As I've traveled around the country, attending various state society and regional meetings, I've heard a recurring concern expressed over the standard of care. More specifically, concerns over engineering work that fails to meet the standard of care. I've heard examples cited where the documents that were submitted for permit, theoretically complete construction documents, were so poor as to clearly place the safety, health, and welfare of the public at risk.

The standard of care is a legally defined phrase that is used by all state engineering licensure boards and all legal firms that defend or prosecute engineering cases. One legal definition states:

"In performing professional services, [the engineer] has the duty to have that degree of learning and skill ordinarily possessed by reputable engineers practicing in the same or similar locality and under similar circumstances.

"It is his or her further duty to use the care and skill ordinarily used in like cases by reputable members of his or her profession practicing in the same or a similar locality under similar circumstances, and to use reasonable diligence and his or her best judgment in the exercise of his or her professional skill and in the application of his or her learning, in an effort to accomplish the purpose for which he or she was employed." (Book of Approved Jury Instructions, 8th Edition)
 
As practicing engineers, we already know that each project is different, as is each client. The definition also includes different localities and different circumstances. It is not surprising that there are a lot of differing opinions as to what an appropriate standard of care is or should be. Without a clear definition to work from, engineers must rely on their education and ethics to keep them out
of the courts.

When we look at examples of failure to meet the minimum standard of care, we can usually point to examples that clearly fail the test. More often in everyday practice, we have to deal with situations that are questionable. It is impossible to determine the exact point when enough work has been completed to satisfy the minimum standard of care. Unfortunately, there is an unrelenting pressure in the business environment that pushes us closer and closer to that undefined point where we are no longer doing an adequate job. The biggest pressures are probably the three words that every project manager has indelibly imprinted on his or her brain: scope, schedule, and budget. We've all been involved with projects where testing or data gathering that was needed before we could adequately perform our work was deemed to be "not in the scope." The same has happened with the project schedule and budget—"we don't have time for that" or "we don't have that in our budget."

A lack of adequate resources can also be a factor that makes it difficult to perform to an adequate standard of care. We can be constrained by a lack of time to complete the work, forcing shortcuts and assumptions. We can be constrained by a lack of technical resources like the correct reference literature or code books. There are other factors that are unique to each project that when combined with those previously mentioned, create the unrelenting pressure on us to lower our standards.

Professional and technical societies, in partnership with the state licensing boards, must become the force that upholds the standard of care. We can do this through our existing programs or we may need to refocus to cover areas that aren't already being addressed. First, through education, we can use our existing educational resources to ensure every engineer understands the concept of an adequate standard of care and then has the technical knowledge to perform to that standard. While all engineering students have been instructed in many different technical topics, very few have ever heard that a standard of care even exists. This must change. Furthermore, when a standard of care is mentioned during seminars or conferences, it is usually referred to only in the context of legal contracts and engineering malpractice. This also must change.

Finally, the professional and technical societies can heighten awareness of the standard of care through outreach to all practicing engineers. The standard of care establishes the bar at the "skill ordinarily used…by reputable members of his or her profession." Without some level of networking and sharing of knowledge in a noncompetitive environment, it is very difficult, if not impossible to determine how another member of the profession would respond to any given engineering task. This is especially true for small or individual practices that don't have ready access to other engineers in order to conduct in-house quality control or peer reviews.