licensed PE and DOT director, was obligated upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect to actively inquire
Engineer B Supervising PE Active Inquiry Present Case Bridge Program
Engineer B was obligated to exercise the capability to actively inquire into the full context of Engineer Intern A's partial report, including the inspection program's historical performance, upon receiving the report of the bridge defect
DOT bridge inspection program director receiving a partial safety report from Engineer Intern A about a bridge defect without the five-year historical context
Obligation identified by the Board that Engineer B should have actively inquired into the full scope of the defect's history rather than accepting the partial report at face value
Engineer B, as the supervising licensed PE and DOT director, was obligated upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect to actively inquire into the full context of the reported defect
Engineer B Supervising PE Active Inquiry Present Case Partial Report
Engineer B received a partial report from Engineer Intern A about a bridge defect without the five-year history of missed inspections; as DOT bridge inspection program director and supervising PE, Engineer B bore responsible charge obligations requiring active inquiry into the completeness of the subordinate's report.
Supervising PE Active Inquiry Obligation Upon Partial Report
Engineer B, upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect, was obligated to actively inquire into the full context of the reported deficiency — including the history of prior inspections and the duration of the apparent defect — rather than accepting the partial report at face value.
Upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect
The role of the professional engineer in protecting the public health, safety, and welfare is fundamental to the practice of engineering and is the overriding value in the NSPE Code of Ethics.
{'license': 'Unlicensed Engineer Intern', 'agency': 'State Department of Transportation', 'program': 'Bridge Inspection Program', 'supervisory_position': 'Supervises field inspectors; supervised by Engineer B PE'}
Discovered that a supervised inspector had failed to report a visibly obvious concrete bridge defect for at least five years; reported the current defect to supervising PE Engineer B but omitted the critical fact that the defect had been visible and unreported for five years, constituting an incomplete and potentially misleading disclosure
{'type': 'employer', 'target': 'State DOT'}
{'type': 'supervised_by', 'target': 'Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE'}
{'type': 'supervises', 'target': 'Bridge Inspector Field Technician'}
Bridge Inspection Program Engineer Intern
Engineer Intern A is an unlicensed engineer in the DOT's bridge inspection program under the supervision of Engineer B
Engineer Intern A observed that an inspector under the supervision of Engineer Intern A had failed to report a visibly obvious defect
Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years
Engineer Intern A Complete Unfiltered Upward Reporting Present Case Bridge Defect History
Engineer Intern A reported the current bridge defect to Engineer B but omitted the material fact that the same defect had been visibly obvious and missed in inspection for at least five consecutive years, depriving Engineer B of information necessary to assess the systemic failure.
Engineer Intern A was obligated to communicate to Engineer B not only the current bridge defect but also the five-year history of missed inspections by the field inspector, without omitting that historical pattern which materially bore on the severity, duration, and systemic nature of the identified risk.
At the time of reporting the discovered bridge defect to supervising Engineer B
Engineer Intern A Graduated Escalation Navigation Bridge Inspection
Graduated Escalation Navigation Capability
Engineer Intern A demonstrated partial escalation capability by reporting the current bridge defect to Engineer B, but failed to navigate the full escalation pathway by omitting the systemic five-year inspection failure from the report — providing an incomplete escalation that did not fulfill the obligation to report all material facts bearing on the safety issue
Escalation of bridge defect finding to supervising PE at state DOT
Reported current defect to supervising PE Engineer B but omitted the five-year history of missed inspections
Engineer Intern A Incomplete Defect History Disclosure State
From Engineer Intern A's selective report to supervising authority through complete disclosure of the historical non-reporting pattern
Incomplete Defect History Disclosure State
Engineer Intern A's report of only the current defect while omitting the five-year pattern of non-reporting
Complete disclosure of the five-year non-reporting pattern to supervising authority
Engineer Intern A reported the current visibly obvious defect but failed to report the material information that the defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years
Engineer Intern A Incomplete Disclosure to Engineer B
From the moment Engineer Intern A reported the defect to Engineer B without disclosing the historical pattern, persisting until the full pattern is disclosed
Engineer Intern A's report to Engineer B disclosing only the current defect while withholding the five-year pattern of non-reporting
Not yet terminated — full historical pattern has not been disclosed to Engineer B
Engineer Intern A's decision to report the defect to Engineer B without including the discovered five-year history of non-reporting
Engineer Intern A Inspection Program Systemic Failure Pattern Recognition
Inspection Program Systemic Failure Pattern Recognition Capability
Engineer Intern A possessed the capability to recognize that the five-year pattern of missed defect reports constituted a systemic inspection program failure, but failed to exercise this capability fully by reporting only the current defect rather than the systemic pattern to Engineer B
Bridge inspection program at state DOT; Engineer Intern A supervised a field inspector who had missed the same visibly obvious concrete bridge defect for at least five years
Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years and discovered the recurring pattern — demonstrating the detection capability — but then reported only the current defect, demonstrating failure to apply the full scope of the capability in upward reporting
Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years and discovered that the same inspector had failed to report the same defect for at least five years
Engineer Intern A Inspection Program Systemic Failure Pattern Recognition Present Case
Engineer Intern A failed to exercise the capability to recognize that the five-year pattern of missed inspections constituted a systemic program failure requiring escalation as a systemic issue, not merely as an isolated current defect
Bridge inspection program; Engineer Intern A discovered evidence of five years of missed inspections but reported only the current defect finding
Reporting only the current defect to Engineer B without characterizing or escalating the five-year history of missed inspections as a systemic program failure
Engineer Intern A Intern Materiality Judgment Restraint Present Case
Intern Materiality Judgment Restraint Capability
Engineer Intern A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that materiality judgments about the five-year inspection history were beyond the intern's authority, resulting in an incomplete upward report to Engineer B
Bridge inspection program; Engineer Intern A discovered a visibly obvious defect that had been missed for at least five years but reported only the current defect without the historical context
Failure to report the five-year history of missed inspections to Engineer B, apparently making an implicit judgment that this information was not material or would reduce urgency — a judgment the intern was not qualified to make
Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination or evaluate the materiality of the information.
