Course 01: Professional Practice and Responsibility

Series · Case · Glossary · References

A project brings together people with different knowledge and different responsibilities. Good practice helps them make a coherent result together. Each person must understand their assignment, its limits, and the consequences of their work.

This course establishes those responsibilities before the team produces technical conclusions, in a team where people work with AI agents. It connects your professional duties with your project appointment, your competence and authority, how your work is examined, and how you communicate. It is a course: it does not grant a licence, an appointment, or authority to approve real engineering work.

Prerequisites and outcomes

No earlier course is required, and you need no pump-design knowledge. Read Packet A of the Northbank case.

How this course is built

This is the first course in the series, so it introduces the way every course is built. The series index explains how the series is built in full.

Each course teaches established project methods and examines the conditions under which they help. Earlier practice already included tools, automation, divided responsibilities and fallible review. Producing an output has never guaranteed competence or understanding. Agents can further change the relationship between production effort and the attention needed to examine it. An agent can often draft, compare, calculate, and search quickly, and many agents can work at once. It cannot hold an appointment, and the attention of the people who examine and decide does not grow with the number of agents.

In professional practice, agents shift where responsibility falls. An agent can contribute to almost any part of an assignment's information work, and a person can authorize it to act. But responsibility for relying on the result comes back to a person. A junior colleague carries professional duties of their own, even when a supervisor answers for their work; an agent carries none. So as agents do more of the work, more of the accountability for the result rests on the accountable people who direct and accept the work, and it grows with the work agents do.

The series uses an engineering analogy. Euler-Bernoulli beam theory neglects shear deformation, which is right for a slender beam; Timoshenko theory adds shear for a short, thick beam and gives the classical result as the beam becomes slender. This illustrates how a neglected effect can become important. It does not prove that these practices formally reduce to every classical method. Test the proposed arrangement against the actual work; some improvements also help human-only teams. These are claims about how the costs of work are changing, not measurements of productivity.

Lessons 1 to 4 each follow four steps:

1. The classical method: what it does and why it works.
2. What it assumes: the cost or limit the method was answering.
3. What changes with agents: which part of that assumption no longer holds, and which part still does.
4. The extended method: how you now carry out the practice, and what each choice gains and costs.

Lesson 5 introduces two habits that every later course uses: a record of how you directed and examined agent work, and a defense of your work through changed premises.

The teaching arrangement

Use the case's arrangement for working with agents: the agents hold no appointment under A01, and every Northbank record stays as written. You will work with real agents in the practice and the assessed assignment.

Outcomes

By the end, you can:

• Identify the people affected by an assignment.
• Distinguish responsibility, authority, and accountability.
• Explain the different contributions of project management and project engineering.
• Recognize work that exceeds your competence or appointment.
• Prepare a clear request for assistance or a decision.
• Explain what an agent can contribute to an assignment, and what it cannot carry.
• Direct and examine an agent's contribution, and keep your own judgment visible.

Lesson 1: Understand whom the work serves

The classical method

An assignment usually names a client, sponsor, or manager, but its effects can reach many other people. Constructors must install the result, operators must use it, and maintenance staff must service it. Other people can experience its environmental or social effects.

So start with the intended benefit and the people it affects. That tells you why the work matters and which consequences need attention. A narrow brief can leave out an important condition, and you must notice the gap before you treat the brief as complete.

At Northbank, the sponsor wants an improved water-transfer arrangement. Operations must run the equipment and respond to failures. Maintenance staff need access and isolation arrangements. Procurement needs an authorized purchase package. These needs are connected, but each contribution needs a named owner.

An engineer also carries professional obligations, and what they require depends on the actual jurisdiction, licence, and circumstances. A project appointment cannot grant permission that the applicable professional arrangement withholds; the Northbank appointment says so explicitly in A01.

Professional ethics is a basis for evaluating conduct, not only technical outcomes. The Engineers Canada ethics guideline puts public safety, health, welfare, and environmental protection first. It also covers truthful statements, competence, confidentiality, and conflicts of interest. It is national guidance, so for real work check the actual regulator's requirements; Northbank's jurisdiction is still unresolved under A06.

