Overview
The issue of conflict of interest is among the most fundamental ethical situations faced by engineers. In the course of their professional practice, engineers face situations involving conflict of interest on an ongoing basis. Each situation must be evaluated based upon the individual and specific facts in the case as there is no one-size-fits-all rule that can be applied to conflict of interest situations. Some situations involve obvious answers while others are more complicated and require careful analysis and examination. While sometimes the appropriate response is disclosure of all of the facts and circumstances to all parties, in other cases, disclosure is insufficient and other courses of action are necessary. In other situations, the engineer must avoid the conflict entirely or else run afoul of basic ethical principles.
Instructions
Scenario:
You are an engineer employed by a facilities design, contracting and engineering firm. You are bidding on designing and constructing a new FAB plant for Acme Semiconductors. Since your engineering firm does not have adequate background in the construction of a FAB plant, you procure the services of an expert within the industry. You have retained the industry expert for three months during the bidding process. As a consortium, you begin the bidding process for the project.
The expert lets you know that there are only three companies that can perform this type of facilities construction and if each company bids competitively, then the margins of profit will be approximately 15 million at best. He has an idea. He tells you that if you will bid the project at 150 million that you will in essence gain 50 million in margin. He will use a third of the 50 million margin (1/3 x 50) to pay off the other two companies for the time period, thus all three companies will be profitable for this project. He will do all the negotiations behind the scenes so you will have no knowledge of the process or doings.
As a new engineer, you are very interested in really gaining an appreciation and understanding of how big business and big construction operations.
Questions:
1. What are the major ethical issues and tradeoffs herein?
2. What are all the possible courses of actions and potential outcomes?
3. What are the expectation of you from the NSPE engineering community?
4. If this ethical issue became a case in court, what would the opening statement of the prosecutor be?
5. What is the right thing to do?
Requirements:
1. Based on your knowledge of the NSPE Code of Ethics (link available in the Ethics Case Study Resources section) and your research, reflect on the proper course of action you should take in the scenario presented. Your position should be specifically based on contents of the Code and on upon your worldview. Clearly identify how you would address any potential conflicts of interest. Synthesize the similarities and differences between the Bible’s approach to ethics and the engineering creed as they pertain to this scenario. Keep in mind that you are an employee of the construction design/contracting firm, not a manager or executive in the company. You must carefully balance your personal views with those of the company and the international standards represented by NSPE.
2. Prepare a 1200-1500 word report (length of main body, not counting title or reference page) on your evaluation of this situation, taking care to properly cite sources both intext and in a reference list at the end of the report.
3. Your report is to be to be submitted through Canvas in a doc, docx, or pdf file with the following specifications:
• use font styles Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman with a font size of 12
• use 1.5 line spacing
• use 1 inch margins on all sides