Engineer Intern A Material Information Completeness Present Case Bridge History
Material Information Completeness in Upward Reporting Capability
Engineer Intern A failed to exercise the capability to ensure that the upward report to Engineer B included all material contextual facts — specifically the five-year history of missed inspections — beyond the immediate defect finding
Bridge inspection program; Engineer Intern A reported the current defect but omitted the historical inspection failure pattern from the upward report to the supervising PE
Reporting only the current bridge defect to Engineer B without disclosing the five-year pattern of missed inspections that constituted material contextual information
Engineer Intern A Material Information Completeness Upward Reporting
Engineer Intern A lacked or failed to exercise the capability to recognize that the five-year history of missed inspections was material information that must be included in the upward report to Engineer B — reporting only the current defect while omitting the historical pattern that gave the defect its full significance
Upward reporting of bridge defect to supervising PE Engineer B at state DOT bridge inspection program
Failure to include the five-year inspection history in the report to Engineer B, despite having personally reviewed and discovered that history
Engineer Intern A Materiality Judgment Incompetence State
From Engineer Intern A's discovery of the five-year defect non-reporting pattern through complete factual disclosure to supervising authority
Intern Materiality Judgment Incompetence State
Engineer Intern A's lack of qualification to assess materiality or urgency implications of the five-year non-reporting pattern
Complete factual disclosure of all discovered information to supervising authority
revealing that the visibly obvious defect had been in existence and unchanged for at least five years might have actually reduced the urgency of any investigation, but Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective review that the visibly obvious defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years, but reported only the current defect
Engineer Intern A Materiality Judgment Restraint Present Case Bridge Inspection
Engineer Intern A discovered a visibly obvious concrete bridge defect and reported it to Engineer B but omitted the material fact that the same defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years; Board found Engineer Intern A was not qualified to independently evaluate the materiality of that historical information.
Intern Materiality Judgment Restraint Obligation
Engineer Intern A was obligated to report to Engineer B all material facts related to the visibly obvious bridge defect — including the fact that the same defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years — without independently filtering that information based on a personal assessment that it might reduce urgency, because Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to make that materiality determination.
As a practical matter, revealing that the visibly obvious defect had been in existence and unchanged for at least five years might have actually reduced the urgency of any investigation, but Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination or evaluate the materiality of the information.
{'license': 'Engineer Intern (unlicensed)', 'specialty': 'Bridge inspection'}
Failed to report the material information that a visibly obvious defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years; Board found Engineer Intern A had a responsibility to report all material facts related to the defect and was not yet qualified to evaluate the materiality or urgency implications of the omitted information.
{'type': 'supervised_by', 'target': 'DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE'}
Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination or evaluate the materiality of the information
Engineer Intern A Public Safety Escalation Bridge Defect History
Engineer Intern A possessed but failed to fully exercise the capability to escalate the full public safety risk — including the five-year history of missed inspections — to Engineer B, limiting the escalation to the current defect and thereby failing to communicate the complete scope of the public safety risk
Public safety reporting obligation in DOT bridge inspection program
Partial escalation: reported current defect but omitted five-year history of missed inspections from report to Engineer B
Safety Obligation -- Engineer Intern A was obligated to hold paramount the safety of the public by ensuring that the full scope of the bridge defect — including the five-year history — was reported
Engineer Intern A Responsible Charge Active Engagement Inspection Supervision
Responsible Charge Active Engagement Capability
Engineer Intern A demonstrated active engagement in the inspection supervision role by reviewing five years of inspection reports and photographs upon discovering the current defect — but failed to translate this active engagement into complete upward reporting of all findings
Supervisory oversight of field inspector in DOT bridge inspection program
Proactive review of five years of historical inspection records and photographs upon discovering the current defect omission
Concerned, Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years and discovered that the same inspector had failed to report the same defect for at least five years
Engineer Intern A Selective Information Omission in Report to Supervisor
From Engineer Intern A's report to Engineer B through the present
Selective Information Omission in Professional Report State
Engineer Intern A's omission of the five-year non-reporting history from the report to Engineer B
Engineer Intern A's decision to report only the current defect and omit the historical pattern
Engineer Intern A Situational Awareness Bridge Defect
Engineer Intern A demonstrated situational awareness sufficient to recognize the ethically and professionally salient features of the bridge inspection failure — including the visibility of the defect, the duration of the omission, and the implications for public safety — but applied this awareness incompletely by not recognizing the full significance of the historical pattern for upward reporting purposes
Bridge inspection program review at state DOT
Recognition that the inspector's failure to report a visibly obvious defect was concerning, prompting review of five years of historical records
Concerned, Engineer Intern A reviewed the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years
Engineer Intern A Supervised Inspector Defect Omission Detection
Supervised Inspector Defect Omission Detection Capability
Engineer Intern A demonstrated the capability to detect that a supervised inspector had failed to report a visibly obvious bridge defect, and to verify this through review of five years of inspection reports and photographs
Review of bridge inspection reports and photographs within the DOT bridge inspection program
Successfully identified through report and photograph review that the same inspector had failed to report the same visibly obvious concrete bridge defect for at least five years
Engineer Intern A observed that an inspector under the supervision of Engineer Intern A had failed to report a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member
Engineer Intern A Unverified Scope of Structural Risk
From the discovery of the five-year pattern through completion of a formal structural assessment
The extent to which the five-year-old unreported defect has compromised the structural integrity of the bridge, which has not yet been formally assessed
Completion of formal structural inspection and engineering assessment of the defect's current severity
Discovery that the defect has been present and unreported for at least five years
Engineer Intern A's discovery of current omission before Engineer Intern A's retrospective five-year review
Engineer Intern A's report of the defect to Engineer B before Engineer B's awareness of the five-year omission history
Engineer Intern A's retrospective review of five years of reports before Engineer Intern A's report to Engineer B
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard - Bridge Defect Reporting
NSPE Code of Ethics, state DOT professional conduct standards
Professional norms governing escalation of public safety concerns in infrastructure inspection contexts
Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard
Engineer Intern A in determining the scope of required disclosure to Engineer B
Governs Engineer Intern A's obligation to ensure that the full scope of the safety concern — including the five-year history of unreported defects — is communicated to Engineer B and, if necessary, escalated further to protect public safety on a bridge used by the public