State facts, assumptions, and opinions accurately. If you have an interest that could impair your impartial judgment, disclose it through the appropriate process. Protect confidential information under the applicable arrangements. When confidentiality and public protection seem to conflict, get suitable guidance on what your obligations actually are.

Commercial pressure is never grounds for a false technical statement. When it arises, explain the concern and its consequences, identify the decision and response that the applicable professional arrangement requires, and record the response. Continue the work that has a sound basis.

Competent practice includes technical understanding. Document control, retrieval, interpretation, and communication support that understanding, but they cannot show that a physical design works. You need suitable technical analysis and examination before people rely on that design.

Use this method when you receive an assignment:

1. State the intended result in one sentence.
2. Identify its direct users.
3. Identify other people who can experience its effects.
4. State the important benefits and possible harms.
5. Identify the obligations that need confirmation.
6. Name the person who will resolve each missing obligation.

Scale the detail to the work: a small drawing correction may need a short note, and a new installation needs a broader account. The point is to bring out consequences the assignment could otherwise miss.

What it assumes

The 'What it assumes' passages in this course describe working arrangements for comparison. They are not universal facts about human practice; examine whether they hold in the task at hand.

The classical method assumes that the person preparing the work meets its consequences while preparing it. Listing affected people, weighing harms, and noticing a missing obligation take time, and the person who spends that time also forms a view about what matters. It also assumes that professional obligations attach to the people who produce the statements an assignment issues.

What changes with agents

An agent can draft Steps 1 to 4 quickly. It can list likely users and affected people, and summarize the ethics guideline. That draft is useful, but unless someone gives the agent the site's arrangements, it is drawn from what such projects usually involve, so a complete-looking list can still miss a person whom only the site's arrangements reveal.

Professional obligations do not move to the agent. An agent holds no licence and no appointment, and the ethics guideline's duties attach to people. A statement that an agent drafts and you issue is your statement.

Truthful statements need particular care. Asked to draft a confident funding statement, an agent can produce one that drops a qualification, and the result reads as fluently as a careful one. The agent does not feel the commercial pressure as an ethical question; it follows the request it was given.

Confidentiality gains a new condition. Information you give an agent enters the system that runs it, so keep confidential information out of systems that your organization has not approved for it.

The extended method

Use an agent to draft the first four steps, then examine the draft against the site's actual arrangements: who operates, maintains, isolates, and receives the equipment. Keep Steps 5 and 6 as your own work, because identifying the obligations that need confirmation depends on the actual jurisdiction and appointment, and A06 leaves Northbank's jurisdiction open.

Before you issue any statement an agent has drafted, check each claim against its source and its stated limits. In the brief, ask the agent to keep each source's qualifications and to mark any claim it cannot support from the material given.

Lesson 2: Match responsibility with authority

The classical method

Responsibility is the work or decision a person must carry. Authority covers the acts that person may perform. Accountability is the obligation to explain and answer for that responsibility.

A job title does not settle every decision right. A manager may have authority to approve expenditure but not to accept a technical deviation. An engineer may establish a conclusion in their discipline but lack authority to change the project scope. Check the appointment against the specific decision.

Project management organizes the project's commitments, resources, execution, and delivery. Project engineering coordinates the technical basis, contributions, interfaces, and grounds for the combined result. Each needs information from the other.

At Northbank, the project manager can arrange work within the approved scope and budget. The project engineer coordinates the technical basis. Discipline engineers keep their technical responsibilities. The sponsor decides changes to scope, budget, and targets. Procurement places orders against authorized packages. These are the case appointments recorded in A01.

One person can hold several roles, but they must still know in which capacity they are acting. A small team needs clear responsibilities as much as a large one.

Prepare a decision map when authority is uncertain:

1. Name the required act.
2. State the content and scope of the decision.
3. Identify the appointment that grants authority.
4. Identify the required technical contribution.
5. Identify the affected participants.
6. State the decision that remains reserved.

Avoid assigning a vague phrase such as “overall approval.” Say whether the act concerns scope, expenditure, technical conformity, delivery, or operating readiness, because a person may have authority for only one of these matters.

