Range of Ethical Issues Engineering, Research Paper Example

The engineering ethics can be defined as the application of ethical and moral principles that should be applied while practicing as a professional engineer. The Swansea University Bay Campus development has several ethical considerations that the Bay Campus engineers will face during construction. The Bay Campus development at the Swansea University beach location that sits on 65 acres directly on the seafront (Swansea University,2015). The campus provides student accommodations to approximately 5,000 students and 1,000 staff. The students and faculty are housed at the University’s College of Engineering and School of Management, which offering students a world-class learning environment. The engineers on the Bay campus building project are facing ethical issues such as environmental, construction, technology and safety. The primary ethical issues are engineers working on beaches and dunes that have a natural propensity to grow and erode over time. The engineers have ethical issue to account for structural shrinking and the beach eroding which can eventually make the Bay Campus development unstable. The ethical situations that the engineers will face during the Bay Campus project include a complex mix of different relationships, contracts, contractors and government involvement. The ethics should not just focus on the engineer but also focus on the network of people that are involved in the Bay Campus project. Engineering ethics is usually concentrated on the ethics of the engineers working on the project however, there are many other parties that participate in the process that have an impact on ethical and unethical decisions (Basart & Serra,2013).

Structural Safety

The ethical issues of the engineers that building the facility at The Bay Campus development at Swansea University. The ethical issue is location that is directly on top of a beach that had a foundation of sand. The engineers have to deal with the ethical issues of building on a location that will have future implications because of the weather, climate and possible storms. The engineer has been left with the responsibility to ensure that the campus is stable enough to withstand a disastrous hurricane.  The National Society of Professional Engineers (2015) indicate that engineers are held accountable to be honest, forthcoming and cognizant of the protecting the public health, safety and the welfare of all people. The engineering team that is building the Bay Campus development must at all times perform to the highest principals and ethical behavior. The engineers must be able to ensure that the buildings and landscape is stable and weatherproof enough to ensure years of declining sand will not cause the campus to be a hazard.  The ethical issues remain that the engineering is constantly put in the position to make these decisions based on their educational and professional training. However, real life application is quite different from skills learned in the classroom(Abate,2011).

There are many ethical issues in the construction of the buildings and safely measures installed by the construction engineers. There is the team that draws up the plans at the start of the project. They have professional that analyze the solid, landscape and engineers that are able to calculate and build structures to endure weather or catastrophic damage. The long list of engineers that are all responsible for the safety of thousands of students and university staff members. The engineers are often the ones held accountable for making sure the building structure can withstand damage. However, at what point does that ethical consciousness becomes lessen when there are millions of dollars riding on the completion of this Bay Campus project.

The ethical issues that the engineer must face is technology because in the midst of hurricane has the engineer considered all the potential consequences of technology failure. The National Society of Professional Engineers holds the engineers to a higher level of expected concern for the lives of others. However, when billions of dollars, contracts, vendors and future revenues depend on this building being signed off as stable and safe for future students.  There are the guidelines by The National Society of Professional Engineers (2015) provide guidelines that must be addressed by engineers during this project:

1. The engineers shall perform all services with honesty and quality
2. The engineers shall only take on project that require their areas of expertise
3. The engineers are held accountable for ethic decisions whenever they have to put their signatures on documents approving plans.
4. The engineers must accept responsibility for all building permits and documents that require them to be accountable for ethic decisions

Conflict of Interest

The engineers of Bay Campus have some ethical issues that have been addressed in case studies such as the ‘Conflict of Interest-Mining Engineering Review of Claims for Federal Government (National Society of Professional Engineers,2015). The engineer for the mining company as hired as sub-contractor who signed off on quality, safety and mining structural changes. The county commission did not have their own engineer consultant so they obtained the Engineer A for consultation and as the same time the Engineer A consultant that made recommendations to the county commission on which projects to keep or reject. The completion of the project is important to the county constituents and the Engineer may potential be relaxed on some quality issues to put the project to completion to save the county millions of dollars. The Engineer A was put in an ethical situation to determine that the quality was safe enough for the people working in the mines.

In contrast, the Bay Campus engineer was facing the dilemma of self-interest of keeping country contracts and the unethical actions of passing quality and safety initiatives.  The Bay Campus engineers face the similar ethical dilemmas because the Swansea University has invested interested and established relationships with the fossil fuel industry.  The Bay Campus student protesters are fighting against the millions of dollars spent on fracking through the Swansea University’s new Energy department(Hazan,2014). The Bay Campus engineers could be put in the position to make unethical decisions by working on projects that are damaging the environment such as fracking. The engineer has to think about any relationships with upper management, fossil companies and the government that might inadvertently cause the engineering to make unethical decisions. In some cases, the engineering is left to make ethical decisions that the company should have before the engineer arrived on the project (Burgess et al,2013).

Deception Practices

The engineers are part of an historical and important Bay Campus projects that has stakeholders, educators, community and government interested in this project being a success. This is a lot of pressure on the engineer to succeed at the building project but yet ensure the Bay Campus plans construction is completed on schedule. The best example is the foundation of the Bay Campus must be 100 feet below the sea level however, the engineer provides a solution that is perfect legal by building a pipe solution that is circular which is 90 feet below sea level. The extra 10 feet in a circle does constituent 100 feet therefore the foundation is approved by the engineer. This may be a wonderful discovery on how to build on beach and dunes but the truth of the matter it’s still a deceptive practice by the engineer to keep the project going forward. The example is fictitious but the ethical decisions that engineers have to make are complex and real. The National Society of Professional Engineers (2015) clear states that engineers should not be influence or misrepresent certain facts that jeopardize the public or private venture. In addition, the codes of ethics specifically address indirectly or directly making unethical decisions is not acceptable.

References

Abaté, C., J. (2011). Should engineering ethics be taught? Science and Engineering Ethics, 17(3), 583-96. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-010-9211-9

Basart, J. M., & Serra, M. (2013). Engineering ethics beyond engineers’ ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics, 19(1), 179-87. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9293-z

Burgess, R. A., Davis, M., Dyrud, M. A., Herkert, J. R., Hollander, R. D., Newton, L., . . . Vesilind, P. A. (2013). Engineering ethics: Looking back, looking forward. Science and Engineering Ethics, 19(3), 1395-404. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9374-7

Hazan, L. (2014, Aug). Students lock-on at Swansea University fracking research campus. Retrieved from http://gofossilfree.org/uk/students-lock-on-at-swansea-university-fracking-research-campus/

Swansea University. (2015). Bay campus. Retrieved from http://www.swansea.ac.uk/campus-development/baycampus/

Swansea University (2015). Construction update: September 2015. Retrieved from http://www.swansea.ac.uk/campus-development/baycampus/constructionupdate/

The National Society of Professional Engineers. (2015). Ethics: Code of ethics: NSPE code of ethics for engineers. Retrieved from http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics