ENGINEERING ETHICS’

CASE STUDY

Name: Sayed Ayman Mustafa Salman Mahfoodh.

ID:20181110200.
Course name: Engineering Ethics.
Instructor: Dr Islam Abohela.
Year: 2020/2021 – Second Semester.

1
2
 Table of Contents
1) ASCE CODE OF ETHICS 3

PREAMBLE 3

1-SOCIETY 3

2-NATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT 3

3-PROFESSION 4

4-CLIENTS AND EMPLOYERS 4

5-PEERS 4

2) CASE STUDY REPORT 5

a) THE EXPECTED STRUCTURE OF CHRISTOPHER’S COMPANY 5

b) PROJECT DISCRIPTION 6

c) ENGINEERING ETHICS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS CASE 7

d) DID THE CHARACTERS FOLLOW THE ETHICAL CANONS? 7

e) WHAT SHOULD CHRISTOPHER RECOMMEND? 7

f) THE PROFFESIONAL ENGINEERS’ ACT 8

g) CONTRACT AND TORT LAWS 8

3) REFERENCE LSIT 10

3
1) ASCE Code of Ethics

-Preamble

Integrity and professionalism are crucial manners for all members of ASCE, and the priority
is given to the protection of the health, safety and welfare of the public.

There are important principles for professional engineers to be considered in their

professional career. Firstly, riskless, durable and sustainable creation of infrastructure.
Secondly, respect, dignity and fairness to ensure fair involvement by all members regardless
of their identity. Thirdly, consideration of present and future needs of the public. Finally, use
engineers’ knowledge and skills to improve life’s quality.

The ethical responsibilities of ASCE are to be applied by all members, no matter their grades
of job. The priority of each stakeholder is given by its order in the list, and none of them
come above the health, safety and welfare of the public (Code of Ethics | ASCE, 2021).

1-Society

For society, engineers must:

- Protect the public’s health, welfare and safety,

- Develop the human’s life’s quality, give opinions based on honesty and knowledge.
- Refuse and report bribery, fraud and corruption.
- Serve public matters and affairs.
- Treat all individuals with respect, equality, justice and avoid prejudice.
- Let the work of any community relates to its history, culture and society.
- Think about the strengths, weakness and consequences of the current advanced
technologies.

2-Natural and built environment

Engineers:

- Follow the standards of sustainable development.

4
- In their work, do not neglect the effects of society, environment and economy as well as
the chances of improvement.
- Reduce the negative impacts on society, the environment and the economy.
- Allow effective use of resources to limit resource depletion.

3- Profession

Engineers:

- Maintain professional manners.

- Consider the legal standards of the practice authority while practising engineering.
- Honestly reflect their qualifications and experiences as professionals.
- Avoid unfair competitions.
- Encourage sharing knowledge and advice between all the engineers.
- Clarify to the public why civil engineering is important for society.
- Improve their skills as professionals continually.

4- Clients and employers

Engineers:

- Should do their work professionally and honestly to their clients.

- Clarify any confliction to their clients’ interests.
- Directly identify any risks or weaknesses of their work to the clients and employers.
- Show the dangers to the clients and employers if their decision is refused due to the
probability of violation of the public’s health, safety and welfare.
- Keep the proprietary details of the customers and employers private.
- Conduct works in their fields only.
- Approve only their work.

5- Peers

Engineers:

- Take the profits of their work only.

- Help others’ work’s improvement.

5
- Motivate applying health and safety precautions in the workplace
- Treat their colleagues equally, fairly and ethically.
- Collaborate equally with their colleagues in work.
- Motivate and assist other engineers to educate themselves.
- Consider equity and respect in their supervision.
- Give comments professionally toward other engineers’ work, personality or reputation.
- Inform ASCE whenever any violations appear to their code of ethics.

2) Case Study Report

a) The expected structure of Christopher’s company:

The purpose of the company may be an important factor to specify the business structure of
the company to satisfy its goals efficiently.

The environmental industry company that Christopher is hired to require high cooperation
between all the employees regardless of their position in the company. For example,
Christopher is responsible for the end products’ -specialized equipment’s- properties that
associated with health, safety and welfare of the public, and depending on the testing process
during the design phase that Christopher is involved on to ensure that the product is meeting
the requirements of a standard-setting organization, he decides whether the equipment is
suitable to be produced and delivered to the clients or not; however, the end decision depends
also on the other employees working on other aspects related to the product such as the
financial aspect which its employees report that it is not suitable to have more tests of the
equipment because that will cost a lot of money.

Thus, the business structure of the company is more likely to be a matrix structure (Figure1)
for many reasons. Firstly, the matrix structure allows all employees in the company involved
in the related departments to participate in making the end decisions of the company and that
is similar to Christopher’s company (CFI, 2021). Secondly, the end product of this kind of
companies produces innovative products with high quality because of the interactions
between the employees from different departments just as the interactions between different
departments in Christopher’s company (CFI, 2021).

6
So, Christopher is working as an employee under the research and development department
which is with the other departments that engaged in different properties of the final products
that are made by the workers and designers are supervised by the management of the
company (CEO).