What it assumes

The classical decision map assumes that everyone who can act holds an appointment, or uses a tool under someone who does. Capability and authority are checked together when a person accepts an appointment. It also assumes that the number of people limits the number of acts, so accountability is spread across roughly as many people as there are hands doing the work.

What changes with agents

Agents can act, not only advise. Depending on the system, an agent can edit files, rename records, send messages, and update registers. Capability is not authority. An agent that can relabel A02 Rev 0 in the shared folder has the technical means to do so; whether anyone should do it is a question for the appointment and the control process.

A person can authorize an agent in advance to perform a defined act, such as preparing a draft or updating an index within stated limits. That authorization is useful, and it can save many interruptions. But it does not move responsibility. A01 appoints people, and the agents hold no appointment. When someone relies on the agent's act, the person who authorized it, and the person who accepted the result, answer for it.

A supervisor in a human team already answers for a junior colleague's work, so answering for others is not new. What changes is that the junior also carries professional duties: they must raise concerns, work within their competence, and make truthful statements, whoever supervises them. An agent carries none of these duties. A project engineer who directs five agents answers for five contributions, and no one else carries a professional duty for those contributions. So as agents do more of the work, more of the accountability for the result rests on the accountable people who direct and accept the work, and it grows with the work agents do. This does not assume that agents replace any person on the team; it concerns where the duties for agent contributions fall.

The extended method

Extend the decision map with two steps:

7. Identify any act delegated to an agent, the person who authorized it, and the limits of that authorization.
8. Name the person who answers for reliance on the result.

Delegate acts, not reserved decisions. An agent can prepare the impact assessment that the sponsor requested under A05; it cannot decide the proposal, and it cannot give the sponsor's approval by recording it.

Size what you delegate to what you can answer for. Each delegated act is one you may have to explain, so the attention of the person who answers limits how much agency is sound. Course 08 develops this as a design of the working arrangement.

Lesson 3: Work within demonstrated competence

The classical method

Competence is the knowledge, skill, experience, and judgment that the assigned work needs. It is specific to the task and its conditions: experience with one type of equipment does not establish competence for every installation.

Check your competence before you accept responsibility. Consider the technical methods, the relevant requirements, the operating environment, the tools available, and the possible consequences. Identify what you can do on your own and what needs supervision or specialist input.

You can learn on real work when the supervision and examination arrangements are suitable, so make those arrangements explicit. A learner should know who will examine the work and which acts remain outside the learner's authority.

Time pressure can hide a competence gap. Familiarity with a supplier's brochure can feel like knowledge of the selected equipment, and a confident colleague can make an unsupported conclusion seem settled. Check the actual grounds.

Review adds scrutiny, but it does not take over the producer's responsibility. A reviewer needs suitable competence, a defined purpose, and access to the relevant basis. The producer must still correct defects and explain the result.

The reviewer, in turn, is responsible for the assigned examination and its conclusions. Both sets of duties exist side by side.

Use a competence check before beginning consequential work:

1. List the judgments the assignment requires.
2. Identify your relevant experience for each judgment.
3. Identify unfamiliar methods or conditions.
4. Name the assistance required.
5. Agree the supervision and review arrangements.
6. State the acts you cannot perform under the appointment.

Do not claim competence just because a checklist is complete. Use the check to find where evidence, experience, or assistance falls short.

What it assumes

The competence check assumes that the person doing the work can feel where their competence ends. Unfamiliar work is slower, raises questions, and produces hesitation, and colleagues notice. Difficulty is the signal that prompts the assistance request. The method also assumes that a producer's competence is roughly known from their appointment and record.

What changes with agents

Agents' competence is broad but uneven. An agent can be strong in one part of a task and weak in an adjacent part, and it does not reliably recognize where its competence ends. Its return in an area it handles poorly can read as fluently and confidently as its return in an area it handles well. Difficulty no longer signals the gap, because the agent does not slow down.

The agent's breadth can also hide your own gap. With an agent's help, you can produce work that looks competent in a method you could not judge yourself. The classical warning about the brochure and the confident colleague applies with more force: a fluent agent explanation can feel like knowledge.

