Harist Kusuma

1106127872

Ethics in The Construction Management

For this week case, we have a construction of community college classroom building. The
company project manager was developing the monthly application for payment to be
submitted to the project owner.
Everyone, in this case the subcontractors, has already submitted their applications for
payment to central constructors except the mechanical subcontractor. However, the project
manager planned to include the mechanical work in the application for payment to be
submitted to the project owner.
The problem isn’t stop there, wanting to help Central Constructor cash flow on the project,
the project manager decided to indicate that the mechanical subcontractor had completed 35
percent of the mechanical work in application for payment submitted to the project owner
instead of 20 percent of that month estimation.
We will look if the project manager being ethical when he billed for the mechanical scope of
work when no request for payment was recieved from the mechanical subcontractor and we
will try to find out if the project manager being ethical when he billed for 35 percent of the
mechanical work when he believed that only 20 percent of the mechanical work had been
completed.
Let’s take a look about the ethics in this case, the code of ethics for both construction
management and civil engineering are quite similar, however there are some differences. The
code of ethics in civil engineers contain four fundamental principle. These principle describe
how engineer have to maintain honor, dignity, and truthfulness. The code of ethics in
construction management contain ten principle, it descrive about advancing and maintaning
integrity, dignity, and other ethical values.
First, we take a look if the project manager being ethical when he billed for the mechanical
scope of work when no request fot payment was recieved from the mechanical subcontractor.
Now let see what is “Scope of Work” definition, the definition is as following “The division
of work to be performed under a contract or subcontract in the completion of a project,
typically broken out into specific tasks with deadlines.”. Now, according to an article from
QUT, this one is classified as “Ethical Improprieties”, to be clear as “Dishonesty and
Unfairness”. In my opinion and in my point of view, the project manager was doing dishonest
conduct in this project, in this case the project cost. He billed for something where there is no
request for payment from one of the subcontractor. “It is vital that project managers conduct
their work in ethical manner” (Willouby. 1994:p56). So, after looking at everywhere, i can
say that what the project manager did was indeed unethical and i think there’s nothing that
can defend his/her action.
For the second case, based on “Construction Management Association of America” and
“American Society of Civil Engineers”, one of the ethical theory is “Engineers shall act in
such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and dignity of the engineering
profession and shall act with zero-tolerance for bribery, fraud, and corruption”. “Fraud”, in
this case, the project manager action can be called as “Fraud”, why ? Project Manager action
in my point of view is doing over ordering the bill and tampering the document. This person
also did “dishonesty” action, playing with the project cost. In my point of view, no matter
what he/she reason to do this, even for the sake of helping the cash flow, it is still
unacceptable, by that, i can say that this person didn’t act according ethics.
My conclusion is that the Project Manager action, both of them are not ethical in any ways,
he/she did dishonesty act and fraud act. He/she action might lead to bigger issue in the
project.

References

- Vee, C. and Skitmore, R.M. (2003) Professional ethics in the construction industry.
Engineering Construction and Architectural Management
10(2):pp. 117-127
- ASCE. 2013. Code of Ethics: Fundamental Principles. American Society of Civil
Engineers. Rice University
- Sonenshein, Scoot. 2007. The Role of Construction, Intuition, and Justification in
Responding to Ethical Issues at Work: The Sensemaking-Intuition Model
- https://cmaanet.org/code-of-ethics
- http://pm.uw.edu/cpo/cpoutlook/code-ethics-civil-engineering-vs-construction-
management