PEPT flashcards

34 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Paramountcy of public welfare

The ethical duty that public safety, health, and welfare outrank obligations to clients and employers when the two conflict, justifying refusal or escalation.

Conflict of interest

A situation where a personal, financial, or other interest could improperly influence professional judgement; it must be disclosed and, where necessary, the engineer must withdraw.

Seal and signature

A personal attestation that the engineer prepared or directly supervised the work and reviewed it; applying it to unverified work is misconduct.

Standard of care

The degree of skill and diligence an ordinary competent engineer would exercise in similar circumstances; falling below it can establish negligence.

Negligence elements

A successful claim requires a duty of care owed, a breach of the standard of care, causation of the loss, and damage of a recognised kind.

Limitation period

The statutory time limit within which a claim must be brought, running from the breach or from when the damage should reasonably have been discovered.

Liability cap

A contract clause limiting the maximum damages payable; it must be reasonable and cannot exclude liability for fraud or statutory safety duties.

Professional indemnity insurance

Cover for claims arising from negligent acts, errors, or omissions in professional services; it typically excludes deliberate acts, warranties, and liquidated damages.

Joint and several liability

A rule letting a claimant recover the full loss from any one contributing party, who may then seek contributions from the others.

Net present value

The sum of future cash flows discounted at the required rate of return, minus the initial investment; a positive result supports proceeding.

Internal rate of return

The discount rate at which a project's net present value equals zero; compare it with the hurdle rate, but use NPV to rank mutually exclusive options.

Payback period

The time needed for cumulative cash inflows to recover the initial outlay; it ignores the time value of money and all later cash flows.

Whole-life costing

Totalling capital, operating, maintenance, energy, and disposal costs over the asset's life so that options are compared on total cost, not first cost.

Critical path

The longest duration sequence of dependent activities through the network; it determines the shortest possible project duration and carries zero total float.

Total float

The amount an activity can be delayed without delaying the project completion date, calculated as late start minus early start.

Cost performance index

Earned value divided by actual cost; a value below one means the work is costing more than budgeted for the value delivered.

Estimate at completion

The forecast final project cost; when current cost performance continues, it equals budget at completion divided by the cost performance index.

Hierarchy of controls

Risk control ranked from most to least effective: eliminate the hazard, substitute it, engineer controls, apply administrative controls, then use personal protective equipment.

ALARP principle

Risk should be reduced so far as is reasonably practicable, balancing the cost and difficulty of further controls against the reduction in harm achieved.

Permit to work

A formal written authorisation controlling high-risk activities such as hot work, confined-space entry, or energised work, specifying precautions and validity limits.

Waste hierarchy

A priority order for materials: prevent, reuse, recycle, recover energy, and dispose; disposal carries the greatest environmental and regulatory burden.

Quality assurance versus control

Quality assurance is preventive and process-focused, verifying that procedures are followed; quality control is detective and product-focused, checking outputs against criteria.

Non-conformance report

A record of work failing a requirement, stating the location, the requirement breached, the disposition chosen, the corrective action, and the verification of the fix.

Hold point

A stage in an inspection and test plan where work must stop until the nominated inspector releases it in writing; work cannot proceed without that release.

Calibration traceability

An unbroken chain of comparisons linking an instrument's readings to a national metrology standard, evidenced by certificates retained in the quality records.

Notice of claim

A formal written notification of a claim event, given within the contract's stated time and form; late or informal notice can forfeit the entitlement.

Variation versus instruction

A variation changes scope, quality, or time and adjusts the price; an instruction directs how existing scope is carried out without changing it.

Contemporaneous records

Documents created at the time of the event, such as site diaries, photographs, and dated correspondence, which carry more evidential weight than later reconstructions.

Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions

Direct emissions from owned sources, indirect emissions from purchased energy, and all other supply-chain and use-phase emissions; scope 3 usually dominates.

Embodied carbon

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with extracting, manufacturing, transporting, installing, and eventually disposing of materials, fixed largely at design stage.

Circular design

Designing for disassembly, reuse, and material recovery so that components re-enter the economy rather than becoming waste at end of life.

Tuckman team stages

The sequence forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning; conflict during storming is normal and should be managed rather than suppressed.

Digital twin

A live digital model of an asset fed by sensor data; its value depends on calibration, data governance, and a clearly defined decision use.

Human oversight of AI

The principle that automated or AI-generated engineering outputs must be verified by a competent person, who remains accountable for the checked result.