Engineering Intern Supervision Standard - DOT Bridge Inspection Context
State licensing board rules, NSPE professional norms
Professional norms governing supervision of unlicensed engineers and inspection personnel
Engineer Intern A is an unlicensed engineer in the DOT's bridge inspection program under the supervision of Engineer B, a PE and state DOT director
Engineer B in supervising Engineer Intern A; Engineer Intern A in understanding reporting obligations to supervising PE
Governs the supervisory relationship between Engineer B (PE, DOT director) and Engineer Intern A (unlicensed), establishing the scope of Engineer B's oversight obligations and Engineer Intern A's duty to provide complete information to enable effective supervision of the bridge inspection program
Escalation Obligation When Initial Regulatory Report Is Insufficient Invoked BER 19-10
Structurally unstable building with certificate of occupancy issued
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits
Engineer A called the county building official who did not return the call; the Board held Engineer A had an obligation to escalate to the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency with jurisdiction
An unanswered phone call to a regulatory official does not discharge the engineer's public safety escalation obligation; the engineer must pursue alternative channels until the risk is addressed
Escalation Obligation When Initial Regulatory Report Is Insufficient
the Board decided that although Engineer A did not believe the building was in danger of imminent collapse, Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter by working with Client B and by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction
Public welfare escalation obligation overrides the limitation of acting only within the scope of the client engagement
Engineer A had an obligation to continue to pursue a resolution of the matter by working with Client B and by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction to determine whether an investigation was warranted after the issuance of the certificate of occupancy
The county building official did not return Engineer A's phone call
Fact-Based Disclosure Obligation Invoked BER 07-10 Snow Load Risk
Modified barn structure with removed columns and footings
Engineer A's concern about the modified barn was based on professional assessment that removing structural columns and footings could create collapse risk under severe snow loads — a technically grounded concern rather than speculation
Engineer A's disclosure obligation was grounded in professional knowledge of the original design and assessment of the structural implications of the modifications, satisfying the requirement that disclosures be fact-based
Engineer A learned of the extension and was concerned that the modified structure could be in danger of collapse due to severe snow loads.
The fact-based nature of the concern supported the obligation to disclose; the Board's finding that written notification to the owner was required reinforced that the concern was sufficiently grounded to trigger formal disclosure
Engineer A learned of the extension and was concerned that the modified structure could be in danger of collapse due to severe snow loads
Jones proposed to extend the barn and, as part of the extension, removed portions of the columns and footings that supported the roof
Faithful Agent Obligation Within Ethical Limits Tension BER 17-3
Forensic engineering engagement for insurance company
Third-Party Affected Party Direct Notification Obligation
Engineer A submitted the report to the retaining insurance company as required by the engagement, but the Board held that the public welfare obligation required additional steps beyond the client relationship
The faithful agent obligation was satisfied by completing and submitting the report to the retaining client, but it did not exhaust Engineer A's professional obligations — public welfare required additional action beyond the client relationship
The NSPE BER decided in that case that Engineer A had ethical obligations under the NSPE Code of Ethics beyond providing the report to the retaining insurance company.
The faithful agent obligation was fulfilled but did not override the independent public welfare obligation to notify affected homeowners and community associations
Engineer A submitted the report to the retaining insurance company
Engineer A wrote the report and identified the design defect and the larger concern regarding the possibility that an inadequate structural member was used in other houses in the subdivision
Honesty in Professional Representations Invoked For Completeness of Report
Report to Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE
Possible uncertainty about relevance of historical information
By reporting the current defect while omitting the five-year history of non-reporting, Engineer Intern A made a representation to Engineer B that was technically accurate but materially incomplete, creating a misleading impression that the problem was a current isolated incident rather than a multi-year systemic failure
Honesty in professional representations encompasses not only the avoidance of false statements but the avoidance of technically true but materially incomplete communications that create misleading impressions; selective disclosure of facts can constitute a form of dishonesty
The materiality of the five-year history to an accurate assessment of the situation required its inclusion; omission rendered the report misleading regardless of the accuracy of what was reported
Incomplete Risk Disclosure Prohibition Engineer Intern A Five Year Defect History Omission
Engineer Intern A's report to Engineer B disclosed only the current bridge defect while omitting the five-year pattern of non-reporting, constituting an incomplete risk disclosure that deprived the supervising PE of material information needed to assess program integrity and cumulative structural risk.
Engineer Intern A was prohibited from omitting the five-year history of missed inspections from the report to Engineer B, as this constituted a known material risk bearing on both the structural integrity of the bridge and the integrity of the inspection program, and its omission created an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the safety situation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Professional Report Integrity Standard
Incomplete Risk Disclosure Prohibition Engineer Intern A Historical Pattern Omission
Engineer Intern A possessed direct knowledge of the five-year non-reporting pattern but disclosed only the current defect, leaving Engineer B without the information necessary to assess the full scope of structural risk and program failure.
Engineer Intern A was prohibited from omitting the known five-year duration of the unreported bridge defect from the disclosure to Engineer B — the historical pattern of non-reporting was a known material risk factor bearing on both the structural integrity of the bridge and the systemic failure of the inspection program, and its omission constituted an incomplete risk disclosure.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Engineer Public Safety Escalation Standard - Bridge Defect Reporting
At the time of reporting to Engineer B and continuing until the full pattern is disclosed
Inspector Misconduct Escalation Constraint Engineer Intern A Inspector Non-Reporting Pattern
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective review that a supervised inspector had failed to report the same visibly obvious bridge defect for at least five years, constituting a systemic pattern of inspector misconduct requiring independent escalation beyond the structural defect report.
Inspector Misconduct Escalation Constraint
Engineer Intern A was required to escalate the inspector's five-year pattern of systematic non-reporting of a visibly obvious defect as an independent program integrity failure — separately from and in addition to the structural defect finding — to Engineer B and appropriate personnel authorities, and was prohibited from treating the inspector's conduct as a minor administrative matter subsumed within the structural defect report.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Engineering Intern Supervision Standard; BER Case analysis of present case
At the time of and following discovery of the five-year non-reporting pattern
Inspector Misconduct Escalation Constraint Engineer Intern A Systematic Non-Reporting Discovery
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective record review that the inspector had systematically failed to report the same defect for five years, a pattern of conduct that independently required escalation beyond the structural defect finding itself.
