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Ethics in Engineering - How does one balance personal interests and morality
Ethics in Engineering - How does one balance personal interests and morality
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Making Ethical Bids in a Competitive Market As the United States economy struggles through a sluggish time with the stock market dropping and unemployment rising, being competitive in the job market has become extremely important among professionals. Engineers are no exception. For most engineering firms, being competitive and successful requires obtaining design projects offered by companies in other fields. These projects can range from designing heating and ventilation systems for office buildings to water systems for cities to computer networks for businesses—the list of possibilities and disciplines is extensive. To get these jobs, engineers must make a bid proposal for the project. Bidding involves estimating the entire cost of the project, including the designing and building processes, as well as the materials and labor. Usually, the company with the lowest bid and the best plan gets the job. The ethical issue in this process is determining the cheapest building materials and construction procedures possible without compromising public safety. The enormous responsibility that an engineer has when designing a project is often overlooked. His or her job is not only to create a design that will work under ideal conditions, but that will meet the regulations of environmental and building codes and will also survive the unpredictable forces of nature that structures are sometimes subjected to. An article in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, "Structures are Held up by Both Skill and Luck,"1 describes many risks involved in the designing process and the failures that can occur when small details are overlooked. In light of a recent surge of failures in the Northwest, the article says: "While the Northwest has experienced some unusual weather conditions this year, the effects of these weather conditions were not all unpredictable. Many tragic failures in the Pacific Northwest (and in other parts of the country) can be traced to poor land-use planning decisions. Despite the availability of hazard mitigation information and qualified technical consultants, the information is often ignored and the consultants bypassed as development continues in the flood plains and on unstable hillsides. Often, unwise site selection and ill-conceived site development results in unnecessary exposure to severe natural hazards." Although the initial reason for not hiring a technical consultant in these cases of poor land choice is most likely an attempt to lower design and construction costs, in retrospect it seems obvious that the money spent on the expertise of a geotechnical engineer would have been significantly less than the "millions of dollars of direct losses and litigation costs.
When analyzing Boomtown’s weather in Activity 27, we found that the hillside and the marsh would be most affected by flooding, or any other excessive precipitation. Green Hill would be affected by extra precipitation during the wet season because it could cause mudslides. Mudslides could cause the houses on the hill to be unstable and the neighborhoods below the hill to be in danger. Also, excess water could affect the marsh because it would flood the area. Since not all water can be absorbed by the marsh, houses built there would easily flood during the rainy season in Boomtown. In contrast, houses constructed on Seaside Cliff wouldn’t easily be affected by additional
On Friday, July 17, 1981, the Hyatt Regency Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri hosted a dance party, which was held in the hotel’s atrium lobby. One of the atrium lobby’s defining features was the presence of elevated walkways that were suspended from the ceiling. About 1,600 people attended the event, mostly occupying the lobby floor; however many guests were either standing or dancing on the suspended walkways as well. Tragically, at approximately 7:05 P.M. a loud crack was heard as two of the walkways collapsed onto the lobby floor below killing 114 people and injuring 216 more. Investigations following this event revealed that the walkways were not designed in a way that was structurally sound, rendering them prone to catastrophic failure. In order to make efforts to avoid such tragedies in the future, it is necessary to evaluate the engineers whose work led to the collapse of the walkways. A consideration of their ethical behavior through the framework of virtue ethics may provide insight into what virtues engineers, and aspiring engineering students, must possess so that their work is done properly with the safety of the general public in mind. To this end, it is useful to first provide some background information on the structure of the suspended walkways and to pinpoint the specific cause of their collapse.
The I-35 Bridge collapse in 2007 was not the result of a single safety precaution being overlooked; it was primarily due to a miscalculation by the original design team, Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates. While the accountability can be placed on Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, the only way to learn from such disasters is to delve deeper into the root cause and determine why this minute, yet extremely important, detail was overlooked for over 40 years.
To clarify, the Engineering Code of Ethics is the set of rules established by the National Society of Professional Engineers that all engineers are expected to adhere to. In essence, the fundamental tenets of this code are that all engineers are expected to prioritize public safety, as well as be honest with their clients and the general public while only doing work that they are qualified to do. (“Code of Ethics,” n.d.). The reason this code is crucial in this case is because it offers guiding principles for the men and women who are in charge of so many of the various structures and buildings that are used by everyone in society. If the engineering population were to fail to adhere to this code, many people’s lives would be put in jeopardy; buildings might crumble, planes may crash, and bridges could collapse. This means that this code serves to keep engineers in check so that the world maintains stability, therefore its importance cannot be emphasized enough. Furthermore, since this code is nationally recognized, if a company’s engineers were to violate any aspect of it, it would be seen nation-wide as a misuse of power for the sake
The SPHE meeting had a guest speaker Jacob Elias, a structures field engineer who works for Balfour Beatty Construction. He’s working on the Dallas Horse Shoe Project and graduated from UTA with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2013. He talked about his line of work, his duties, responsibilities, and the main steps in constructing the Downtown Dallas remake of IH-35E and IH-30. He also discussed what he learned from his experience as a student as well as a professional in the field. He ended with some major advice for students and future engineers.
