Standard of Care for Delivery of Engineered Products

The responsibilities of the professional engineer are presented from the perspective of legal liabilities that can be incurred and deficiencies in the law that may relieve his/her accountability. The process for the delivery of engineered products is investigated in terms of current engineering education and historical trends. The concept of the standard of care emerges from a review of tort and criminal law that applies to engineering practice. Risk evaluation and risk management are acknowledged as a significant part of current engineering practice. The extent of the professional engineer's responsible charge is proposed. It is based on the interdependence of the phases of the delivery process and the responsibility for a delivered, engineered product. Principles of risk management and the prescriptive format of the ASCE Manual of Professional Practice for Quality in the Constructed Project are compared to suggest it may have significant deficiencies. To complete the paper, generic principles of risk management are developed to begin moving from concept to application.