During the design and development stages of a re­mote meter reading system for residential electric­ity use, the two engineers working on the project for the City of Forest Ridge noted something dif­ferent than they expected. The first, an electrical/ software engineer, noted that their city liaison staff member provided all the information on the soft­ware options, but only one option, the one from Lorier Software, was ever discussed and detailed. The second designer, an industrial systems engi­neer, further noted that all the hardware specifica­tions provided to them by this same liaison all came from the same distributor, namely, Delsey Enterprises. Coincidently, at a weekend family picnic for city employees, to which the engineers had been invited, they met a couple named Don

Question

Delsey and Susan Lorier. Upon review, they learned that the man Don is the son-in-law of the city liaison and Susan is his step-daughter. Based on these observations, before they proceed further with development of the system, what should the two engineers do, if anything, about their suspi­cions that the city liaison person is trying to bias the design to favor the use of his relative’s software and hardware businesses?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A discussion question open for different responses.