Engineer Intern A was constrained from treating the inspector's five-year pattern of systematic non-reporting of the same visibly obvious defect as a matter subsumed within the structural defect report — the inspector's conduct pattern constituted an independent program integrity failure requiring separate escalation to Engineer B and potentially to appropriate personnel authorities.
Professional Responsibility Acknowledgment Standard - Inspection Program Oversight; NSPE Code of Ethics
At the time of and following the discovery of the five-year non-reporting pattern
Inspector Omits Defect Report → Defect Exists Undetected
Inspector Systematic Non-Reporting Pattern
From Engineer Intern A's discovery of the five-year pattern through the present, as the pattern has not been fully reported to Engineer B or other appropriate authorities
Subordinate Inspector Non-Reporting Pattern Discovered State
Inspector's five-year pattern of failing to report the same visibly obvious bridge defect, discovered by Engineer Intern A through retrospective record review
Not yet terminated — the pattern has been discovered but not fully disclosed up the supervisory chain
Engineer Intern A's retrospective review of the inspector's reports and photographs going back five years
{'license': 'N/A', 'specialty': 'Insurance company retaining forensic engineering services'}
Retained Engineer A to investigate a burned beam in a residence under construction; received Engineer A's report identifying the design defect and systemic subdivision concern; subject to Engineer A's obligations that extended beyond the report submission.
{'type': 'engineer', 'target': 'Engineer A Subdivision Tract Defect Reporting Forensic Engineer BER 17-3'}
Intern Conducts Retrospective Review → Omission Pattern Confirmed
Intern Epistemic Humility and Materiality Deference Obligation Invoked Present Case
Report to Engineer B DOT Bridge Inspection Program Director PE about discovered bridge defect
Engineer Intern A failed to report that the defect had been missed for at least five years, apparently making an independent judgment that this information was not material; the Board found the intern was not yet qualified to make that determination
An engineer intern who filters information based on a personal assessment of its materiality or urgency substitutes their own unqualified judgment for the licensed supervisor's professional judgment, violating the proper allocation of professional authority within the supervisory structure
revealing that the visibly obvious defect had been in existence and unchanged for at least five years might have actually reduced the urgency of any investigation, but Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination or evaluate the materiality of the information.
The intern's obligation to report all material facts without filtering was held to override any personal assessment of whether the historical duration of the missed inspection would affect urgency
revealing that the visibly obvious defect had been in existence and unchanged for at least five years might have actually reduced the urgency of any investigation, but Engineer Intern A was not yet qualified to either make that determination or evaluate the materiality of the information
Intern Ethical Culpability Despite Unlicensed Status Constraint Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection Omission
Engineer Intern A is an unlicensed engineer intern, but the ethical obligation to provide complete and unfiltered upward reporting of material safety information applies to interns as well as licensed engineers, and the intern's omission of the five-year history constitutes an independent ethical failure regardless of licensure status.
Intern Ethical Culpability Despite Unlicensed Status Constraint
Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status did not relieve the intern of independent ethical culpability for the knowing omission of the five-year non-reporting pattern from the report to Engineer B — the intern's ethical obligations under the professional code applied regardless of licensure status, and the deliberate or negligent filtering of material safety information constituted an independent ethical violation.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Engineering Intern Supervision Standard - DOT Bridge Inspection Context
Engineer Intern A is an unlicensed engineer in the DOT's bridge inspection program
At the time of and following the omission of the five-year pattern from the report to Engineer B
Intern Foregoes Further Escalation → Historical Risk Period Established (Remains Unaddressed)
Intern Materiality Judgment Prohibition Engineer Intern A Bridge Defect History
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective review that a visibly obvious bridge defect had been missed in inspection for at least five years, but reported only the current defect to Engineer B, apparently having assessed that the long duration might reduce urgency — a determination the intern was not qualified to make.
Subordinate Materiality Judgment Deferral Constraint
Engineer Intern A was prohibited from independently assessing whether the five-year history of missed inspections was material, urgent, or relevant to the report to Engineer B — including the assessment that the long duration might reduce urgency — because Engineer Intern A lacked the professional qualification to make such determinations, and was required to report all discovered facts without filtering.
NSPE Code of Ethics; BER Case analysis of present case
Intern Reports Defect Partially → Engineer B Receives Partial Information
{'license': 'N/A', 'specialty': 'Property owner'}
Purchased property with barn from Engineer A; extended barn by removing structural columns and footings with town approval; subject to Engineer A's obligation to provide written notification of perceived structural deficiency.
{'type': 'purchased_from', 'target': 'Engineer A Prior Design Engineer BER 07-10'}
National Society of Professional Engineers
the overriding value in the NSPE Code of Ethics
there are basic values and principles in the NSPE Code of Ethics that provide important guidance to professional engineers who are faced with such situations
NSPE Board of Ethical Review in analyzing Engineer Intern A's obligations
Identified as the overriding normative framework governing engineer obligations to protect public health, safety, and welfare, and as the source of basic values and principles guiding engineers in public safety situations
NSPE Code of Ethics - Public Safety Obligations
Engineer Intern A in determining reporting obligations; Engineer B in supervising the bridge inspection program
Governs Engineer Intern A's obligation to fully disclose all material safety-relevant information when reporting the bridge defect to Engineer B, including the five-year history of unreported defects, and establishes the primacy of public safety in professional engineering conduct
Non-Subordination of Public Safety Obligation to Political or Budgetary Bargaining Invoked BER 98-5
Proposed grandfathering ordinance allowing buildings under construction to be exempted from new stricter code requirements
City council chairman offered additional code inspectors in exchange for Engineer A's concurrence with a grandfathering ordinance; Board held it was not ethical for Engineer A to agree or to sign inadequate inspection reports
An engineer's public safety obligations cannot be traded as consideration in a political bargain, even when the engineer faces genuine resource constraints that make full compliance difficult
Non-Subordination of Public Safety Obligation to Political or Budgetary Bargaining
Public safety obligation was held to be non-negotiable; the resource constraint problem required a different solution that did not involve compromising safety standards
Persistent Escalation Constraint Engineer A BER 19-10 Building Official Non-Response
Engineer A identified structural instability in a building that had been issued a certificate of occupancy, called the county building official who did not return the call, and was required to escalate further rather than accepting non-response as sufficient.
