CROSS UK Report 1298: Fraudulent use of calculations from another engineer

Collaborative reporting for safer structures. Report 1298: Fraudulent use of calculations from another engineer. Building control raised alarm of attempts made by another engineer to pass off work as their own.
A reporter was informed by building control of attempts made by another engineer to pass off the work of the reporter’s firm as their own. The calculations related to a roof top extension – disproportionate collapse calculations – that the reporter’s firm had originally prepared. A contractor, with whom the reporter’s firm had previously worked, was copied into a building control submission containing the reporter’s work; this had been passed to the engineer.
The project involved the change of use of an existing non-compliant structure. It was therefore a high-risk building. The reporter says that the plagiarised calculations were copied and pasted from the original work without due consideration of the specific requirements.
The original calculations had been issued as unprotected PDFs and could be easily edited with suitable software. The engineer in this case had proceeded to change the font and the name of the reporter’s firm across each page of the document.
Ignoring the moral and ethical issues here, the outputs (PDF files) were too easy to replicate and alter. The copier rebadged the document as their own. This can be relatively easily done with any decent PDF software. However, the name of the original firm remained on the copied work in the form of an image that had not been corrected. Logos and other typed name references had been covered up.
While many in the industry use standard software, there are still instances where bespoke calculations are needed. These naturally attract interest and should be protected to avoid dubious copies being made. Thankfully, in this instance the copy attempt was picked up by a competent building control officer. As this was a high-risk building, the consequences could have been serious if the attempted copy had not been noticed.
The reporter says that proceeding to full court action against the copier would cost circa £40,000 to £50,000 – and even if the reporter’s firm won, there would be no guarantee of recovering their costs. Consequently, the member’s firm now protects all building control calculations and reports prior to issue.
Drawings will remain unprotected as the benefits of being able to mark up and collaborate are much greater than the risk of someone copying a drawing template.
Going forward, the reporter is going to ask for the contact information and trading addresses of all organisations within the project team (where an obvious online presence does not exist) to enable contacts to be traced if necessary. Finally, the reporter recommends that all firms apply additional security to outgoing documentation to mitigate the risk of copying by unscrupulous individuals or firms.
Key learning outcomes
For consultants:
- report any similar actions to the building control authorities
- if appropriate, report such actions to the relevant institutions; and
- consider the need to protect work from unauthorised copying.
For clients:
- ensure that only trustworthy consultants are employed.
Comments
Sadly, this is not an unfamiliar story. Plagiarism, corner-cutting and now AI create ethical dilemmas that some find difficult to resolve. It is acceptable, even to be encouraged, to learn from another’s work. However, it is not acceptable to ‘copy and paste’ such work and pass it off as one’s own.
In this case, the reporter’s details were included as part of the fraudulent submission. This could have led to others mistakenly believing that the reporter had contributed to the work and that cannot be right. We are all familiar with standard conditions set out on drawings and at the bottom of emails cautioning others against unauthorised copying, but these will not deter the unscrupulous.
The ‘passing off’ of the work of others as their own implies that the person making the submission to building control lacks the ability, time and/or energy to do the job properly and thoroughly. They are not taking their responsibilities seriously, and this is concerning as it potentially compromises safety. Designs should be specific to the realities of each situation. Designers need to carefully consider each design – copying a previous design means the implicit assumptions have probably not been considered and any potential errors would likely have been copied into other designs. If appropriate those involved should be reported to the relevant institutions with a view of being sanctioned.
CABE’s Code of Professional Conduct
The issues raised in this CROSS UK report relate to poor ethical behaviour and conduct. CABE members are held to the highest standards of conduct, ethics and professionalism.
Please see CABE’s Code of Professional Conduct at b.link/CABE_CoPC and CABE’s Guide to Ethical Professionalism at b.link/CABE_GEP
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