FE Electrical Ethics Practice Problems

Answer: C) The engineer who created the drawings, since copyright vests in the author when the work is created

The Handbook's Copyrights section on p. 13 describes copyright as a form of protection provided to the authors of original works of authorship, and it lists the exclusive rights the owner holds: to reproduce the work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies and to display the work publicly. Engineering drawings are original pictorial and graphic works, so they are protected, and the protection arises automatically when the drawing is fixed in a tangible form, on paper or in a CAD file, without registration. Ownership vests in the author, the engineer, unless one of two things transfers it: the drawings were made by an employee within the scope of employment, in which case the employer is treated as the author, or a written agreement makes the work a work made for hire or assigns the copyright. Neither applies here, so the engineer owns the copyright and the client holds an implied licence to use the drawings for the building they were prepared for. The client may not reuse them for a second building or hand them to another designer for modification without permission, which is why design contracts usually address reuse expressly. Filing drawings for a permit makes them a public record for inspection but transfers no rights to the authority.

The client who commissioned and paid for the drawings, since payment for the work carries the copyright with it confuses paying for a service with acquiring the copyright, which requires a written transfer.

The drawings belong to no one, because engineering drawings are technical documents that cannot be copyrighted is false; drawings are original works of authorship.

The building department, once the drawings are submitted with the permit application gains a record, not a copyright.

Answer: D) Disclose the spouse's interest before the review, and take no part in the decision.

The governing sentence is Rule 240.15.B.6 of the NCEES Model Rules, printed on p. 5 of the Handbook: licensees shall disclose all known or potential conflicts of interest or other circumstances that could influence or appear to influence their judgment or the quality of their professional service or engagement.

Read what that sentence actually turns on. It is not the size of the stake, and it is not whether the engineer would in fact be swayed. It is whether the circumstance could appear to influence the judgment. A commissioner voting on a proposal from a company in which the household holds a share fails that test at any percentage, which is why the Handbook sets no threshold and why the 15% figure is given only to make the interest concrete. Disclosure is the mandatory act; standing out of the decision is what disclosure is for, since a disclosed interest that still casts a vote has not been cured.

Taking part anyway reasons from the size of the stake, calling it a minority share, and from whose name is on it. Neither the percentage nor the shareholder's identity appears in the rule, and a spouse's holding is exactly the kind of circumstance the phrase 'or other circumstances' is there to catch. Entering it in the record afterwards gets the act right and the timing wrong: a disclosure made afterwards cannot inform the body that had to weigh it, and the rule protects the judgment, which is spent once the vote is cast. The transfer is worse than it looks. A transfer inside the family for the duration of the review does not end the household's interest, it conceals it, and the appearance the rule addresses is untouched.

Note also Rule 240.15.A.1 on the same pages: the licensee's first and foremost responsibility is to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of the public. The public's protection here is a review nobody has a reason to distrust.

Answer: C) Present both design choices to the client with the reliability, cost, energy and environmental trade-offs disclosed

The Handbook's Societal Considerations on p. 14 ask engineers to deliver solutions that are technically viable, economically feasible and environmentally and socially sustainable, and to assess consequences over the whole life cycle, from design through operation to disposal. That is a mandate to weigh energy use and resource conservation, not a mandate for any particular piece of equipment. The Model Rules add the form the advice must take: Rule 240.15 A.4 on p. 4 requires all relevant and pertinent information to be included objectively in professional documents and statements, and Rule B.6 on p. 5 requires disclosure of anything that could influence the quality of the professional service. Two code-compliant designs with different risk profiles are a decision that belongs to the client, and the engineer's duty is to make it an informed one: the reliability record, the energy saving, the life-cycle cost including the value of that saving over the plant's life, and the environmental effect, with a professional recommendation if asked. Choosing by price alone withholds the analysis; choosing by a single criterion, whether efficiency or track record, substitutes the engineer's preference for the client's informed judgment and ignores the trade-off the Handbook says must be considered.

Pick whichever design costs the client less to install, without any further analysis of the alternatives at all omits the life-cycle and environmental assessment the Handbook calls for.

Choose Design B, because the lower energy use settles the question in favour of the newer equipment and Choose Design A, because the longer service record settles the question in favour of the proven, familiar equipment each decide on one factor and deny the client the disclosure that Rules A.4 and B.6 require.

Answer: A) Disclose the foreign patent to the office while the application is pending.

The engineer knows something material that the office does not, and the office is about to grant a property right on the strength of what it knows. That is the whole of it.

The Handbook states the professional obligation directly, in Rule 240.15.A.4 of the Model Rules on p. 4: licensees shall, to the best of their knowledge, include all relevant and pertinent information in an objective and truthful manner within all professional documents, statements, and testimony. A patent application is a professional document and a statement, and a reference the applicant knows to be closer to the claims than anything the examiner has found is about as relevant and pertinent as information gets. Rule A.1 on the same page puts the public first, and the public interest in a patent system is that it grants exclusivity only for what is genuinely new.

United States practice makes the same point with teeth. Everyone substantively involved in prosecuting an application owes the patent office a duty of candour, which means an obligation to disclose known information material to patentability, from any country. Breaching it is treated as inequitable conduct, and the remedy is that the whole patent becomes unenforceable, not merely the claims the withheld art would have defeated. A patent obtained by keeping quiet is therefore worth less than one that never issued.

Saying nothing on the ground that searching is the examiner's job confuses two different things: the examiner does the searching, but nothing about that relieves the applicant of disclosing what the applicant already has. Waiting to see whether the examiner finds it independently is the same position with a delay attached, and it is worse, because the withholding is then deliberate and documented by the file itself. Treating a foreign patent as irrelevant is simply wrong on the law: printed publications and patents count as prior art wherever in the world they were published.

Answer: D) PPE Category 4, rated 40 cal/cm²; above that energy the task may not be done energized under any circumstances

NFPA 70E allows arc flash protection to be selected in one of two ways: an incident energy analysis, which calculates the energy a worker would receive from an arcing fault at the working distance and selects arc-rated clothing accordingly, or the arc flash PPE category method, which assigns a category from tables of equipment types, provided the available fault current and clearing time fall within the table's stated parameters. The tables run from Category 1, arc-rated to 4 cal/cm², to Category 4, rated to 40 cal/cm², and they include medium-voltage switchgear entries, so 13.8 kV equipment is within the method. There is no category above 4. Where the parameters are exceeded, or where the incident energy could be greater than 40 cal/cm², the standard does not permit adding layers and proceeding; the task must not be performed on energized equipment, and the options are to de-energize, to reduce the incident energy by faster clearing or remote operation, or to obtain an incident energy analysis that shows the energy is lower than feared. The hospital's need for power does not change the rule; it is met by planning, by backup supplies and by remote switching, not by exposing a worker to an energy that no clothing is rated to stop. The Handbook's Electrical Safety table on p. 23 covers the shock hazard; the arc hazard, a thermal one, is governed by the incident energy alone.

There is no upper limit, since extra layers of PPE can be added for any incident energy above the top level is not permitted; layering does not create a rating above what the tables allow.

PPE Category 2 is the highest category the method permits for energized work of any kind, above or below 600 V understates the tables, which go to Category 4.

The PPE table method cannot be applied to any equipment rated above 600 V, such as this medium-voltage switchgear is wrong; the tables include medium-voltage equipment within stated limits.