Post-Dismissal Safety Escalation Constraint
Engineer A was required to continue pursuing resolution of the structural instability concern beyond the initial unanswered call to the county building official, by contacting the supervisor of the county official, the fire marshal, or any other agency having jurisdiction — and was prohibited from treating the building official's non-response as a discharge of the safety escalation obligation.
Following the county building official's failure to return Engineer A's phone call
Political Bargain Safety Non-Compromise Constraint Engineer A BER 98-5 Grandfathering Ordinance
Engineer A responsible for the city's building inspection program faced staff reductions while implementing more rigorous code requirements, and was offered additional inspectors in exchange for endorsing a grandfathering ordinance — a political bargain the Board determined was ethically impermissible.
Political Bargain Safety Standard Non-Compromise Constraint
Engineer A was prohibited from agreeing to concur with the proposed grandfathering ordinance or signing inadequate inspection reports as a condition of receiving additional code inspectors — establishing that the safety inspection standards were non-negotiable regardless of the resource pressure created by staff reductions and the political inducement offered by the city council chairman.
During negotiations with the city council chairman regarding inspector staffing and the grandfathering ordinance
Proactive Risk Disclosure Invoked BER 19-10 Structural Instability
Structurally unstable building with non-imminent collapse risk
Engineer A immediately advised Client B and called the county building official upon discovering structural instability, and recommended bracing the building, without waiting for formal requests
Proactive disclosure of non-imminent but real structural risks is required even when the engineer's engagement was limited to fire origin and cause investigation
Engineer A immediately advised Client B and called the county building official. The county building official did not return Engineer A's phone call. Engineer A also recommended to the owners that they should brace the building to prevent its collapse.
The proactive risk disclosure obligation extended beyond the scope of the engineering engagement to encompass structural risks discovered incidentally
Although not imminent, Engineer A believed collapse of the building was a danger
Engineer A also recommended to the owners that they should brace the building to prevent its collapse
Proactive Risk Disclosure Invoked For Five Year Defect History
Disclosure of five-year inspection failure history to Engineer B
Having discovered through records review that the same bridge defect had been missed for at least five years, Engineer Intern A was obligated to proactively disclose this risk-amplifying information to Engineer B without waiting to be asked, because the duration of the missed inspection materially affects the assessment of structural risk to the traveling public
Proactive risk disclosure requires communicating not only the existence of a current defect but all information that would materially affect a supervisor's or regulator's assessment of the risk level, including how long the defect has been present and unaddressed
The proactive disclosure obligation applies regardless of intern status when the engineer possesses material risk information obtained through professional review
Professional Accountability Invoked For Engineer Intern A Partial Reporting
Bridge inspection defect history disclosure
Uncertainty about scope of intern reporting role
Engineer Intern A's failure to report the five-year history of missed inspections to Engineer B represents a failure of professional accountability — having discovered the full scope of the problem through diligent records review, Engineer Intern A bore responsibility for communicating that full scope rather than providing a partial report that obscured the systemic nature of the failure
Professional accountability requires that engineers take responsibility not only for what they report but for the completeness and accuracy of the picture their reports convey; partial reporting that omits material aggravating facts is a form of accountability failure
The accountability obligation is not diminished by intern status; Engineer Intern A had the information and the obligation to report it fully
Professional Report Integrity Standard - Internal Supervisor Disclosure
Professional engineering ethics norms and NSPE Code
Professional norms governing completeness of safety disclosures to supervising engineers
Engineer Intern A when reporting to Engineer B
Establishes that Engineer Intern A's omission of the five-year duration of the visibly obvious defect from the report to Engineer B constitutes a failure of complete and accurate professional disclosure, particularly given the public safety implications of a systemic inspection failure
Professional Responsibility Acknowledgment Standard - Inspection Program Oversight
NSPE Code of Ethics, professional engineering practice norms
Professional norms governing acknowledgment of systemic failures in supervised inspection programs
Professional Responsibility Acknowledgment Standard
Engineer Intern A in reporting to Engineer B
Establishes Engineer Intern A's obligation to acknowledge and fully disclose the systemic nature of the inspection failure — not merely the current defect — including the five-year pattern of omission, enabling Engineer B to take appropriate corrective action
Public Safety Paramount Constraint Engineer Intern A Bridge Defect Full Disclosure
A concrete bridge member with a visibly obvious defect had gone unreported for at least five years, creating an unassessed structural risk to the public. Engineer Intern A's omission of this history from the report to Engineer B left the supervising PE unable to fully evaluate the public safety implications.
Engineer Intern A was constrained by the paramount public safety obligation from withholding the five-year history of the unreported bridge defect from Engineer B — the full scope of the structural risk, including the duration of unreported deterioration, was directly material to public safety and could not be omitted from the upward report without compromising the engineer's foundational obligation to hold public safety paramount.
NSPE Code of Ethics - Public Safety Obligations; BER Case 19-10; BER Case 07-10
At the time of reporting to Engineer B and continuing until the full risk is disclosed and addressed
Public Safety Paramount Constraint Engineer Intern A Bridge Defect Reporting
Engineer Intern A discovered a visibly obvious bridge defect with a five-year history of non-reporting, but reported only the current defect to Engineer B, failing to hold paramount public safety by omitting material information about the systemic inspection failure.
Engineer Intern A's obligation to hold paramount public safety required complete disclosure of all material facts — including the five-year history of missed inspections — to Engineer B, and prohibited any filtering or omission of safety-relevant information regardless of the intern's personal assessment of its urgency implications.
