Isaac (00:10): What is up everybody? Isaac here with Civil Engineering Academy, excited to have another podcast episode rollout. We're thankful that you're here and that you share this stuff. So if you're liking and subscribing, we appreciate that. Leave comments, that's always appreciated. And if you need help on your f your PE, definitely check us out at civilengineeringacademy.com. We wanna make sure you're taken care of as we wanna help people on their journey to become a professional engineer. And speaking of being a professional engineer, one of the big issues out there is ethics. And today's episode we're gonna talk about a special case. It was actually an article that was written in the A SCE. So this is a real case that happened and we wanted to discuss it. I want to bring on my brother Mark. We wanna discuss this ethics problem and kind of just bounce stuff back and forth on this particular problem. I think a lot of people get hung up on ethics a little bit when there are some gray areas out there. And so we have to be mindful of things that happen in the workplace or with social media or in the public. So there's a great article, it's written by an author Tara Hoke, and she wrote this article in the ASCE talking about this ethics case. So we're gonna discuss it today and it's gonna show a disagreement between engineers that became public, and it basically is gonna teach us about ethics, communication, and professionalism on how we should tackle a scenario like this. So stick with me as we discuss this particular ethics problem. It's gonna be coming up right after this. See you in a minute.

Isaac (01:35): Alright. All right. We're rocking and rolling. Mark. What's up?

Mark (01:37): Hey, I'm here again. Ready for yeah. Ready for another riveting conversation. .

Isaac (01:45): Well, we kind of hit that in the intro. Talked about this ethics case that's come up that what was written as an article. And I think it's important to kinda see these case studies that roll out every once in a while, because a lot of times we, we get siloed in our own work. We don't look up sometimes and see well, ethics problems are out there in the world. So,

Mark (02:08): Yeah.

Isaac (02:09): Well..

Mark (02:10): I look at his stuff 'cause you can kind of see a, a bad thing coming if you're encountering a similar situation in your own practice, in your own engineering.

Isaac (02:21): Yeah. You're tempted.

Mark (02:23): Yeah. And you might be tempted to do something wrong, so it's good to, to review these things.

Isaac (02:29): Yeah. So with this particular one, I kind of teed it off. It's about a disagreement between engineers that ended up becoming public, but yeah. Why, can you tell us a little bit more about this particular case and what happened?

Mark (02:41): Yeah, so we won't disclose like specific names and everything, but basically there was a huge DOT project, right? It's big project that was plagued by delays. And so the DOT that was in charge of the project was getting frustrated because just delay after delay, after what a delay were was occurring. And so the DOT decided to hire a third party set of engineers to kinda review and suggest maybe some alternatives or maybe some solutions for a faster delivery. They were trying to figure out how to accelerate the project, right? And so they, they they got a couple of engineers to do kind of a a review of of the schedule, see what the sequencing looked like. I'm sure they probably reviewed like, I don't know all the traffic control and everything. And they tried to figure out what was going on, but they they dissected everything. And then they, they wrote a report and rather than sending that report or even having I guess a direct conversation with the engineer of record or the yeah, the engineer record on on how things were initially designed initially phased, probably, I'm sure it was, there was a lot of phasing in the construction, right? There were a lot of maintenance of traffic, some MOT where they had to switch traffic over, back and forth as they got structures done. Or, you know, there's probably a lot of complicated phasing that was going on this project. And so rather than you know, get with the engineer of record and say, Hey, this is what we found the engineers that actually did the review, decided to just go public uh with their report.

Mark (04:48): And it was pretty scathing . It was pretty critical of the the original you know, the engineer of record, their, their design and their, the, the phasing that they put together for the project. And they're pretty critical of that. And so rather than going directly to the engineer and say, Hey, this is what we think we found, they just, they publicized it, right? And so that initiated the big dust up right. Between, you know,

Isaac (05:18): Big blow up.

Mark (05:19): The big blow up. So yeah, that's, that's in a nutshell what happened in this, in this case.

Isaac (05:28): Well, it spurs some questions and so many people that maybe are listening or maybe they're preparing for the PE exam ethics is part of the PE exam. And the ASCE has a code of ethics. Why don't you talk about that a little bit and maybe where this role particularly falls in that ASCE code of ethics.

