By Tara Hoke
This column is based on a recent case reported in the news media involving the deficient design of an apartment building in a northwestern suburb. Fortunately, the structural deficiencies in this case did not result in tragedy for the building’s users or occupants, but this case nevertheless serves as a reminder of the potentially catastrophic consequences caused by a failure to provide due consideration for the safety of engineering works.
Situation
Residents of a newly opened apartment building are forced to vacate their homes following notice from the city that the building’s occupancy permit has been revoked due to “life safety concerns” with the building’s design.
Questions about the structure first surfaced months prior to its opening, when an unidentified source brought the design to the attention of a local structural engineer who was not involved in the project. Upon review, the structural engineer believed that substantial elements of the apartment building’s design had been copied from drawings the engineer’s own firm had prepared for another local project. Worse yet, the copied drawings were intended for a structure that was much smaller in size and scope, and the structural engineer felt the apartment building’s design engineer had failed to make the changes necessary to address the differing safety requirements of a larger structure.
The structural engineer contacted the building’s design engineer, who denied copying the caller’s drawings and expressed confidence that his design was fully compliant with building code requirements and applicable standards. The design engineer claimed his work had been reviewed both internally and by an independent third party, though he declined to name the external peer reviewer. Dissatisfied by this answer, the structural engineer filed a complaint against the design engineer with his licensing board, which agreed to open a case.
In the course of their review, investigators for the licensing board identified serious deficiencies in the building’s design. Concrete columns throughout the structure were undersized or underreinforced, and some transfer beams were not supported by structural elements strong enough to transfer the necessary loads. As a whole, the design lacked an adequate load path to transfer the weight of the structure to its foundation. Moreover, the building’s core and load-bearing walls were not flexible enough to withstand lateral forces, creating a risk that even a mild-to-moderate earthquake could cause a catastrophic failure of the structure.
Contrary to the design engineer’s earlier statements, the board found that he had not in fact obtained an independent peer review of his design, as required by statute. It also determined that he had failed to perform a sufficient number of field reviews during construction to check for conformity with the design drawings and code requirements.
When interviewed by the board, the design engineer acknowledged that his past design experience had been limited to concrete residential buildings of two stories or less, along with wood-frame structures up to five stories in height. The engineer also designed steel studs, and in that capacity he regularly reviewed structural designs for high-rise reinforced-concrete buildings; however, he himself had never designed such structures prior to his work on this apartment building.
With respect to the independent review and field reports, the engineer attributed the omissions to his busy practice and noted that, in the midst of his other work commitments, the necessary reviews “just never happened.”
A report of the board’s findings was forwarded to the city, which prompted the city’s action to bar tenants from occupying the property.
Question
If this case had involved an ASCE member, how would his actions be measured under the ASCE Code of Ethics?
Discussion
Section 4f of the ASCE Code of Ethics requires that engineers “perform services only in areas of their competence.” While competence is the bedrock of a professional’s career — i.e., the attainment of education and experience in a specialized field of knowledge — in practice, this bedrock is shifting all the time. New methods and technologies, changing standards or regulations, and even the ethical duty of professional development challenge today’s engineers to keep expanding their scope of competence or risk being left behind.
Unfortunately, sometimes a desire for advancement can tempt engineers to stretch well beyond the reach of their expertise. Also, individuals are often not the best judges of their abilities; it is a common phenomenon for persons learning a new subject to overestimate their understanding, simply because they do not yet know enough to recognize just how complex the subject really is.
To avoid misjudgment, engineers must carefully weigh their experience against the risk of noncompliance with other ethical obligations. Clients and employers expect an engineer to serve their interests “with integrity and professionalism,” per Section 4a of ASCE’s code, while the engineering community demands that its members’ work “uphold(s) the honor, integrity, and dignity of the profession,” in accordance with Section 3a. Above all, all persons impacted by engineering services rely on the engineer’s commitment to “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public” before any other considerations, as noted in Section 1a.
If the engineer’s experience demonstrates true proficiency in an engineering matter, then these ethical duties are met. If, on the other hand, there is room for question about the depths of the engineer’s knowledge or expertise, then the most ethical course is to “trust but verify”: trust in the intent to provide competent services, but verify the result by involving trusted mentors, reviewers, or other professionals with proven expertise.
In the current case, the design engineer took on work that was beyond the scope of his expertise, and he failed to ensure the safety of his design by seeking competent review. Accordingly, if this matter had involved an ASCE member, the Committee on Professional Conduct would likely have no trouble concluding that the engineer had violated his ethical obligations to practice only in his areas of competence and to protect first and foremost the public health, safety, and welfare.
The engineer’s licensing board reached a similar decision, finding that he had “made a critical error in judgment in believing that he had the requisite skill and knowledge” to design the apartment building and that he had not made “even the minimum effort to rectify his shortcomings” by seeking independent review of the design or performing appropriate field reviews during construction.
For these reasons, and in view of the engineer’s failure to take action even when credible concerns about the structure were brought to his attention, the board felt the engineer had committed professional misconduct, and it voted to revoke his license to practice.
It is important to acknowledge the engineer who reported his concerns about the structure to the licensing board for investigation. Section 1i of ASCE’s code instructs engineers to “report misconduct to the appropriate authorities where necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public,” and it is likely due to this engineer’s commitment to this ethical duty that a potential catastrophe was averted.
Also note that a “near miss” of this nature rarely results from an ethical lapse of one person alone. In this case, contributors to the defective structure can be said to include the design engineer’s business partner, who was deeply involved in the deficient design and also lost his license as a result of the board’s investigation; the developer whose desire to “fast track” the project may have pressured the engineer to skip field checks and necessary reviews; and the city whose inspectors neither identified the code compliance issues with the structure nor confirmed that an independent review had been performed. Though all are fortunate that the building occupants’ losses were solely economic in nature, it goes without saying that public safety should be top of mind for all involved in an engineering work and should never be left to chance.
Tara Hoke is ASCE’s general counsel and a contributing editor to Civil Engineering.
This article first appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Civil Engineering as “Confidence beyond Competence.”