The responsibility does not move. When you direct an agent and issue its work, you are the producer the classical method describes: you correct defects and explain the result. And you cannot examine for reliance what you could not judge, so the competence that matters is the competence of the person who examines and accepts the agent's work.

The extended method

Apply the competence check to the examination as well as the production. For each judgment the assignment requires, ask three further questions:

• Will an agent contribute to it?
• How will you examine that contribution?
• Do you have the competence to examine it?

Where the answer to the last question is no, the assistance you need is a competent examiner, not another agent. Do not treat an agent's statement of its own confidence as evidence of its competence. Where you can, try the agent first on a part of the task whose answer you already know, such as what A04 does and does not establish, and see whether it keeps the limits.

Lesson 4: Communicate concerns and preserve responsibility

The classical method

A concern becomes useful when another person can understand it and act on it. State the condition you observed, the supporting evidence, the work affected, and the consequence. Then identify the response that is needed.

Keep observation separate from inference. “A04 records 600 V” is a statement of what a source says. “The offered equipment is compatible” would need further technical evidence, and a schedule target cannot supply that evidence.

Escalating means taking a matter to someone who can resolve it or assign its treatment. It does not require abandoning every activity: identify the dependent work that lacks a sound basis, and continue independent work within your authority.

If a concern affects safety or a professional obligation, follow the response requirements that actually apply and get suitable assistance. This course does not define a universal stop-work or reporting procedure.

Persuasion is part of responsible practice. Explain the consequence in terms the other person can assess, listen for information that changes the issue, and keep uncertainty visible when agreement is difficult.

Prepare a concern for decision:

1. State the discrepancy or missing condition.
2. Cite the relevant source and revision.
3. Explain the work that depends on its resolution.
4. State the foreseeable consequence of proceeding.
5. Propose a bounded next action.
6. Identify the person who must decide.

After a decision, check exactly what was decided and on what conditions. A request to investigate permits the investigation; it does not approve the solution that the investigation may recommend.

What it assumes

The classical method assumes that the person who notices a concern is a professional who feels responsible for raising it. The obstacle it addresses is pressure to stay quiet. It also assumes that the person who did the work notices discrepancies while doing it, because they read the sources closely.

What changes with agents

Whether an agent raises a concern depends on its instructions, capability, context and the task. Do not assume that it will raise every consequential issue. Given a request, an agent can simply work toward what was asked. Asked to prepare the equipment selection, it may select from the supplier brochure instead of reporting that A02's operating conditions are unresolved. Where it does notice a discrepancy, it may mention it in passing inside a long return, where nobody acts on it.

So a concern that a careful colleague would have raised may never reach a person unless the brief and the return are designed to carry it. The agent holds no professional appointment in this case, but its instructions can still require it to stop, report a conflict or seek direction.

Drafting the concern becomes cheap. An agent can prepare all six steps quickly once someone has identified the concern. Deciding that the concern matters, choosing whom to persuade, and holding the position when agreement is difficult remain the person's work. Cheap concern notes also carry a cost: each one uses the attention of the person who must decide, so a stream of minor ones can bury the one that matters.

The extended method

Arrange for concerns to surface. In the brief, state the conditions under which the agent must stop and report instead of proceeding: a claim it cannot support from the given sources, conflicting sources, an act outside the stated authority, or a missing input. In the return, ask for a separate section that lists concerns and open choices.

Then examine that section yourself, decide which concerns to raise, and prepare them for decision. Persuading the sponsor, operations, or a supplier remains your work.

Lesson 5: Keep your own contribution visible

The classical method

In a human team, a signature, a checker's initials, or a name on a calculation shows who produced the work and who examined it. The person who signs has done the work or supervised it closely. A colleague can ask the author how a conclusion was reached, and the author can explain it from memory of doing the work.

What it assumes

The classical method assumes that producing the work shows the judgment that went into it. Someone who prepared a decision map had to think through each appointment to prepare it, so the finished map is weak but real evidence of that thinking.

What changes with agents

A finished output no longer shows whose judgment it contains. An agent can produce a well-formed decision map, concern note, or appointment response quickly. A reader, whether a sponsor, a reviewer, or an instructor, cannot tell from the output how much of it the signer examined, and the signer may not be able to explain a part they never thought through.

