Step 4: Review

Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.

Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.

Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.

Engineers shall not reveal facts, data, or information without the prior consent of the client or employer except as authorized or required by law or this Code.

Engineers shall acknowledge their errors and shall not distort or alter the facts.

Engineers shall treat all persons with dignity, respect, fairness and without discrimination.

Engineers shall not disclose, without consent, confidential information concerning the business affairs or technical processes of any present or former client or employer, or public body on which they serve.

Engineers in private practice shall not review the work of another engineer for the same client, except with the knowledge of such engineer, or unless the connection of such engineer with the work has been terminated.

Cited as background example of how the Board has addressed peer review issues, specifically regarding conflicts of interest when an engineer who conducted a review later joins a design-build proposal for the same project.

Cited as background example illustrating the peer reviewer's obligations when confidentiality agreements exist and safety violations are discovered, establishing the process for resolving disagreements between reviewer and reviewed engineer.

Cited to contrast the present case, noting that in that prior case the Owner refused to advise the engineer of the planned peer review, unlike here where the Owner reluctantly agreed to notify Engineer A.

Engineer B is ethically required to make certain that Engineer A is advised of the planned peer review. It is not necessary for Engineer B to provide that notice personally, but Engineer B must know either that Engineer A has been advised or that Engineer A has been terminated from the project.

Owner and Engineer B are not required to obtain Engineer A’s consent to the peer review, merely to assure that Engineer A has been informed of the peer review. Especially in the face of known design defects in the first tower, Engineer A may not ethically object to the peer review.

The Board's first conclusion implicitly establishes that Engineer B's notification duty is triggered by Owner's initial instruction to conduct the review covertly, meaning Engineer B's ethical obligation is not merely passive (waiting to be asked) but active: Engineer B must refuse to proceed with the engagement at all until satisfied that notice has occurred or Engineer A has been terminated. This suggests the duty functions as a precondition to accepting the peer review assignment, not merely a procedural step to be completed at some point during the review.

The Board's second conclusion distinguishes between 'consent' and 'notice,' but does not fully address what obligations flow from Engineer A once properly notified. Engineer A's professional accountability duty under the Code's error-acknowledgment provision arguably extends beyond passive non-objection to an affirmative duty to cooperate substantively with the peer review process, such as providing plans, calculations, or clarifying design rationale, given that the known errors in the first tower directly implicate public safety in the mirror-image second tower.

The Board's reasoning rests on an assumption that Owner's confidentiality interests (in conducting a discreet review) can be reconciled with transparency obligations toward Engineer A, but does not resolve whether Owner has a further duty to share the peer review's findings with Engineer A once complete. Since Engineer A retains professional responsibility for the original design and a duty to acknowledge errors, withholding the review's outcome from Engineer A could undermine the very accountability the Board's second conclusion presumes Engineer A owes to the process.

Q101: Owner's initial instruction to Engineer B to conduct the peer review covertly, without informing Engineer A, is itself ethically problematic even though Owner is not directly bound by the NSPE Code. The instruction placed Engineer B in a position where compliance would have required Engineer B to violate the peer review notification norm reflected in III.7.a. The Board's approval of Engineer B's refusal to proceed implies that the covert instruction, had it been followed, would have tainted the entire engagement from its inception, making Owner's initial directive an ethical failure in its own right, independent of Engineer B's ultimate compliant conduct.

Q104: The absence of a contractual provision authorizing peer review does not affect Owner's authority to retain Engineer B without Engineer A's consent. The Board's reasoning treats the right to commission a peer review as flowing from Owner's status as client/owner of the project and from the overriding public welfare interest in accurate design, not from any specific contractual clause. Engineer A's professional relationship with Owner does not include a right to veto Owner's independent decision to seek additional professional review, particularly once design defects have already surfaced in the related first tower.