Mark (05:53): So, ASCE has a code of ethics and there's like, they call 'em the fundamental cannons, right? Of ethics. And there's eight of 'em. And I won't read, you know, all of them 'cause there's, there's eight main cannon items, fundamental cannons. And then there's a bunch of subcategories as well that that cover some of some of the conditions that we talk about when we're dealing with ethics. But essentially this case violated what they call canon number five, which is engineers shall build their professional reputation on the merit of their services and shall not compete unfairly with others. And then as part of that, that canon, there's a sub canon to that category that basically addresses the situation, says engineers shall not maliciously or falsely directly or indirectly injure the professional reputation prospects practice or employment of another engineer, or indiscriminately criticize in another's work. So these reviewing engineers that were basically doing kind of a peer review of the original engineer records work that's where they, that's where they went wrong, right? Hmm. They just kinda,

Isaac (07:18): So let me ask you some follow up questions. I mean, you're presented with this option to take on that work. Do you think this code of ethics came up or is there a way that they could have handled criticizing another's work in a different way besides taking it public publicly?

Mark (07:38): Well, that.

Isaac (07:38): Or should they have avoided it?

Mark (07:40): No, I don't think there's, there's never, there shouldn't ever be a problem with one engineer criticizing or scrutinizing another engineer's work. There should never be a problem with that in and of itself. I've, I've had my work scrutinized by other engineers and in peer review type situations, and they find stuff. And I mean, if you're not like I don't know, taking it with the right attitude, you can be offended by kind of what they find, you know, why are you questioning my judgment on this and that?

Isaac (08:16): Well, I'll just say this. We run a couple courses to help with the FE and PE and we always do peer reviews, and we always find problems sometimes that we need to correct. So,

Mark (08:26): Yeah.

Isaac (08:27): Um Francis go our team.

Mark (08:30): Yes, yes, we find stuff right? Even in our own courses where we get criticized and we get scrutinized and different little things that are found. And I've, I've tried to like make that kind of a welcoming thing. My attitude is just, yeah, I like another set of eyes on my work. And if you see something that doesn't, you don't agree with or doesn't look right, I wanna know about it. You know?

Isaac (08:55): Yeah.

Mark (08:56): So that's, that's my attitude is I, I, I try to welcome that, right? But if I were to have a peer review of my work, and rather than coming to me with those criticisms or those, those items that maybe the the reviewing engineer doesn't agree with, if that engineer were to just go out and publicize this, and one of his first things that he says, he or she says is, Hey, you know Mark's work really stinks. He's not really that good , you know, and starts tearing me down in public before that engineer has talked to me about my work and, and what they've found in their review. I mean, that's just, that's kind of, that's hitting below the belt. A low ball, that's a low ball thing to do. So . And so that's, that's what we have to be careful. So as an, as an engineer, if you're asked to perform a review of another engineer's work, and you do that review and you do find some things that you don't agree with that you want to call out, you need to approach that engineer that's done the work first, right?

Isaac (10:12): Yeah.

Mark (10:12): That's who you need to talk to about it right off the bat. Don't publicly announce their shortcomings or their incompetence if you think they're incompetent. You know, just, that's just not, that's just not cool.

Isaac (10:26): Yeah. I'm, I'm one, I'm curious how this one got, you know, that far.

Mark (10:31): Yeah.

Isaac (10:32): So quickly,

Mark (10:33): I would think.

Isaac (10:34): Maybe some history there or something, but.

Mark (10:37): Yeah, if I were to like, read between the lines, there may have been some history between the reviewing engineer and the EOR, maybe,

Isaac (10:47): Maybe they're competitors and.

Mark (10:49): Yeah. And maybe,

Isaac (10:50): Maybe they lost the bed .

Mark (10:53): Yeah. Or maybe there was some personal relationships, you know, that went awry or something. And, you know, one engineer kind of had an ax to grind against the other. I, who knows, there may have been some history there.

Isaac (11:06): Well, the other thing I wanted to note, like, it is, it's very easy to go public with stuff. I mean, social media has made this extremely easy. I haven't seen really engineers critical of other people's work online in my sphere. But who's to say it's not happening, but I'm just saying it's very easy. It, it could be very easily done on social media, LinkedIn, and all that jazz, so mm-hmm . But, you know, the bar to entry to get stuff in front of other people is, is pretty low nowadays. So mm-hmm . Need to be careful with that. Um but yeah, you bring up those canons Canon five there's also another canon, Canon two, which is about performing services only in your area of competence. And that was, I think, kind of an issue with this one. And kinda where it went to court too, is that they were deciding if these people that authored this critical report, the, with, if this fell in the area of their own competence.

Mark (12:14): Yeah.

Isaac (12:14): It sounds like that they agreed that it did.

Mark (12:18): Right. But the report was questioning their competence, right?

Isaac (12:23): Yes.

