Poor engineering design and ethics

The press frequently reports on incidents where it appears that disastrous outcomes may have been avoided if engineers had focused more on the common good or public safety.

GHG emission management

 

Danny Crichton, writing in TechCrunch,  suggests there is a fundamental thread that binds the disparate and heinous stories of the decline of engineering ethics together. The increasingly noxious alchemy of complexity and capitalism is a thread that binds the 737 MAX, FB data leaks, PG&E grid fires, and VW's emissions.

Ethics starts with leadership at the top, and specifically with better communication around safety and regulatory concerns to all stakeholders, but most definitely shareholders. Owners of stock in companies with complex technical products need to be told — again and again — that the companies they own will prioritize safety over immediate profits. The tone must always be to value long-term growth and sustainability… Yet, short-term traders aren’t the only investors available. The capital markets are diverse, and there are trillions of dollars of wealth handled by managers seeking to invest in long-term growth, without the downsides of inevitable disasters. One key part of investor relations is to acquire the investors that match the culture of the firm. If your investors don’t care about safety, no one else will either.1

 

The website of Engineers Nova Scotia states that Members of Engineers Nova Scotia must adhere to the Code of Ethics adopted by Council motion, effective September 30, 2012. This was adopted based on the Engineers Canada Code of Ethics as set out in the Engineers Canada publication “Guideline on the Code of Ethics”, dated April 2012.2

 

Facebook post from someone who takes the engineer's oath seriously 

Hyunjoo Jin reports, for Reuters, that the South Korean engineer Kim Gwang-ho flew 7,000 miles to Washington last year to do something he never dreamed he would: he reported alleged safety lapses at Hyundai Motor Co - his employer of 26 years - to U.S. regulators.

In a culture which values corporate loyalty, Kim was moving against the tide when he handed the NHTSA 250 pages of internal documents on the alleged defect and nine other faults. South Korea has been buffeted by corporate scandals, many within its family-run conglomerates or chaebol, but has seen few whistleblowers. A high proportion are sacked or ostracized, despite legislation to protect them, according to advocacy groups. Kim, fired in November for allegedly leaking trade secrets about the company’s technology and sales to media, has since been reinstated by Hyundai after a ruling by a South Korean government body under whistleblower protection laws. Hyundai has filed a complaint disputing the decision. “I will be the first and last whistleblower in South Korea’s auto industry. There are just too many things to lose,” Kim said in an interview at a bakery cafe run by his eldest daughter. “I had a normal life and was better off, but now I’m fighting against a big conglomerate.”3 

The ambiguity between loyalty to employers and clients who support the engineering enterprise and the safety or common good of society in expressions of engineering ethics makes decisions about inadequate designs an exercise in tension for practicing engineers.

 

References

 

1(2019, April 28). The demise and rebirth of the ethical engineer | TechCrunch. Retrieved May 1, 2019, from https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/28/the-demise-and-rebirth-of-the-ethical-engineer/ 

2(n.d.). Welcome to Engineers Nova Scotia. Retrieved November 18, 2021, from https://engineersnovascotia.ca/ 

3(2017, May 14). Blowing the whistle in South Korea: Hyundai Man takes on chaebol .... Retrieved November 18, 2021, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hyundai-whistleblower/blowing-the-whistle-in-south-korea-hyundai-man-takes-on-chaebol-culture-idUSKCN18B0J5

 

Engineering the Green Transition

Recent articles in the engineering media point to the unique resources and responsibilities that engineering can bring to planning and building our infrastructure in a time of climate change.

Building for Climate Change

 

David Fork and Ross Koningstein, two Google engineers writing in the IEEE Spectrum claim that engineers can disrupt Climate Change and decarbonization, carbon capture, and solar-radiation management will provide work for decades to come.

Our opening battles in the war on climate change need engineers to work on the many existing technologies that can massively scale up. As already illustrated with wind, solar, and batteries, such scale-ups often bring dramatic drops in costs. Other industrial sectors require technological revolutions to reduce emissions. If you experiment with your own mix of climate-mitigation techniques using the En-ROADS interactive climate tool, you’ll see how many options you have to max out to change our current trajectory and achieve 350 ppm CO2 levels and a global temperature rise of no more than 1.5 °C.1 

The authors have compiled a set of engineering calculations that are important for engineering our response to climate change.