However, before doing this we had to look more into depth on the materials we will use to construct our bridge. We also have to consider the possible environmental and geological factors that should be taken into consideration for our model. Pertaining to environmental and geological factors, there are many stipulations that structural engineers take into consideration before the construction of a truss bridge begins. The main objective of the geotechnical engineers are to protect the lives of others and avoid property damage from happening which can be caused by various geological conditions. Geological engineering uses principles of soil and rock mechanics to find surface conditions and materials.The Geotechnical engineers complete works such as: geological hazard assessments, material properties, landslide and slope stability, erosion, flooding, dewatering, and seismic investigations. These engineers closely examine all of these important factors before constructing a bridge in a certain location. According to Teach Engineering.com, constructing a safe and efficient bridge requires an ample amount of time and energy. Environmental and geological factors play a major role in construction, as
From nursery rhymes such as the "Three Little Pigs" to the Sampoong Superstore collapse, structural failures are always a threat. In the case of the "Three Little Pigs" nursery rhyme, building material played a key role in preventing the house from collapsing. The Sampoong Superstore, on the other hand, failed due to many factors, but one of the major factors was ethical failure in the construction and maintenance of the structure. The job of an engineer is to prevent these structures from failing. They do so by learning, understanding, and following the basic principles of Statics. Engineers build things stronger than what they were made to handle so that one small mistake will not jeopardize the structure. Although they occur, structural
With the widespread, expensive, and life-threatening damage that can occur during natural disasters, including floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and other events, it is important that the responses to these events are quick and performed efficiently, with cost and resource optimization in mind. That way, resources are not wasted in areas that don’t need them. And, if this were to happen, other, high-demand areas would suffer. With the amount of damage and displacement of local populations that occur, the planning and deployment of nearby resources needs to address these concerns. If done poorly, poor planning can in fact work against its own goals and cause failures to occur that compromise millions in assets and endanger many people as well. Take, for example, the legendary failure of FEMA in its response to Hurricane Katrina. Yes, one of the main reasons that FEMA failed was its inability to gather resources and knowledge, but it also lacked the ability to mobilize its resources (whereas Walmart could do both of these things successfully) (Horwitz 1).
To test these models in collusion, bidders interact in a three-stage game and can be of type risk neutral, strong or weak. In the first stage, the strong bidders vote for or against forming a cartel and a cartel is only formed if they all agree. When they form a cartel they incur a cost. In the second stage, if a cartel is formed the strong bidders interact in a pre-auction knock-out mechanism where all bidders submit a sealed bid and the highest bidd...
With the help of architectural engineers, our world has become very civilized and advanced over the past decades. Like all other engineers, architectural engineers use logic and creativity to solve problems. They come up with effective designs to assist people in their everyday tasks. In our daily lives we are surrounded by buildings. Places that were once a dessert are turned into cities that now hold amazing buildings. Houses, schools, shopping centers, offices, apartments, airports, etc. are very essential in our society. These buildings do not only please the eye, but they also provide us with shelter and are made to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, snow storms, and strong winds. Would these buildings still function efficiently and provide us with a stable shelter if it were not for architectural engineers? There are different engineers with each their own expertise, but for buildings in particular, architectural engineers are needed. Architectural engineering, also known as building engineering, is an interdisciplinary program that integrates important knowledge from different disciplines such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering , architecture, physics, chemistry, biology, and economics (“Building Engineering”). An architectural engineering professional has to master all the different disciplines because the design of building systems often requires the application of the disciplines. Architectural engineers are important in today’s society because they possess the knowledge and qualifications to work on complex buildings, lead project teams, and most importantly, to provide us with a safe environment.
In conclusion, civil engineers have a responsibility to deal with current issues in a professional and ethical manner for the benefit of society. The topics discusses included: high energy consumption of buildings, the need for efficient water resources, transportation planning, poor infrastructures doomed to failure, the need to have higher standards to become a licensed professional engineer, how globalization has affected all engineers, and the need to have more professional use advance engineering informatics. All these subjects were pondered about how these challenges can be overcome are there effective methods that engineers can apply today. Unfortunately, not all problems are easy to handle.
Today's problems are more complex and the needs of current and future societies have created challenges for engineering unparalleled in our history. The use of electronic data collection methods and the application of computers has revolutionized the practice of Civil Engineering. To interpret and satisfy these needs, Civil Engineers currently direct the spending of more than one tenth of Canada's gross national product, more than any other professional group. The Civil Engineer must deal with the human impact of engineering. Social, moral and legal issues concern us to a far greater degree than ever before.
Johns Hopkins University. (2009, March). In disaster-prone areas, construction needs a new approach. Retrieved from http://phys.org/news157051992.html
There are 25 major specialties in engineering that are recognized by professional societies. In any one of those 25 specialties, the goal of the engineer is the same. The goal is to be able to come up with a cost effective design that aids people in the tasks they face each day. Whether it be the coffee machine in the morning or the roads and highways we travel, or even the cars we travel in, it was all an idea that started with an engineer. Someone engineered each idea to make it the best solution to a problem. Even though engineer’s goals are similar, there are many different things that engineers do within their selected field of engineering. This paper will focus on the architectural field of engineering.
The concept of cost planning and cost control particularly in the tendering process of building project is not a new technique and have been successfully use for many years to achieve value for money on project. Involving a process of applying prices to the various elements of work that comprise the project, such as items of labour and materials so as to estimate the overall cost of the construction project. Added to the function of providing a means of determining the probable cost of the project, this technique is also used to assess achievement of best value for money of the project. The UK government describes achieving best value for money as having taken into account when making procurement decisions the optimum combination of whole life cost and quality necessary to meet customer's requirements (CPS.GOV.UK). It dictates the critical elements of the project such as design, schedule and quality all constitutes a stages where cost must be effectively planned and controlled.