Mark (12:23): Yeah. And so that's partly the reason why going public with that was so, so bad. , you know, that information should have been presented to the original, the originating engineer. It should have been presented to that person first before it went public.

Isaac (12:44): Yeah.

Mark (12:46): And it's only fair, I mean, it's like the, the originating engineer that, you know, started the design deserves to like, defend his logic or, or her logic as to why something was designed a certain way or planned out a certain way or scheduled a certain way. Um they deserved their day in court, your right. They could deserve to defend themselves. So, yeah.

Isaac (13:11): So you know, just kind of a recap of this particular case, what ended up happening is the ASCEs committee on Professional Conduct ended up deciding that the actual two report authors were within their area of competence, and that they did not unfairly criticize that DOT's particular work. But the chief engineer, however, violated the code of ethics by attacking their professional integrity in public. And so what ended up happening is a letter of censure from the ASCE went to them. So do you know anything about a letter of censure and what that actually does?

Mark (13:55): Um it's basically just a notification from ASCE that you have officially violated the code of ethics and you're on, you're kind of on notice within the organization that that you've had that infraction essentially. Um I don't know that it carries over to any, I don't know, any kind of legal costs or,

Isaac (14:23): Yeah.

Mark (14:23): Or yeah, any other kind of punitive type situation professionally. I don't, I don't know that it applies to that, but it's just kind of a, a notification from, you know, ASCE that dude, you're on the, you're on the, you're on the blacklist, you're on the watch list.

Isaac (14:45): Yeah. So . So I mean, obviously it seems like emotions took off on this one. And I think the key takeaway though is that emotions do not excuse unethical behavior no matter how mad we're getting at each other , so,

Mark (15:06): No, for sure. And so I mean, Isaac, have you ever had a situation like this in your own career where.

Isaac (15:14): I have, but it's been more like internal within the organization. Maybe between peers or something like that?

Mark (15:22): Yeah.

Isaac (15:22): Um where there's been disagreements, whether it's on design concepts or something like that. You know, it's sometimes you have to have a third party come in and weigh in on that. We've also had, I've had stuff where we've had engineering being done by a third party that it's easy to criticize their work, you know, and even their work gets reviewed. And sometimes people, if you consistently show bad work or have problems, sometimes you end up building a reputation that your quality just isn't as good as maybe other, you know, consultants that are in the industry doing the same work. Right. And so sometimes there needs to be feedback there, but I haven't had any where stuff has like gone public and that I would never recommend these guys because they suck so bad .

Mark (16:14): Right.

Isaac (16:15): You know, I've never done that. That's never even crossed my mind to do that because, you know, there needs to be a level playing field and people are competent, whether, you know, even though their design isn't say the best or most economical.

Mark (16:29): Yeah. The, the worst I, in my career, the worst I've ever been like, called out in public. And I, I would put that in quotes is maybe in a, in a meeting situation. So I've had like.

Isaac (16:44): But still within the ownership, right? Like.

Mark (16:46): Yeah, it's within the ownership. So just, you know, years ago I did a, a reshoring design for a a one-way beam and slab type project that we were doing for a lab building at a, at the local university here in Salt Lake City. And the engineer, the structural engineer was questioning my my reshore design because it deviated from what he had prescribed on the structural drawings. Hmm. And so I had to go into a meeting and defend my design including some of the, I I, I took the liberty of taking, well, , I took some live load reductions. I accounted for some of those in the capacity of the slabs that I was trying to design for. And I had to go in and defend that. But I was, I felt like I was kind of, you know, it was amongst the ownership the general contractor all of their management team. I was confronted in front of everybody on my design and I had to kind of defend it on the fly . I wasn't like, you know, really prepared to do that, but.

Isaac (18:18): Defend yourself.

Mark (18:19): Yeah. Hard to do. I was able to successfully do that. In fact, I found that I was actually in the right, and the engineer of record was actually in the wrong, because it was outside of their purview to prescribe what the reshoring should be. It was part of means and methods of construction.

Isaac (18:40): Oh, yeah.

Mark (18:40): And that was solely on my responsibility. And so I, I basically argued successfully that the design is mine and this is sufficient. And now part of

Isaac (18:53): Your scope of work.

Mark (18:54): Yeah. It's,

New Speaker (18:54): You design stuff,

Mark (18:55): It's part of your scope of work. And if you're gonna get prescriptive with the reshore design, then you're gonna design it. You know? And then once I put it like that, the engineer was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You know, this is part of means and methods. And then I kinda won the argument. But...