Q201: Engineer B's obligation to notify Engineer A does not conflict with, but rather is subordinate to and consistent with, faithful agency to Owner under I.4. Faithful service to a client does not extend to concealment that would violate a colleague's professional standing or the profession's peer review norms. Engineer B properly balanced these interests by refusing to proceed covertly while still remaining available to perform the review once proper notice was given, thereby serving Owner's substantive interest in a competent review without sacrificing professional integrity toward Engineer A.

Q204: Owner's initial preference for confidentiality and control over the review process is in tension with the public welfare interest in a transparent and cooperative peer review, but this tension is resolved in favor of transparency once safety implications are at stake. Because significant design errors were already found in the first tower's plans, the public welfare provision (I.1.) effectively overrides Owner's confidentiality preference, requiring that the review proceed openly rather than secretly, even though Owner retains general rights to protect proprietary business information under III.4.

Q301: From a deontological standpoint, Engineer B fulfilled the duty of notification by treating it as a threshold, non-negotiable condition for engagement rather than a matter subject to client discretion. Engineer B's refusal to proceed under Owner's initial covert instruction reflects a rule-based commitment to the peer review norm embedded in III.7.a., independent of the consequences that might have flowed from either compliance or refusal. This demonstrates that Engineer B's duty was categorical: notification was owed to Engineer A as a matter of professional obligation, not merely as an instrumentally useful precaution against future disputes.

Q304: Engineer A did not act with full professional integrity in refusing to consent to the peer review. Given the discovery of significant design errors in the mirror-image first tower, Engineer A had heightened reason under III.1.a. and I.1. to welcome, rather than resist, independent scrutiny of the second tower's design. Refusing consent under these circumstances suggests prioritization of personal or professional reputation over the acknowledgment-of-error obligation and the public's safety interest, undermining the integrity expected of a design professional facing credible evidence of prior mistakes.

Q401: If Owner had refused entirely to permit notification of Engineer A, Engineer B would still be considered to have satisfied the notification duty only by declining the engagement altogether rather than proceeding covertly. The Board's reasoning implies that Engineer B's ethical duty is not merely to advocate for notice but to ensure that notice actually occurs as a precondition of performing the review; absent Owner's consent to notify, Engineer B's only ethical option consistent with III.7.a. would have been to withdraw from the assignment rather than compromise the profession's peer review standard.

Q403: Had Engineer B not objected to Owner's original instruction and instead proceeded with the review before advising Engineer A, the Board's conclusion that the notification duty was fulfilled would not hold. The Board's approval turns specifically on Engineer B's initial refusal to proceed covertly; compliance with the covert instruction, even if notice were given belatedly after the fact, would represent a violation of the peer review norm because the duty is to ensure notice before or contemporaneous with the review, not merely at some point during or after its conduct.

The tension between Client Loyalty in Peer Review and Peer Review Notification by Engineer B was resolved in favor of notification: Engineer B's duty to act as a faithful agent to Owner did not extend to executing an instruction (conducting a covert review) that violated the profession's peer-review norms. Engineer B's refusal to proceed until Engineer A was advised shows that client loyalty is bounded by, and subordinate to, the structural obligation of transparency toward the engineer whose work is being reviewed. This suggests that client-directed confidentiality (III.4, II.1.c.) cannot be invoked to justify concealment from a fellow engineer whose professional standing and work product are directly implicated.

The apparent conflict between Peer Review Cooperation Dependency and Engineer A's personal objection was resolved by subordinating Engineer A's consent to Professional Accountability: once significant design errors had already been discovered in the first tower, Engineer A's obligation under III.1.a. to acknowledge errors and the overarching duty to hold public safety paramount (I.1.) foreclosed any legitimate basis for refusing cooperation. This indicates that in peer review contexts, an engineer's individual preference or reputational concern cannot ethically override public welfare once a track record of design defects has been established for closely related work.

