I know I have read ethical standards of practice for Land Surveyors in the past. I'm not sure if it was state specific or not and can't put my hands on it. A certain Engineering/Surveying company needs to be sent a reminder that it is unethical to actively solicit work that has already been procured by another professional. Can anyone point me in the direction of ethical standards specific to Georgia or for Surveying in general?
Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"
If you do a Google search for 'land surveying ethics' you will get a pretty good list of topics and examples. I have been working on a ethics write up and found lots of good information and examples this way.
One example is from Utah: http://www.ucls.org/assets/documents/01.%20CodeofEthics.7-12-08.pdf
Probably unethical, not illegal, and ....
any attempt to enforce something like that would be in violation of Federal Trade Commission anti-competitiveness laws.
If clients can be taken away from you you are probably doing something wrong.
The ethical standards of practice for Land Surveyors extend to prevent anyone from causing another surveyor harm by their actions in what they may say, do and how they conduct themselves and do no harm to another surveyor.
The surveyor must conduct themselves within the laws that everyone lives with. Unfair practices and backstabbing must be documented with proof of intent to do damage or harm to another surveyor to have any legal weight before any accusations can be made.
Fair trade practices must be followed. Then again we are not car salesmen that spin a dime on a clunker. Everything we do must hold the test of time and standards we set for ourselves and those the BOR sets for us.
If someone is misrepresenting themselves and reputation of another surveyor to take over their clients work, then we are heading in the wrong direction.
🙂
Probably unethical, not illegal, and ....
Dave is correct.
If your client replaces you, you have an issue with your client. An issue that should have been addressed, with your client, much earlier.
"By order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, former Section 11(c) of the NSPE Code of Ethics prohibiting competitive bidding, and all policy statements, opinions, rulings or other guidelines interpreting its scope, have been rescinded as unlawfully interfering with the legal right of engineers, protected under the antitrust laws, to provide price information to prospective clients; accordingly, nothing contained in the NSPE Code of Ethics, policy statements, opinions, rulings or other guidelines prohibits the submission of price quotations of competitive bids for engineering services at any time or in any amount."
Check out the Model Rules developed by NCEES with Member Boards:
http://ncees.org/About_NCEES/Publications.php
Check with your licensing board to see if they have adopted these model rules or some other Code of Professional Conduct. Many states have.
Ric
I agree with Ric. Check your state standrds PDF and search ' supplant or supplanting in the doc. It is a violation of standards.
we have a case where another firm was awarded their proposal for setting a couple dozen monuments. their estimate was pennies lower than mine and submitted two days after the deadline. it is suspicious to say the least.
they included many monuments I was supposed to set on the adjacent property for a developer. the real rub came when i had to check into a couple of monuments. one or two seem good, some more are out by 0.05' to 0.10' and the rest are out by 0.10' to 0.20'.
i do have to check into a few more. perhaps i will inform this firm of their erroneous locations and suggest they return to either set offset drill holes or reset monuments.
Probably unethical, not illegal, and ....
> any attempt to enforce something like that would be in violation of Federal Trade Commission anti-competitiveness laws.
I don't believe that collusion in restraint of trade would be applicable to this situation. We're not talking about interfering with a client's right to seek professional services in an open market, but rather an unsolicited attempt to take business away from another practitioner. If you're aware of any legal actions against a professional attempting to enforce do-not-supplant rules, I'd be interested in seeing the references.
It's a sad perspective when one views ethical behavior as illegal. You need to reevaluate your thinking!
note: this is not directed to Thadd...although I'm sure it wasn't me that he's complaining about.
North Carolina Board Rules
21 NCAC 56 .0701 RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT
(7) Shall not attempt to supplant another engineer or land surveyor in a particular employment after becoming aware that the other has been selected for the employment.
not about you don
my proposal was submitted one day before the due date
the other proposal was submitted two days after the due date
i just have to wonder if the other firm took advantage of reviewing my proposal before they submitted theirs. that would be unethical.
To clarify, this is what happened. I was contacted and hired verbally to perform a boundary survey. I was in the process of writing the contract a day or two later when the client called back. He also needed some engineering done and called an Engineering Firm. When they found out that he had already ordered a survey from us, they informed him that they had a surveying department that could take care of it while they were working on the engineering and possibly save him some money. I don't plan to try and do anything about it other than email some ethical standards to the Engineer. If the prospective client were price shopping or something, I wouldn't worry about it. He had called twice. The second time verbally hiring us. I told him that he would have a contract by the end of the week. At least he called back before I wasted any more time on the contract or research. I wouldn't have tried that knowing that he had already hired someone else.
Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"
that's a tough one
verbal is not having the paper in hand
my 2 cents is that by telling the client that you would get him a contract by the end of the week, you indicated to him that he wasn't under contract till he signed it. This probably freed up the engineer to bid when the client said he hadn't signed the contract yet. Always get your contract signed immediately and have them fax or email it back to you. I agree its not right, but you didn't have a contract.
To me, it sounds like you agree that it's not ethical, by saying that you "agree it's not right." I don't think he ever said it was illegal. Anyway, we can hash over whether it's technically against some written ethical standard, but I also agree it ain't right. Well, that's my 2¢ worth.
A verbal contract for professional services is a valid contract.
This is unethical because the engineering firm has now (probably unwittingly) enticed the layman client into two contracts for the same service. Both professional firms could now insist on providing the service and being paid for it. One could then settle for a certain amount to drop their case, or pursue it to the extreme. It sounds like you don't intend to do that, but it is this situation that makes it unethical. It may have saved one client a little money, but if it were standard practice to try to supplant other professionals in this manner it would make for a very nasty and costly environment for those seeking professional services.
The engineering company indicated that it would same the client money.
That is the weak link I understand in the verbal end. Whether they actually save the client money is to be tested by them doing the job. Just like a car salesman saying this model will save you money in the long run, lol.
To get started I always ask my clients to fax or email a survey order to me and then I will do any paperwork.
It is a form of contract and the result is something physical to show in evidence beyond word against word.
0.02
Unless you have a signed contract it means nothing. I feel your pain. My policy is to get signed agreement, then begin work. I may do some research for the bid, but nothing costing our firm more than a couple hours. I've been bitten on verbal agreements in the past. Clients have no ethics. Engineering firms are notorious for giving cheap surveys for the engineering. Once worked for an engineering firm. Their policy was break even on surveying to make profit on their side. I left within a few months.