Isaac (19:13): I do the same thing. We have, you know, we do do a lot of foundations, but we're not telling the construction group how, you know, if it's a, if it's a wet hole or a dry hole, you know, depending on the water table. We'll design something for different scenarios, but we're not gonna tell them how to construct it.

Mark (19:37): Right.

Isaac (19:37): Um we let them figure out, you know, based on our spec mm-hmm . How you're gonna dewater this or keep water out of the hole, you know, and that's kind of up to you keep the hole stabilized, so, right.

Mark (19:49): Yeah.

Isaac (19:49): Means and methods.

Mark (19:51): Right. And then whenever I've been in situations where I feel the need to criticize a structural engineer's design, 'cause maybe it's something that I think is, I find a lot of cases where I think something's been over designed based on my experience and what I've seen a lot of over the years. You know, I got a good feel for what works and what doesn't. And sometimes I'll get a younger engineer is where it usually happens, and I and I'm like, man, this is or design and I wanna streamline it. Right. For constructability, I find it just, it's better just to call the, the engineer, just deal with 'em straight up and then just say, Hey, can you explain how you got to this conclusion? Why did you size this structural member like this? Why did you, you know, do X, Y, and Z? Please explain it to me. And a lot of times they have a good reason for it, and I'm like, okay, cool. And then we just, we just move forward,

Isaac (20:52): Move on.

Mark (20:53): Yeah. But a lot of times if I have 'em explain it like that, explain their logic to me, then I can say, okay, did you think about this? Did you consider that? You know, and then, and then we get to a viable solution. So it's just, it's always better just to deal directly with, I if you're in a position where you're criticizing another engineer's work or scrutinizing another engineer's work, it's better just to deal directly with 'em. Right. And show them what you're finding and talk to 'em directly about what you're finding. Don't, don't go into a public situation, whether it's social media and even in just like a double meeting. Yeah. And roast them in front of everybody. That's just not, that's not cool. .

Isaac (21:40): Definitely not. Yeah. I mean, how, how do you see, you know, part of being leadership is being able to be emotionally in control. So how do you, I guess, how do you see that playing out? I mean, sometimes a younger engineer might know what they're doing is wrong, and maybe they're not piping up to a more senior individual, but mm-hmm . It seems like leadership and keeping our emotions in control need to play a hand at hand, go hand in hand with each other.

Mark (22:16): Yeah.

Isaac (22:17): And sometimes you do get passionate, passionate leaders. But plus you can't let some stuff spill over.

Mark (22:25): Well, plus if you're an older more experienced engineer, you need to, like, you, sometimes you gotta check your pride too, you know, because you could have a younger.

Isaac (22:37): Check three times.

Mark (22:37): Yeah. Younger engineer that's questioning what you're doing and you're like, you can't question me, you young punk, you know, what do you think you're doing? , I know what I'm doing. You know, you can't, you can't have that attitude either. I've been questioned like that before and I try to think of it, oh, this, maybe it's a learning opportunity for that younger engineer. You know, I'm gonna teach 'em what I, my thought process and why I did something a certain way. And if you approach it with that attitude, and that's not to say like the younger engineer hasn't found something that you missed that can happen.

Isaac (23:14): Right.

Mark (23:15): Absolutely. But you shouldn't have like, you know, your, your pride in the middle of all of that so that you're, it just makes you mad. 'cause Some inexperienced young punk is questioning your work and .

Isaac (23:30): So there's probably some guardrails here on how to handle disagreements ethically. Um I'm, I'm sure one of them is that we need to keep you know, any critiques, pretty fact-based mm-hmm . You know, you're not gonna go outside that. And it's also important, like we said, to keep it private as much as possible. Obviously, you know, you're dealing with owners and stuff that care about hearing about these things, but it's not getting out, you know, in the public and social media and stuff. So keep things fact-based, keep 'em private. Those are good things to do. You know, you don't wanna, there's always two sides to every story. So if you're coming back, you know, being the one that's writing up some sort of critique, you wanna make sure you have full knowledge of the project for sure. Mm-Hmm . You need to know what the other side, the other side's story is, and design the ASCE, you know, code of ethics is a pretty good set of roles to make a decision with as a framework.

Mark (24:37): Yeah. And, and a lot, most of the stuff in there is pretty, I would say, common sense, like.

Isaac (24:44): Yeah.

Mark (24:44): Type stuff.

Isaac (24:46): It's sad, you have to put it on paper, but...