So the evidence of your contribution moves out of the output and into how you directed and examined it.

The extended method

From this course on, keep two things for each assessed output:

1. An examination record. Keep each brief you gave an agent and a short note of what you checked in its return, what you found, and what you changed. Name the specific relationship you checked, such as “A04's limits on capacity, protection, and compatibility are kept in the concern note.” “Reviewed and correct” is not evidence of examination.
2. A defense. Be ready to explain the main conclusions and their grounds without the agent, and to reason through a changed premise. For example: if A05 had a recorded scope amendment, which of your activities would change, and which decisions would still be reserved?

Mark which judgments are your own. If an agent proposed an activity and you accepted it, say what you checked before accepting it. Finding no defect is acceptable when you can say what your checks would have caught.

The record serves a real consumer: the person who must decide how far to rely on your work. Keep it short. A record that grows because agents make records cheap uses that person's attention without adding to their confidence.

Northbank worked example: An assignment under an incomplete basis

The project manager asks the project engineer to prepare the equipment-selection work. Packet A is available, but no supplier selection is available yet.

The project engineer first identifies what the assignment rests on. A02 Rev 1 requires 18 litres per second and two pump units, and leaves the hydraulic conditions unresolved. A05 requests 22 litres per second but records no scope amendment.

The project engineer separates the required contributions:

The project engineer can organize the gathering of inputs and define the technical work, but the available records do not support a final equipment selection. A04 supports the observed connection characteristics; it does not establish the electrical design.

A concise return could state: “Prepare the input investigations under A02 Rev 1. Keep the 22 litres per second proposal separate. Complete dependent selection after the basis is established.”

This gives the manager useful work to arrange, while preserving the sponsor's decision and each discipline's responsibilities.

The same work with agents

This account is a teaching assumption, not a Northbank record: the records do not say how any of the work was produced.

The project engineer briefs an agent to draft the division of contributions. The brief identifies A01 Rev 0, A02 Rev 1, A04 Rev 1, A05 Rev 0 as a proposal, and A06 Rev 0 as an open inquiry. It asks the agent to name, for each matter, the role that A01 makes responsible, and to stop and report any matter that the records do not settle instead of resolving it.

The agent returns a table. The project engineer does not accept it because it looks complete. The engineer checks that each responsibility matches A01, that A05 sits with the sponsor's decision, that A04's limits survive, and that no matter is assigned to the agent itself. The judgment that the records do not support a final selection is the engineer's own, and the engineer records it as such.

A short examination note could read:

Brief: A01 Rev 0, A02 Rev 1, A04 Rev 1, A05 Rev 0 (proposal), A06 Rev 0 (open). Checked: each row against A01; A05 kept as a proposal for the sponsor; A04 cited for observed characteristics only, with capacity, protection, and compatibility left to the electrical engineer. Changed: nothing in the table. My judgment: the records do not support final selection, because A02's hydraulic conditions and A06 remain open.

The division of contributions is the same as in the classical account. What the agent changes is who drafts it and what the engineer must check and show.

Transfer example: A software service upgrade

A service manager asks a developer to increase processing speed. A security specialist holds responsibility for the access design. The product owner decides which user functions change.

The developer can examine performance under the current requirements but cannot assume permission to remove access checks. A performance proposal must identify its effects on access, reliability, user behavior, and continuing support.

The same decision map applies: identify the act, its authority, the technical contributions, the affected people, and the reserved decision. The technical details differ, but the responsibilities still need clear homes.

If the developer uses a coding agent, the agent can propose removing an access check because it speeds processing, and it may not report that the change touches the security specialist's responsibility. The developer's brief must state that limit, and the developer answers for the change either way.

Practice: Prepare a responsibility brief

Use A01 to A07 and work in pairs. One participant prepares the brief; the other challenges its authority and evidence.

The supplied task is: “Prepare the next two activities needed for Northbank equipment selection. Keep work moving within the approved project basis.”