The case illustrates a layered prioritization: notification (procedural fairness toward the reviewed engineer) is treated as a precondition that must be satisfied before the substantive question of cooperation arises, but notification itself does not require consent. Peer Review Notification by Engineer B and Engineer A Peer Review Cooperation Duty operate on different levels—one governs process integrity between engineers, the other governs the reviewed engineer's obligation to the public and profession. Client Loyalty in Peer Review and Public Welfare in Tower Design Review are not ultimately in genuine conflict here because faithful agency to Owner was reinterpreted to include ensuring an ethically sound review process, which itself serves the public welfare goal of catching defects before the second tower is built.

Is Engineer B ethically required to make certain that Engineer A is advised of the planned peer review?

Is Engineer A ethically required to cooperate with the peer review of Engineer B?

Does Owner's initial instruction to conduct the peer review covertly, without informing Engineer A, itself constitute an ethical breach independent of whether Engineer B complies?

Does the discovery of significant design errors in the first tower create an independent duty for Engineer A to proactively re-examine the second tower's design, separate from any peer review?

What ethical obligations, if any, does Owner have to share the peer review's findings with Engineer A once completed, given Engineer A's duty to acknowledge errors?

Does the absence of a contractual provision authorizing peer review affect whether Owner may retain Engineer B without Engineer A's consent?

How should Engineer B balance client loyalty to Owner against the duty to notify Engineer A of the planned peer review?

Does Engineer A's professional accountability for the first tower's design errors override his personal objection to the peer review, given the public welfare concerns for the second tower?

How should the principle of peer review cooperation in an undisclosed review be reconciled with Engineer B's obligation to ensure proper notification before proceeding?

Does Owner's preference for client confidentiality and control over the review process conflict with the public welfare interest in a transparent, cooperative peer review of the tower design?

From a deontological perspective, did Engineer B fulfill the duty of notification under the peer review provisions by refusing to proceed until Engineer A was advised, regardless of Owner's initial instruction?

From a consequentialist standpoint, did the potential benefit of catching design errors before construction of the second tower justify conducting the peer review even over Engineer A's objection?

Did Engineer B act with professional integrity by objecting to Owner's instruction to conduct the peer review covertly, rather than simply complying with the client's directive?

Did Engineer A act with professional integrity in refusing to consent to the peer review, given the known design errors already discovered in the first tower?

If Owner had refused to consent to notifying Engineer A at all, would Engineer B still be considered to have satisfied the notification duty by declining the engagement rather than proceeding covertly?

If no significant design errors had been discovered in the plans for the first tower, would the Board still conclude that Engineer A may not ethically object to the peer review of the second tower's design?

If Engineer B had not objected to Owner's instruction to conduct the peer review without advising Engineer A, would the Board's conclusion that Engineer B fulfilled the notification duty still hold?

Because the Owner's decision to procure a peer review is guided by the paramount duty to protect public health, safety, and welfare, it sets a legitimate protective process in motion, but that same process becomes ethically fraught once it leads to the Owner's instruction to keep the review secret from Engineer A.

The Secret Review Instruction carries no fulfillment or violation of its own yet it directly triggers Engineer B's ethical objection, showing that an unprincipled procedural choice by the Owner can still generate downstream normative consequences even without being itself judged against a duty.

The Owner's Consent to Notification, guided by the value of professional integrity in peer review, corrects the problem created by the secret instruction and causally enables the transparent notification of Engineer A, showing how upholding integrity can reverse a prior ethically questionable action's trajectory.

Engineer B's Objection to Secret Review fulfills the duty not to review another engineer's work without that engineer's knowledge, and this principled stand is precisely what causes the Owner to reconsider and consent to notifying Engineer A, demonstrating how one actor's adherence to a duty can correct another's earlier lapse.

Engineer A's Refusal to Consent, occurring after being notified of the review, violates the duties to acknowledge errors, act in the client's best interest, and hold paramount public safety, showing that once transparency was restored through the causal chain, Engineer A's resistance to accountability undermines the very protective purpose the peer review process was meant to serve.

The question arises because Engineer B is caught between an explicit client instruction for secrecy and a professional norm favoring transparency toward the peer whose work is being reviewed, and the Code does not clearly resolve which obligation takes precedence when the two conflict.

The question arose because the Owner tried to secretly commission a peer review of Engineer A's tower design, and once Engineer A learned of it and refused consent, it became unclear whether his general duty to cooperate with legitimate peer review survives when the review itself was set up in violation of peer review norms.

This question arises because the Owner, who is not an engineer and thus not directly bound by the NSPE Code, issued an instruction that conflicts with an engineer's disclosure duty, leaving unclear whether ethical scrutiny attaches to the instruction itself or only to Engineer B's compliance with it.

The question arises because the paramount public safety principle and the procedural peer review cooperation framework point to different scopes of responsibility once errors are found in one design, leaving unclear whether that discovery alone generates a self standing duty for the second tower.

The question arises because Engineer A's professional duty to acknowledge errors seems to presuppose access to the very findings that revealed those errors, yet the covert and contractually unregulated nature of the peer review leaves it unclear whether Owner is ethically bound to provide that access.

The question arises because the Absent Contractual Peer Review Provision leaves ambiguous whether Owner authority to hire Engineer B derives solely from contract terms or from broader professional and welfare obligations that exist independent of Engineer A's agreement.

The question arises because the Owner's covert instruction and Engineer B's engagement to review Engineer A's plans place two legitimate but conflicting obligations, serving the client and respecting a peer's right to know, in direct tension with no clear textual priority between them.

The question arises because the same set of facts, the errors in the first tower and the covert review of the second, can be read either as evidence that Engineer A's personal objections must yield to public welfare obligations, or as evidence that the manner of the review itself violated professional norms, making his objection independently justified.

The question emerged because Engineer B faced a direct conflict between an explicit client instruction for a covert review and an NSPE Code provision protecting engineers from undisclosed peer review of their work, with no contractual clause resolving which obligation takes precedence.

The question arises because the Owner's procurement of a secret peer review, discovered only after Engineer A learned of it, creates a structural conflict between the Owner's contractual right to manage the review process and the profession's obligation to ensure open, cooperative scrutiny of a defective tower design that could endanger the public.

The question arises because Engineer B's refusal to proceed absent notification sits at the intersection of a deontological rule against secret review and an initial client directive to keep the review undisclosed, requiring the Board to determine which duty was paramount.

The question arises because the same set of facts, an undisclosed peer review conducted despite objection, can be evaluated either by its beneficial safety outcome or by its violation of professional notification obligations, leaving the ethical verdict dependent on which warrant is prioritized.

The question arises because the Owner's covert review instruction pits Engineer B's contractual dependency on client cooperation against an explicit ethical duty to notify a fellow engineer, leaving unresolved which obligation should take precedence.

The question arises because Engineer A's refusal can be read either as a legitimate defense of professional norms against covert peer review or as an evasion of accountability given already discovered design errors in the first tower, and the covert nature of Engineer B's instruction leaves the true motive and legitimacy of the refusal ambiguous.

This question arose because the original case only addresses partial owner cooperation, so extending the scenario to total refusal of consent exposes an unresolved gap in whether declining work counts as fulfilling versus merely avoiding violation of the notification duty.

This counterfactual question arises because the Board's reasoning bundled a general professional obligation (cooperate with peer review) together with a specific factual outcome (errors were found), and it is unclear from the case whether the obligation's authority derives from the principle itself or from the vindicating outcome.

The question arises because the Board's finding conflated two distinct actions, objecting to secrecy and notifying Engineer A, creating ambiguity about which action actually grounds the fulfillment of the notification duty under Engineer B Peer Review Notification Duty.

Given that Owner wanted the review conducted secretly and Engineer A remained the engineer of record, the Board concluded that Engineer B could not ethically proceed without confirming, by any means, that Engineer A had been told or was no longer on the project.