Mark (24:49): It is, but it's fairly common sense. If it feels funny and you probably shouldn't be doing it, you know, but it's a good idea to review that code of ethics because they're just, it's a good template to follow, you know, as you're engaging with other engineers and you might be in a situation where you have to critique and scrutinize their work, how you gonna handle that? You should have at least an idea of of what's right and what's wrong with that.

Isaac (25:18): Yeah.

Mark (25:19): Even though your conscience can probably get you through most of that .

Isaac (25:23): That's very true.

Mark (25:24): Right? .

Isaac (25:26): Well, I think these are interesting cases. I think they're fun to talk about and I think they're fun to share with others on like a podcast like this, because sometimes we miss these cases or you're not hearing about them. So maybe we could do this a little more regular and talk about ethics cases that were coming across.

Mark (25:43): Yeah.

Isaac (25:43): Um obviously you wanna go check out the ASCE code of ethics as a great reference. We'll make sure we link that in our show notes and stuff so you have a copy of that. Plus, I think it's probably helpful to use if you're preparing for your exams too. You wanna go look through that stuff. Any other thoughts about this one?

Mark (26:06): No, it's, it's definitely something that we probably ought to visit periodically, Isaac as a topic of discussion. Just 'cause it's important and we need to be ethical and we need to be professional and treat everybody with respect. And it's just good to review this stuff, you know, because all of us, we get into situations,

Isaac (26:31): Think before you post, you know, don't, don't get trigger happy on the, on the posting.

Mark (26:37): Yeah. One thing I'd like a closing thought that I share is one of the things that I like to do sometimes, you know, I'll get criticized about something and I'll be, you know, we're human, we're gonna get emotional about some of that sometimes.

Isaac (26:54): Oh yeah.

Mark (26:54): What I'll do is I'll sit down and I'll write my scathing email, my response, you know, to whatever criticism that I've had, but I won't send it. I actually sleep on it and I come back in the next morning and I read it again and I always feel differently about what I've written. So it's kind of.

Isaac (27:15): Light it up.

Mark (27:16): Yeah. Well, it's kind of cathartic, you know, get it all out, you know, I can.

Isaac (27:21): You stuck.

Mark (27:22): Yeah. Air all my grievances and then I come back the next day and I, and I write the real email, which is, you know, I try to keep it down the middle and professional.

Isaac (27:33): Yeah.

Mark (27:34): Keep it professional, but it just helps get it all out, you know? And so.

Isaac (27:40): I've definitely had those before and that is a great advice. .

Mark (27:43): Yeah, that's something.

Isaac (27:44): Sit on that email for a day.

Mark (27:46): Because if you just send it out your first impulse, sometimes you send that out, you'll, you'll regret it. .

Isaac (27:52): Yeah. And I even have another one, like, if this is something that you have a problem with, with someone on your team or in, in your organization, just, just a bonus tip for you. Especially if you know, like someone higher up than you is gonna be involved, I have found that calling them, talking to them first, letting them know or giving them a heads up about the issue goes a long ways before you fire off an email. That's pretty like, you know, not skating, but could be, you know, or it could be interpreted the wrong way, so.

Mark (28:26): Right.

Isaac (28:27): You know, give people heads up, but also sit on your email for a day and make sure you're.

Mark (28:33): Yeah.

Isaac (28:34): That's, you're okay with it before you fire off.

Mark (28:36): Yep. That's good. So good advice.

Isaac (28:40): Okay, man. Well we will revisit one of these, I think in the future. I think it's a great topic to review. I'm always surprised sometimes they get comments from people taking our courses that they struggled with the ethics section in the exams and maybe they're worded funky or something like that. Or maybe there's like, you know, multiple, what feels like right answers. But some people struggle on the ethics section of the exam and I've always felt like, oh, those were kind of gimmes. You know, you just kind of reason 'em out, but, right. Some people do struggle and I, you know, obviously I think they try to make 'em more challenging, so,

Mark (29:15): Right.

Isaac (29:15): They're a little gray. But.

Mark (29:17): Yeah.

Isaac (29:18): It's a good topic, one that we need to visit often. So I would like to know those that are listening. If you found this helpful, if you like this topic, if you've been in a situation like this before, how did you handle it? Any of those stories would be great to hear because we can all learn from each other, so.

Mark (29:35): Yep.

Isaac (29:36): Okay, man. Anything, any last words?

Mark (29:39): No, I think we've said some good things here.

Isaac (29:44): Okay. So, well, thanks for joining me again and we'll talk to you again in the future.

Mark (29:48): Okay. We'll see yah.

Isaac (29:50): Okay, see yah.