Use this invented practice event together with Packet A: a manager asks for the statement “Electrical compatibility is confirmed,” saying that a qualified statement may weaken the funding request. No additional electrical evidence is available. Prepare a truthful alternative and a response to the pressure, and explain the possible consequences of the requested claim.

First prepare the decision map (output 2) yourself, without an agent. You then know what an agent's version should contain. Work with an agent for the outputs that follow, and use your map to examine what it returns.

Supply these outputs:

1. A statement of the intended result and affected people.
2. A map of four decisions and their appointed authorities.
3. Two executable activities with owners and needed contributions.
4. One competence limit with a suitable assistance request.
5. A concern note about one unresolved condition, including your ethical-pressure response.

Use Packet A only, and identify its records by revision. Do not invent a legal requirement or a completed technical check. During the challenge, explain which statement would change if new evidence arrived.

For each agent-assisted output, keep the brief you gave the agent and a short note of what you checked in its return, what you found, and what you changed.

Then complete three further exercises:

1. Separate capability from authority. For each of these acts, state whether an agent could perform it in the system you use, who under A01 could authorize it, and who answers for reliance on the result: drafting the concern note; relabelling A02 Rev 0 in the shared folder; sending a purchase package to procurement; recording the sponsor's decision on A05.
2. Arrange for a concern. Give an agent the manager's request in the practice event, as written and with no further instruction, and keep its return. Then brief it again with stop conditions from Lesson 4, and compare the two returns. Whatever the agent returns, explain which part of each brief governed it.
3. Check examination competence. Choose one judgment from your competence check to which an agent will contribute. State how you would examine its contribution and whether you have the competence to do so. If you do not, write the assistance request.

Knowledge check

1. How do responsibility, authority, and accountability differ?
2. What distinguishes project management from project engineering in A01?
3. Why does A05 not establish the equipment-selection flow?
4. What does A04 establish, and what remains for electrical engineering?
5. How should you respond when commercial pressure requests an unsupported technical statement?
6. How does independent review affect the producer's responsibility?
7. An agent can perform an act in your project's systems. What else must be established before it performs the act, and who answers for reliance on the result?
8. A supervisor already answers for a junior colleague's work. What is different when the contribution comes from an agent, and what does that mean for where accountability for the result rests?
9. Why is an agent's fluent, confident return weak evidence that the work lies within its competence?
10. The classical competence check relies on a signal that agents do not give. What is that signal, and what replaces it when an agent contributes?
11. How do you arrange for an agent to raise a concern that it would otherwise pass over?

Assessed assignment: Establish your working responsibility

Prepare a two-page appointment response for the Northbank project engineer, working with agents. Use Packet A and your practice outputs. Include an activity plan and one decision request. Add your examination record: the briefs you used, and what you checked, found, and changed in each agent return.

Then defend the response to your instructor. Explain its main conclusions and what you checked, and reason through changed premises such as a recorded amendment to A05, new electrical evidence, or an agent system that can place orders. Give the defense live, without consulting an agent, where you can. Your instructor rates the defense as the teaching guide describes; in text-only study it is rated on changed-premise reasoning with the medium recorded.

As the series index explains, your instructor, like a sponsor, cannot see from the finished response how much judgment went into it. That is why the briefs, the examination record, and the defense are assessed.

An instructor assesses eight observable criteria:

Before the defense, explain your response to a peer as practice, and repair any unsupported claim found during examination. Acceptance in training confirms that the assignment meets its learning criteria; it grants no professional authorization.

Portfolio continuation and references

Keep the appointment response as Portfolio 01, with its revision and source packet identified. Later courses add document control, evidence, and interpretation to this responsibility basis, and each adds its own examination record.

The management manual (Edition 9), section 3.1 and chapter 2, supports precise assignments and an established basis. Its sections 1.2 and 1.4 distinguish an agent's contribution and capability from the person's responsibility and authority. The manual addresses agents working under that account. Your agent's actual instructions come from its assignment and project and may differ; inspect those instructions rather than infer them from the citation.

The Engineers Canada competency guidance offers further study on technical competence and professional maturity. It is national guidance; the actual regulator sets admission requirements.

The series references identify each source's role and limits. External readings are optional for this assignment.