Ethical Dilemma in Engineering Profession - Essay Example

Ethical Dilemma in Engineering Profession (Tacoma Bridge) Prompt: On the whole, which side of your chosen dilemma has the stronger ethical arguments to support it? Dilemma: “Is it ethical for the engineer LeonMoisseif to lower the cost of the construction, and please the funder by using less material rather than provide safety for the public”? Issue: The collapse of the Tacoma Bridge Answering the Ethical Dilemma of Engineering Profession no matter which has some sort of values and ethics to associate. Every profession has some sort of values attached to it - some limitations which make the profession pious, ethical or complete (Whitbeck, 2-3). The same goes to engineering which has defined set of limitations, technicalities and ethics to follow making it a highly responsible profession. No matter in which area an engineer works, he or she has to stand on the ethical grounds. Just as professionals define engineering is another name to ethics or serve the public. Serving the people means improving their lives, their living standards and most importantly their technology in the safest manner (Baura, 6). The recent case of the Tacoma Bridge collapse whose engineer was LeonMoisseif was a major example of the professional neglect (Delatte, 89-97). There was negligence of safety rules that brought the bridge to collapse after few months of construction. During the project there was design failure, more specifically a failure of meeting up the standards-ethics which assure bridge stand alone safety and also the safety of the public associated to the bridge (Bowen, 4-7). Government who sponsored the Tacoma Bridge Construction expected much from the engineer “Leon Moisseif”. The government wanted the project to end in the most economical manner. It was because they wanted to save the public funds, which can be used in the future civil projects. Right from the start, appointing the engineer and selecting the resources such as material or labor all was under the Government’s assistance. And hence the Government wanted the organizers to meet their decisions which brought pressures on engineer Leon Moisseif. Engineering profession itself defines rules for engineers and so it did for Leon Moisseif in the Tacoma Bridge project. The rules which have been adopted include duty ethics, rights ethics and virtue ethics which implies to all types of science and engineering professions. Moreover, an engineer on duty means that he or she has to obey regulation codes, safety measures and technical codes (Delatte, 89-97). The same was expected from engineer Leon Moisseif who was incharge of the Tacoma bridge project and who was to take care of the dilemma of whether he should pay attention to the Government or his profession’s safety ethics (Delatte, 89-97). Civil engineering which is a deliberate engineering discipline implies all such rules. In view of the Tacoma Bridge case, it can be said that when engineers come onto pressures, pressures of the Government, they start to forget their actual responsibilities. Engineering is about meeting the codes, as a good engineer always reflects the obligations he or she has been set incharge of (Pinkus, 33). On the other hand, engineer Leon Moisseif came onto the quandary that he has to serve both the public as well as the Government who has been paying him for his task and operations. This brought him to a two side view in which the aim was to construct a highly standardized bridge and to serve the public, which unfortunately came out as a weakened engineering project, collapsing the bridge after four months period of construction (Nguyen, 1-7). In engineering, decision making has a fundamental role to play. Every engineer is bound to take certain actions which rely on engineer’s decisions on the job (Pinkus, 33). Considering the case of Tacoma Bridge fall, if there were taken better decisions by the engineer Leon Moisseif the project would have been truly successful. In Charles Harris’s view (The Author and a Professional engineer), engineering ethics evolve around strong decision making and a strong decision is one which is comprised of ethics and moralities. Moral imagination is truly required in engineering decision making as it was required in the Tacoma Bridge case where the engineer showed a weakened morality (Pinkus, 24). If the engineer is out of moral judgment then he or she cannot take a right decision- a strong decision. In Tacoma Bridge case, the problem was there for Leon Moisseif as he was stuck in between the moral judgment and a set of tasks assigned by the Government and their obligators. In such way, the engineer was given the limited amount of budget in which he had to complete the task and bring a successful bridge project. In this way, he skipped the fundamental obligations which say safety first and the use of the right proportion of material (Petroski). All such adjustments and difficulties take engineers to wrong decisions, which further lead the project to disaster or life ending situation. Tacoma Bridge Fall was a life ending disaster. It would have taken many lives if gotten approved for public transportation. “Causing people to death”, what else could be worst for an engineer than this, as he or she is given the responsibility to improve people’s life and not end it by a simple negligence (Nguyen, 1-7). Failures are sometimes important. They are important for engineers to identify their problems which they need to learn. When there are not failures how would an engineer be an engineer? But this does not mean that failures are acceptable in the engineering profession as failures are due to violation of the ethical code “improving people’s life”. Just as the ethical violation failures are dragged through the violation of other codes such as safety precautions respectively (Petroski). Safety comes when it is considered highly at the design stage. If the design is excluding safety it definitely cannot bring safety in other operations. Similarly, if safety was kept as the first priority by Leon Moisseif then Tacoma Bridge would have been a successful civil project. There was negligence in the selection of material and also in the labor that brought the bridge to collapse (NSPE, 1-3). This is where engineers face the problem as they are bound to restrictions along with the things, “material and labor” they have to manage at the same time. For this reason, Leon Moisseif came into the count of the most difficult profession. The difficulty was there in decisions, implication of ethics and assurance of codes of which the disaster took place. The same Whitbeck, Caroline assesses that engineers are trouble takers. They stand on the trouble grounds and hence have to adjust themselves in the middle of the trouble situation (Whitbeck, 2-3). Apart from all, engineering is about mantling the rules, obligations and ethics and hence engineers fall in a complexity of whether they should go with ethics or with the Government who is the sponsor of their projects. Sometimes they are given much tougher responsibility that they stuck in their decisions and not able to differentiate of which decision is right and which is wrong (Bowen, 2009). The same happened with Leon Moisseif who was not able to pick the right choice in the Tacoma Bridge project. In ethical perspective the right decision would be to meet safety codes and in Government’s perspective the right decision would be to obey their direction. This is all what led Tacoma Bridge to collapse as the engineer was in the confusion to decide, left ethics behind and eventually brought the project to lack safety and safety obligations (Bowen, 4-7). If the bridge got approved it would have taken many lives and would have become the weird example of engineering dilemma (NSPE, 2013). Reference List Baura, G. (2006). Engineering Ethics: An Industrial perspective. Burlington: Academic Press. Bowen, W. (2009). Engineering Ethics: Outline of an Aspirational Approach. London: Springer. Delatte, N. (2009). Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers. Fairfax: ASCE Publications. Nguyen, D. (2012). Tacoma Narrows Bridge Post-Mortem Report. Los Angeles: University of California. NSPE. (2013). NSPE Code of Ethics for Engineers. Retrieved March 1, 2013, from www.nspe.org: http://www.nspe.org/Ethics/CodeofEthics/index.html Petroski, H. (1992). To engineer is human: the role of failure in successful design. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. Pinkus, R. (1997). Engineering Ethics: Balancing Cost, Schedule, and Risk - Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle. New York: Cambridge University Press. Whitbeck, C. (2011). Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. New Jersey: Cambridge University Press. Read More