Because defects had already surfaced in the first tower and the second tower shared the same design, the Board concluded that Engineer A's consent was unnecessary and that his objection to the review would be ethically improper under these facts.

Because Owner's covert instruction came before any work began, the Board's reasoning implies Engineer B's ethical duty operates as a gatekeeping precondition, refusing the engagement itself, rather than a step to be satisfied mid-review.

Given that the same defects threaten the second tower, the interpretive extension reasons that Engineer A's error-acknowledgment duty should require more than silence, though the Board's original text left this substantive cooperation question unresolved.

Because Engineer A remains accountable for the original design, the interpretive extension suggests that Owner's discretion to withhold review results is not absolute, though the Board's stated conclusions never explicitly resolved this post-review disclosure question.

Given that Owner's initial directive required Engineer B to withhold notice from Engineer A, and given that Engineer B's refusal was approved by the Board, the Board concluded the covert instruction was an independent ethical failure that would have tainted the engagement had it been followed, regardless of Engineer B's ultimate compliant conduct.

Because design defects had already been found in the related first tower, the Board reasoned that Owner's authority to retain Engineer B flows from Owner's status and the public welfare interest in accurate design rather than from any specific contractual clause, so the absence of such a clause does not require Engineer A's consent.

Given that Engineer B declined only the covert condition and remained willing to serve Owner once Engineer A was notified, the Board concluded that faithful agency and the notification duty were not in true conflict, since serving Owner's substantive interest never required concealment from Engineer A.

Because errors already surfaced in the first tower's plans, the Board concluded that the public welfare interest in a transparent, cooperative review outweighs Owner's confidentiality preference, even though Owner retains a general right to protect proprietary information in less safety-critical circumstances.

Given that Engineer B refused to proceed covertly as a precondition rather than weighing likely outcomes, the Board read this as evidence of a categorical, rule-based commitment to the notification norm, supporting a deontological characterization of Engineer B's conduct.

Given that significant design errors had already surfaced in the mirror-image first tower, the board concluded that Engineer A's refusal to consent to review of the second tower prioritized reputation over the acknowledgment-of-error and public safety obligations, and therefore lacked professional integrity.

Assuming Owner had refused entirely to allow notice, the board reasoned that Engineer B could not satisfy the notification duty by simply proceeding quietly, so only declining the engagement would preserve the peer review standard.

Because Engineer B's satisfaction of the notification duty rested on the initial refusal to proceed covertly, the board reasoned that had Engineer B instead complied with Owner's secret instruction, even with belated notice, this would violate the peer review norm requiring advance disclosure.

Given Owner's instruction for a covert review and Engineer B's insistence on advising Engineer A first, the board concluded that faithful agency to Owner does not extend to executing instructions that conceal review from the engineer whose work is being scrutinized.

Because significant errors had already been found in the first tower's design, the board reasoned that Engineer A's personal objection to review of the second tower could not ethically outweigh the public welfare and accountability obligations triggered by that discovery.

Because the board found that notifying Engineer A did not itself require his consent, it could position notification as a precondition that clears the way for the substantive cooperation question, keeping the two duties on separate levels. Given that catching design errors before the second tower was framed as benefiting both the Owner and the public, the board concluded that faithful agency to the Owner and public welfare concerns are not truly in tension in this case, but instead converge through a properly notified and ethically conducted peer review process.

Should Engineer B comply with Owner's instruction to conduct the peer review covertly, or refuse to proceed until Engineer A is notified?

Should Engineer A participate fully and cooperatively in Engineer B's peer review, or refuse consent and resist participation?

Should Engineer A proactively re-examine and acknowledge errors in the second tower's mirror-image design, or wait for the peer review process to surface any issues?

Should Owner instruct Engineer B to conduct the peer review covertly without informing Engineer A, or notify Engineer A of the review from the outset?

Should Owner share the peer review's findings with Engineer A once completed, or withhold the results given his earlier refusal to consent?