NSPE Overruling Engineering Judgment Task Force

Recommendation for NSPE Board of Directors Action
January 6, 2007 Meeting

NSPE Action Plan Goal #: 2

Background of Recommendations—The NSPE Overruling Judgment Task was established in January 2005 by NSPE President Bobby E. Price, Ph.D., P.E., F.NSPE, to study and investigate situations and circumstances in which individual engineers' judgment had been overruled by management and in which the public health and safety may have been compromised. Following extensive study and investigation (including a study of the literature and other work in this area, a national survey of individual engineers who alleged that their judgment had been overruled and that the public health and safety had been compromised, and an invitation and presentation by NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin, P.E. at the January 2006 NSPE Winter Meeting), the Task Force prepared a written report to the NSPE of Directors in July 2006 (Attachment 1). Following review, the NSPE Board of Directors accepted the final report and also referred the final report back to the Task Force for the development of more specific recommendations.

In response to the NSPE Board of Directors July 2006 action, the NSPE Overruling Engineering Judgment Task Force has prepared the following specific recommendations for action by the NSPE Board of Directors.

Actual Recommendations for Board Action —

NSPE-SPONSORED TRAINING

Recommendation #1: Widely disseminate and publicize NSPE Ethics in Employment Task Force Report within Engineering community.

Recommendation #2: NSPE should emphasize the need for engineers to develop and enhance their abilities and confidence in explaining life-threatening situations in simple, understandable, lay terms, which can be easily understood by non-engineers (managers or regulators) and the public.

Recommendation #3: NSPE should expand and publicize at all levels its web based ethics training for individual engineers and their employers.

NSPE AND DISPUTE MEDIATION

Recommendation #4: NSPE must promote discussion and cooperation between engineers and their employers that seeks common ground to address ethical dilemmas and their consequences.

Recommendation #5: NSPE should study and, if deemed feasible, fund, develop, and publicize avenues of support for engineers who find themselves in a legal struggle to defend their work, their judgments, their jobs, and their reputations as a result of fulfilling their ethical obligation to the public. The NSPE Ethics Hotline, now in place, must be widely promoted as a strong first step in this direction.

INTERNAL SAFETY JUDGEMENT DISPUTES (New Task Force)

Recommendation #6: Develop some appropriate processes for companies to use by which disputes in safety judgments between managers and engineers can be resolved internally. NSPE should offer web based training on this [procedure.

Recommendation #7: NSPE should offer mediation services should company’s internal process fail.

DEVELOP FORMAL DEFINITIONS WITHIN ENGINEERING COMMUNITY (New Task Force)

Recommendation #8: Reconsider qualifications required of Technical Program Managers (consider issues raised by disasters such as NASA shuttles and New Orleans levees).

Recommendation #9: Define scope of technical program on case-by-case basis before establishing minimum engineering qualifications for managers (e.g., size, complexity, safety implications).

Estimated Impact on Budget for 2006-07 Year. Unknown

NSPE Task Force on Overruling Engineering Judgment:

Louis L. Guy, Jr., P.E., F.NSPE, Chair

Curtis A. Beck, P.E., F.NSPE

Paul M. Bowers, P.E., F.NSPE

Mark H. Dubbin, P.E.

Robert W. Emery, P.E., F.NSPE

Larry W. Emig, P.E., F.NSPE

Francis J. Lombardi, P.E.

Joel A. Miele, Sr., P.E., F.NSPE

Karen S. Pedersen , P.E., F.NSPE

Terry R. Royer, P.E.