NSPE Code of Ethics; FHWA/AASHTO Bridge Inspection Reporting Standard
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked Across All BER Cases in Discussion
Building inspection program under political pressure
The Board's discussion opens by affirming that protecting public health, safety, and welfare is the overriding value in the NSPE Code of Ethics, and all four cited BER cases are analyzed through this lens
In each case, the public welfare obligation required the engineer to go beyond the immediate client relationship and take affirmative steps to protect third parties who were exposed to engineering-related safety risks
Public welfare obligation was consistently held to override client and employer interests in all four cases
The role of the professional engineer in protecting the public health, safety, and welfare is fundamental to the practice of engineering and is the overriding value in the NSPE Code of Ethics
Public Welfare Paramount Invoked By Engineer Intern A Bridge Inspection
Multi-year inspection failure disclosure
Engineer Intern A's discovery of a visibly obvious bridge defect that had been missed for five years implicates the paramount obligation to protect the traveling public from structural bridge failures; the public welfare obligation required full disclosure of both the current defect and the five-year history of non-reporting
In the bridge inspection context, public welfare requires not merely reporting the existence of a current defect but ensuring that supervisors have all information necessary to assess the full scope of public safety risk — including how long the defect has been present and unaddressed
Public welfare obligation overrides any protective instinct toward the subordinate inspector; the five-year history is material to public safety assessment and must be disclosed
Was it ethical for Engineer Intern A to fail to report to Engineer B that the defect had been missed for at least five annual inspections?
Does Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status diminish or eliminate ethical culpability for the incomplete disclosure, or does participation in a public safety inspection program impose full ethical obligations regardless of licensure?
Did Engineer Intern A's selective omission of the five-year non-reporting pattern constitute a form of active deception, or merely an incomplete disclosure, and does that distinction carry different ethical weight under the NSPE Code?
Beyond reporting the five-year pattern to Engineer B, did Engineer Intern A have an independent obligation to flag the inspector's systematic non-reporting as a potential personnel or programmatic integrity issue requiring separate escalation?
What obligation, if any, did Engineer B bear to ask probing follow-up questions upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report, and does Engineer B's failure to inquire further share in the ethical failure?
Does the principle of Intern Epistemic Humility and Materiality Deference — which counsels Engineer Intern A to defer judgments about significance to supervising engineers — conflict with the Complete and Unfiltered Upward Reporting Obligation, which demands that Engineer Intern A transmit all discovered facts without filtering them for perceived relevance?
Does the Faithful Agent Obligation — requiring Engineer Intern A to act within the chain of command and defer to Engineer B's supervisory authority — conflict with the Proactive Risk Disclosure principle, which demands that Engineer Intern A volunteer the full five-year defect history even if not explicitly asked?
Does the Systemic Failure Escalation Obligation — which calls for Engineer Intern A to surface the inspector's multi-year pattern of non-reporting — conflict with the Responsible Charge Engagement principle assigned to Engineer B, in the sense that treating systemic escalation as Engineer Intern A's duty may inadvertently relieve Engineer B of the supervisory responsibility to detect programmatic failures independently?
Does the Honesty in Professional Representations principle — which requires completeness in reports to avoid material omissions — conflict with the Intern Epistemic Humility principle when Engineer Intern A genuinely believed the historical pattern was not material, raising the question of whether a good-faith but incorrect materiality judgment can excuse an omission that the Board deems unethical?
From a deontological perspective, did Engineer Intern A violate a categorical duty of complete and honest upward reporting by selectively disclosing only the current defect while withholding the five-year pattern of non-reporting, regardless of whether the omission caused immediate harm?
From a consequentialist perspective, did Engineer Intern A's partial disclosure to Engineer B create a materially worse expected outcome for public safety than full disclosure would have, given that Engineer B's remediation decisions were based on incomplete information about the duration and systemic nature of the inspection failure?
From a virtue ethics perspective, did Engineer Intern A demonstrate the professional integrity and moral courage expected of an engineering professional by reporting the current defect while suppressing the five-year non-reporting history, or did this selective disclosure reflect a character disposition toward self-protective minimalism rather than honest stewardship of public safety?
From a deontological perspective, does Engineer Intern A's unlicensed status diminish or eliminate the duty to provide complete and unfiltered upward reporting to a supervising PE, or does the NSPE Code's obligation to hold public safety paramount apply equally to engineering interns operating within a supervised professional program?
If Engineer Intern A had fully disclosed the five-year pattern of non-reporting to Engineer B at the time of the initial report, would Engineer B have been obligated to escalate the matter beyond routine defect remediation to include a systemic audit of the inspector's entire inspection history and a formal review of the bridge inspection program's oversight protocols?
If Engineer Intern A had lacked the capability to conduct the retrospective five-year review and had therefore been genuinely unaware of the pattern of non-reporting, would the ethical analysis of the partial disclosure change, and what does this imply about the ethical significance of Engineer Intern A's actual knowledge at the time of reporting?
If Engineer Intern A had reported the five-year non-reporting history but framed it as potentially attributable to ambiguous inspection criteria rather than clear inspector negligence, would that qualified disclosure have satisfied the obligation of complete and unfiltered upward reporting, or would it have introduced a different form of material misrepresentation by filtering the factual record through an intern's unqualified causal judgment?
If Engineer B, upon receiving Engineer Intern A's partial report, had proactively asked whether the defect had been present in prior inspections and Engineer Intern A had then disclosed the five-year history, would Engineer Intern A's initial omission still constitute an ethical violation, or does the supervising PE's active inquiry obligation partially redistribute the ethical responsibility for incomplete disclosure?
Resource Constraint Engineer A BER 98-5 Inspection Program Staff Reductions
Engineer A responsible for the city's building inspection program faced simultaneous staff reductions and implementation of more rigorous code requirements, creating a resource constraint that the city council chairman attempted to exploit as leverage for the grandfathering ordinance.
Engineer A's ability to adequately perform the city's building inspection program was constrained by staff reductions due to budget cuts, creating tension between available inspection resources and the more rigorous code requirements being implemented — but this resource constraint did not justify compromising safety standards or endorsing the grandfathering ordinance.
During the period of staff reductions and implementation of new code requirements
Responsible Charge Engagement Invoked For Engineer B Supervisory Role
Reliance on subordinate reporting in large programs
Engineer B, as a licensed PE and DOT director supervising the bridge inspection program, bears responsible charge obligations that require active engagement with the full scope of inspection program quality — including the historical performance of field inspectors — not merely receipt of current defect reports; Engineer B's supervisory role creates an obligation to probe the completeness of reports received from Engineer Intern A
Responsible charge in a bridge inspection program context requires the supervising PE to ensure that the program's historical inspection records are reviewed when significant defects are discovered, not merely to accept the intern's partial report at face value
The responsible charge obligation requires active engagement sufficient to ensure program integrity; Engineer B should have inquired about the defect's history upon receiving the report
Safety Obligation Invoked Engineer Intern A Bridge Defect Five Year History
A visibly obvious concrete bridge defect had been missed by a supervised inspector for at least five consecutive years, creating an ongoing public safety risk that was only partially disclosed to the supervising PE.