	Goals and initial calculations (more detail in the article)[1]
1	We need to remove about 2000 gigatonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere
2	Humans use about 1 zettajoule of energy per year
3	To supply 1 zettajoule (ZJ) of energy per year with photovoltaic solar panels, we’d need to cover 1.6 percent of the planet’s land surface
4	To supply 1 ZJ of energy per year with nuclear power, we’d have to build three 1-gigawatt plants per day for 30 years
5	A 50-pound bag of concrete mix will cost about 42 cents more if the emissions from cement manufacturing are captured and stored
6	Removing 2,000 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 would account for roughly 2.8 percent of global GDP for 80 years

 Table of Engineering Considerations

Engineers Canada asks why is climate change important for engineers? Climate change is a significant and lasting change in weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It includes changes to temperature, precipitation and other climate parameters and changes in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and flash storms. In northern Canada climate effects on permafrost, ice-cover and snow loads are already apparent.

Much of Canada’s infrastructure has been in place for many years with designs based on existing climate patterns. With the effects of a changing climate, these designs need to be revisited to improve safety and protection for Canadians. Engineers, under their professional code of ethics, need to be involved in addressing the impacts of changing climate on infrastructure design and operations because it affects public safety and public interest.2 

Engineers are held to a higher standard of reasonable care than the average layperson. By virtue of the professional’s training and experience, they are expected to apply a high level of expertise to issues that affect their professional practice.

Professionals are expected to be aware of the limitations of their professional scope and access other qualified professionals to augment those areas where they may not be fully qualified to express professional judgment. Through extensive media coverage, the average layperson is cognizant of the climate change issue and its potential for disruptive and serious impacts. Similarly, the average engineer must also be sensitive to the potential for changing climate conditions and appropriately apply these sensitivities to their professional practice. Given the level of public awareness of the climate change issue, a professional cannot make the argument that they were unaware that climate change could potentially affect their professional work. 3 

Darrel Danyluk is a past president of Engineers Canada and of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta. He is also a previous chair of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations Committee on Engineering and the Environment. David Lapp is a member of the WFEO Committee on Engineering and the Environment. They ask what are the key priorities for climate action within engineering? Some priorities for engineering should be:

• Education of existing practitioners, students and educators;

• Updating of existing codes, standards and guidelines or the creation of new ones where there are gaps;

• Better evidence of costs and benefits of adaptation and building climate resilience, particularly for civil infrastructure and buildings; and

• Developing multi-stakeholder concurrence on the need for adaptive and mitigative actions.

 

The main barrier is in implementation, which is often caused by a lack of financial commitment by decision-makers. Costs to mitigate and adapt to climate change are still uncertain and it’s difficult to obtain effective cost-shared agreements and division of responsibilities among stakeholders. In Canada, it’s sometimes difficult to coordinate and agree on actions between all three levels of government as there are jurisdictional and institutional limits to action. Some infrastructure owners aren’t prepared to invest in climate action measures, especially for designs that are outside of existing codes and standards that are becoming increasingly outdated as the climate changes. There’s also a reluctance to implement measures outside of existing guidelines and practices that often haven’t taken climate change into account.4

Calculating the material, workforce, and economic requirements to adapt and build resilience in our infrastructure is the traditional role of engineers. Now the costs and benefits of mitigative and adaptive measures need to be confirmed and included in building codes and construction practice.

References

1	(2021, June 28). Energy Engineers: You Can Disrupt Climate Change - IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved July 25, 2021, from https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/engineers-you-can-disrupt-climate-change
2	(n.d.). Climate Change and Engineering | Engineers Canada. Retrieved July 25, 2021, from https://engineerscanada.ca/public-policy/climate-change-and-engineering
3	(n.d.). Principles of Climate Change Adaptation for Engineers. Retrieved July 25, 2021, from https://engineerscanada.ca/sites/default/files/01_national_guideline_climate_change_adaptation.pdf
4	(2021, March 25). WFEO climate stories: Canada - International Coalition for .... Retrieved July 25, 2021, from https://sustainability-coalition.org/wfeo-climate-stories-canada/