Figure 1: Matrix structure

b) Project description

The project of the company is to produce the suitable equipment to be used in the operations
of the public facilities that fit the requirements related to the health and safety of the public to
ensure the operations to be done in a safe approach without any exist of dangerous situations,
and as mentioned before this mission must be done by Christopher. However, Christopher
faced a problem because the standard-setting organization that the company follows is about
to update and release new standards related to health and safety which mean that he should
do new tests to make sure that the equipment meat the new standards or not and that will
extend the time needed to deliver the product to the client and will cause financial problems
to the company. Besides, the client and the company want to move forward and complete the
project, but the management of the company doesn’t want to violate the health and safety of
the public. Moreover, if they delay the project, they will violate the ethical standards related
to the clients and worker also which means that they are between violating the health and
safety standards or violating the ethical standards.

7
c) Engineering ethics associated with this case

As the problem is related directly to Christopher who is a civil engineer, this problem
cannot be recognized or solved by others because they are not experts in the engineering
field. This put the whole responsibility of solving this problem at the engineers who must
report and clarify the problem even if that would cause to them some losses because this is
related to the ethics of the professional engineers which they must refer to the code of ethics
if any issues related to the engineering field appear while they are working in an engineering
project such as that mentioned in this case because engineering ethics codes list the priorities
if any dilemma occurs.

d) Did the characters follow ethical canons?

Christopher followed the ethical canons because when he did the test and recognized the
problem, he did not neglect the problem without informing the management of the company.
However, the company follow the ethical canons in one part which is related to the relations
between them and the client because they want to satisfy their client; but they didn’t clarify
to the clients the dangerous that may happen if they continue the project which may cause
bad impactions to the health and safety of the public, and they treat the client satisfaction as a
priority rather than the health, safety and welfare of the public and that violates the ethical
canons.

e) What should Christopher recommend?

The recommendations that Cristopher should provide to the company management must
follow the standards of the standards-setting organization. And since continuing the project
without a guarantee the safety of the equipment, he must recommend doing more tests on the
equipment to make sure if there is any mistake that would cause dangerous situations
referring to the new standards because health and safety of the public is a priority and the
satisfaction of the client and the financial side of the company is not as important as the
safety.

8
f) The professional engineers' act:

Some parts are related to this case in the professional engineers’ act. For instant, under part
10 -other matters- they specified which entities can perform professional engineering
services without having the license to do these works such as the environmental company
mentioned in this case. This part of PE acts stated that any entity can do these services only if
they directed by a registered professional engineer –“For this section, a person carries out
professional engineering services under the direct supervision of a registered professional engineer
only if the engineer directs the person in the carrying out the services and oversees and evaluates
the carrying out of the services by the person” (Professional Engineers Act 2002, 2013, 95) - just
like the civil engineer -Christopher- in this case.

g) Contract and tort laws

A contract is an agreement between two parties or more than specify their duties upon each
other in certain circumstances for a known period. All parties of a contract must fully
understand the contract terms and accept these terms which indicate there must be some
elements to exist for the contract to be valid such as “a valid offer, an acceptance of the offer
and an exchange of some form consideration” (Contract and Tort Law, 2021). In addition, if
any party of the contract violate any terms and caused damages or injuries to the others
involved in the contract; the party how has been harmed or injured must be awarded (Contract

and Tort Law, 2021).

Tort law is the body of law that deals with all people whenever a person causes injury, harm
or unfair loss to another person in society. This type of law state that every person must
behave as he is responsible for his action (Contract and Tort Law, 2021).

There are many differences between contract and tort law. First of all, as mentioned before in
contract law the parties of the contract are not enforced to enter the agreement of the contract
between them; whereas, the injured party by the party which violated the law in the tort law
doesn’t involve in any agreement. In addition, in tort law, the violated duty is a duty that is
published by law and applied to everyone in a community. However, in contract law, the

9
duties are fixed and they applied just to the parties participated in the contract. Additionally,
in contract law, the damages can be determined from the contract itself, which means it is
limited and can be awarded based on the contract; while on tort law, the damages can’t be
determined or measured because it is not limited and the victims will be awarded by the
courts because of the harm caused by another party violated the law (Contract and Tort Law,
2021).

As an engineer, if I hired by a company or a client, the agreement between us that specifies

my duties toward them will be a contract. In contrast, the laws and standards related to the
designs and the ethical behaviour that I must apply as an engineer toward the client and the
community.

In this case, the agreement between the company and the client is a contract between them
which they are both know the terms of it and agreed on it. But, the laws and standards that
related to the safety of design and using of the produced equipment which the civil engineer -
Christopher- and the company are responsible to check and apply them are considered as tort
law, and any violation of these laws that causes harm or injury to any one of society; the
company will be punished by the specialized court related to these cases.

10
 Refere
1.
nce list
Asce.org. 2021. Code of Ethics | ASCE. [online] Available at: <https://www.asce.org/code-of-
ethics/> [Accessed 28 February 2021].

2. LegalMatch Law Library. 2021. Contract and Tort Law. [online] Available at:
<https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/contract-and-tort-law.html> [Accessed 2 March
2021].

3. Corporate Finance Institute. 2021. Corporate Structure - Different Types of Organizational

Structures. [online] Available at:
<https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/finance/corporate-structure/>
[Accessed 1 March 2021].

4. 2013. Professional Engineers Act 2002. [ebook] Available at:

<https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/2013-09-23/act-2002-054> [Accessed 2
March 2021].

11