Engineer Intern A was obligated to hold paramount the safety of the public by ensuring that the full scope of the bridge defect — including the five-year history of missed inspections — was communicated to Engineer B so that appropriate corrective action could be taken to protect bridge users from the structural risk posed by the unaddressed defect.
Upon discovery of the five-year history of missed inspections
Subordinate Inspector Oversight Defect Escalation Met By Engineer Intern A Current Defect
Engineer Intern A, serving in a supervisory capacity over field inspection technicians, discovered upon reviewing an inspection report that a supervised inspector had failed to report a visibly obvious concrete bridge defect; Engineer Intern A then reviewed five years of historical records and discovered the same pattern of non-reporting.
Subordinate Inspector Oversight and Defect Escalation Obligation
Engineer Intern A was obligated, upon discovering that a supervised inspector had failed to report a visibly obvious bridge defect, to immediately escalate the defect to supervising PE Engineer B — which Engineer Intern A partially fulfilled by reporting the current defect, but violated by omitting the five-year historical pattern of the same failure.
While reviewing the inspection report for a bridge, Engineer Intern A observed that an inspector under the supervision of Engineer Intern A had failed to report a visibly obvious defect in a concrete bridge member.
Upon discovery of the inspector's failure to report the current defect, and upon completion of the historical records review
Subordinate Materiality Judgment Deferral Constraint Engineer Intern A Five Year Pattern
Engineer Intern A's decision to omit the five-year pattern from the report to Engineer B reflects an exercise of independent materiality judgment that the intern was not qualified to make, resulting in the supervising PE receiving an incomplete picture of the inspection program failure.
Engineer Intern A, as an unlicensed engineer intern lacking the professional qualification to independently assess the materiality or urgency implications of the five-year non-reporting pattern, was constrained from filtering that information out of the report to Engineer B based on personal judgment about its relevance — the intern was required to transmit all discovered facts upward and allow the supervising PE to make materiality determinations.
Engineering Intern Supervision Standard - DOT Bridge Inspection Context; NSPE Code of Ethics
At the time Engineer Intern A prepared and delivered the report to Engineer B
Supervising PE Active Inquiry Constraint Engineer B Partial Report Receipt
Engineer B as supervising PE and DOT director received Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect without the five-year history of non-reporting, and was obligated to actively inquire into the full context rather than accepting the partial report as complete.
Engineer B, upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect, was constrained by the obligation to actively inquire into the full context of the reported defect — including how long the defect had been present, whether prior inspections had identified it, and what the inspection record showed — and was prohibited from passively accepting the partial report as a complete account of the safety situation.
Supervising PE Active Inquiry Obligation Engineer B Bridge Inspection Program
Engineer B received a report from Engineer Intern A about a current bridge defect but was not informed of the five-year history of the same defect being missed; as the responsible PE and program director, Engineer B bore supervisory responsibility for the completeness of the inspection program's quality assurance.
Engineer B, as the supervising licensed PE and DOT director, was obligated upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the bridge defect to actively inquire into the full context of the reported deficiency — including the history of prior inspections and the duration of the apparent defect — rather than accepting the partial report at face value, so that the scope of corrective action and the adequacy of the inspection program could be properly assessed.
Upon receiving Engineer Intern A's report of the current bridge defect
Engineer B, a PE and state DOT director.
Systemic Defect Multi-Stakeholder Notification Constraint Engineer A BER 17-3 Tract Housing
Engineer A conducting a forensic investigation for an insurance company discovered a seriously under-designed structural beam in a tract residence and observed that identical designs existed throughout the subdivision, creating a systemic public safety concern requiring multi-stakeholder notification beyond the retaining client.
Systemic Defect Multi-Stakeholder Notification Constraint
Engineer A was required to notify not only the retaining insurance company but also local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association about the under-designed structural beam — and was prohibited from limiting notification to the retaining client alone — because the systemic replication of the defect across identical tract housing designs created public safety obligations extending beyond the immediate engagement.
Upon determining that the under-designed beam was likely replicated across identical tract housing designs in the subdivision
Systemic Failure Escalation Obligation Invoked In Bridge Inspection Program
Bridge inspection program quality assurance
Engineer intern's limited authority relative to program-level decisions
The discovery that a field inspector had missed the same visibly obvious concrete bridge defect for at least five consecutive years constituted evidence of a systemic inspection program failure requiring escalation to program supervisors with full disclosure of the historical pattern, not merely a current-cycle defect report
A five-year pattern of missed identical defects by the same inspector is not an isolated error but a systemic failure; Engineer Intern A's obligation extended beyond reporting the current defect to escalating the pattern as a program-level concern
Systemic Failure Escalation Obligation for Inspection Programs
The systemic nature of the failure and its public safety implications required full escalation regardless of the engineer intern's limited formal authority; the appropriate response was to provide Engineer B with complete information to enable program-level remediation
Systemic Inspection Failure Escalation Violated By Engineer Intern A Bridge Program
Discovery that a field inspector had failed to report the same visibly obvious concrete bridge defect for at least five consecutive annual inspection cycles, indicating a systemic failure in the bridge inspection program rather than an isolated oversight.
Systemic Inspection Failure Escalation Obligation
Engineer Intern A was obligated to escalate the five-year pattern of missed inspections to Engineer B as a systemic program failure — not merely as a single current defect — so that a comprehensive program review, inspector accountability action, and audit of all inspections conducted by the implicated inspector could be initiated.
Upon completing the historical records review and before or contemporaneously with reporting the current defect to Engineer B
Systemic Pattern Upward Disclosure Constraint Engineer Intern A Five Year Bridge Defect History
Engineer Intern A discovered through retrospective review that the same inspector had failed to report the same visibly obvious concrete bridge member defect for at least five years, but reported only the current defect to supervising PE Engineer B, omitting the systemic historical pattern entirely.
Engineer Intern A was constrained from reporting only the current bridge defect to Engineer B while omitting the five-year pattern of the same inspector's systematic non-reporting of the same visibly obvious defect — the full historical pattern constituted independent material safety information that Engineer Intern A was required to disclose in its entirety.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Professional Report Integrity Standard; Bridge Inspection Reporting Standard (FHWA/AASHTO)
At the time Engineer Intern A reported the bridge defect to Engineer B
Temporal Disclosure Urgency Constraint Engineer Intern A Five Year Pattern Omission
The five-year duration of the unreported defect was time-sensitive information bearing on the urgency of structural assessment — the longer the defect had gone unaddressed, the greater the potential for cumulative deterioration and structural risk, making prompt and complete disclosure to the supervising PE a time-critical obligation.
Engineer Intern A was constrained by temporal urgency from deferring or omitting disclosure of the five-year non-reporting pattern — the discovery that a visibly obvious structural defect had gone unreported for five years created an immediate obligation to disclose the full historical context to Engineer B without delay, as the duration of unreported deterioration was directly relevant to assessing whether the bridge remained safe for public use.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Bridge Inspection Reporting Standard - FHWA/AASHTO
Immediately upon discovery of the five-year non-reporting pattern
Third-Party Affected Party Direct Notification Obligation Invoked BER 07-10
Jones as new property owner exposed to structural collapse risk from snow loads
Engineer A verbally notified the town supervisor about the structural deficiency risk to the modified barn; the Board held Engineer A should also have notified the new owner Jones in writing
Verbal notification to a regulatory official is insufficient when an identifiable private party is directly exposed to the risk; written notification to that party is required
the Board concluded that while Engineer A had acted ethically by taking prudent action in notifying the town supervisor, the individual presumably with the most authority in the jurisdiction, Engineer A should also have notified the new owner in writing about the perceived deficiency.
Direct written notification to the affected property owner was required in addition to regulatory notification, not as a substitute for it
Engineer A verbally contacted the town supervisor, who agreed to review the matter, but no action was taken
Third-Party Affected Party Direct Notification Obligation Invoked BER 17-3
Individual homeowners in subdivision with potentially under-designed structural beams
Local homeowners' or community civic association
Engineer A discovered under-designed beams in a tract housing subdivision; the Board held Engineer A had obligations beyond reporting to the retaining insurance company, including contacting individual homeowners and the homeowners' association
When a forensic investigation reveals a deficiency affecting identifiable third parties beyond the retaining client, the engineer's public welfare obligation extends to direct notification of those affected parties
The NSPE BER decided in that case that Engineer A had ethical obligations under the NSPE Code of Ethics beyond providing the report to the retaining insurance company. Engineer A had further responsibilities to take additional steps, including contacting local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association to advise them of the finding.
The obligation to notify affected homeowners and community associations was held to supersede the limitation of the engineer's engagement to the retaining insurance company
Engineer A had further responsibilities to take additional steps, including contacting local building officials, individual homeowners, and the local homeowners' or community civic association to advise them of the finding
Timely Risk Disclosure Obligation Violated Engineer Intern A Historical Pattern Omission
Engineer Intern A discovered through historical records review that a supervised inspector had missed the same visibly obvious bridge defect for at least five years; this information was material to Engineer B's risk assessment but was omitted from the report.
Engineer Intern A was obligated to promptly disclose to Engineer B the full risk information bearing on the bridge defect — including the five-year history of the same defect being missed — upon discovery of that history, recognizing that the duration of the missed defect materially affected the assessment of risk severity and the urgency of corrective action.
Upon completing the historical records review, contemporaneously with or immediately following the report of the current defect to Engineer B
{'license': 'Public official', 'specialty': 'Municipal administration'}
Received verbal notification from Engineer A about structural deficiency; agreed to review the matter but took no action, contributing to the Board's finding that written notification to the new owner was also required.
{'type': 'notified_by', 'target': 'Engineer A Prior Design Engineer BER 07-10'}
Written Report Completeness Constraint Engineer Intern A Bridge Defect Report to Engineer B
Engineer Intern A's report to Engineer B disclosed only the current defect while omitting the five-year history of the same inspector's failure to report the same defect, constituting a failure of written report completeness.
Engineer Intern A was constrained from submitting a report to Engineer B that omitted the known five-year duration of the visibly obvious bridge defect — the report was required to include all relevant and pertinent factual information, including the historical pattern of non-reporting, which was directly material to assessing the severity of structural risk and the integrity of the inspection program.
NSPE Code of Ethics; Professional Report Integrity Standard - Internal Supervisor Disclosure
Written Third-Party Owner Notification Constraint Engineer A BER 07-10 Barn Collapse Risk
Engineer A designed a barn, sold the property, learned the new owner had modified the structure in a way that created collapse risk under snow loads, verbally notified the town supervisor who took no action, but failed to also notify the new owner Jones in writing.
Written Safety Notification Third-Party Owner Constraint
Engineer A was required to notify the new property owner Jones in writing about the perceived structural deficiency resulting from the barn extension — and was prohibited from relying solely on verbal notification to the town supervisor as a complete discharge of the safety notification obligation — because the property owner was directly at risk and verbal governmental notification alone was insufficient.
Upon learning of the barn extension and identifying the structural collapse risk
The Board concluded that while Engineer A had acted ethically by taking prudent action in notifying the town supervisor, the individual presumably with the most authority in the jurisdiction, Engineer A should also have notified the new owner in writing about the perceived deficiency.
barn construction (BER Case 07-10) before property sale to Jones (BER Case 07-10)
certificate of occupancy issuance (BER Case 19-10) before Engineer A's structural instability observation (BER Case 19-10)
defect existence (visibly obvious) before Engineer Intern A's discovery of the defect
fire investigation and beam examination (BER Case 17-3) before Engineer A submitting report to insurance company (BER Case 17-3)
property sale to Jones (BER Case 07-10) before barn extension and structural modifications (BER Case 07-10)
repeated inspection omissions (five-year pattern) before Engineer Intern A's review of current inspection report
structural modifications approved and extension built (BER Case 07-10) before Engineer A learning of the extension (BER Case 07-10)