Cases

  1. cases
    • Professional engineering responsibility with respect to ethics and safety
    • Chapters: 3, 19, 20, 21
    • Important questions: is it legal, is being legal even good enough, is legal necessary
  2. Utilitarian Approach:
    • Considered right if it is greatest good for greatest number of people
    • If benefits are greater than harms, if pleasure is greater than pain
  3. International
    • Emission requirements are not internationally consistent
    • Which laws do you follow/apply
    • e.g. SNC Lavalin, known to bribery and bad things
    • BUT if it is acceptable 
  4. Rights Approach
    • A right that is accepted by society, follow United Nations rights, or Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
    • Canadian Charter of Rights: Everyone has the right to be secure against search and seizure
    • E.g. Bell using your information, or Ontario Building Code (incorporates more rights)
  5. Justice Approach
    • Justice is what you deserve, fairness is treating every equally, aim to treat everyone the same
    • Design for all, equality (one design that everyone can buy and use), and fair (adaptable design to provide same function to everyone who buys or uses it)
    • Human Variability: How adaptable should you be to be ethical, is one size fits all good enough
    • e.g. Lefties, more prone to accidents, is this a design flaw
  6. Common Good Approach
    • Common things we all depend on (water, peace, education, health)
    • "Do our actions build up or break down these common goods"
  7. Virtue Approach
    • Based on honesty, real happiness
    • Person based rather than action based
    • "what kind of person, team, organization do I want to be"
    • Moral Operating System??
  8. Smell Test
    • Think about what others would think if this was in the news
    • However, passing the "smell test" isn't that significant, pretty much a bare minimum
    • Bioethics (TED Talks Video)
  9. Ethical
    Decisions
    • Recognize when an ethical decision is in front of you, know when something may be wrong
    • Make sure you get the facts before deciding
    • *Use all the perspectives discussed (Greatest good, human rights, justice/fairness, common good, virtues, smell test)
    • Realize that there is not one single perspective that offers the correct answer
    • Ethical decisions are meant to be difficult, but important to make a decision and stick with it
    • Use the reactions you receive to gauge how the decision was (From public, close friends, experts)
    • Recognize who is in the position to make the decision
  10. Safety
    Much of safety in engineering is based off of mistakes in the past
  11. Safety Examples
    • Failed bridges (Quebec bridge) improve civil engineering/Ontario Building Code
    • Air Traffic (3200 accidents per year), they learn more each time
    • Mississauga train derailment, Bhopal project (oil)
    • Esso's reaction: Could that happen here, how can we stop it, such incidents raise your awareness
    • 6 million dollars for solutions, but probably billions in repairs and violations if something goes wrong
    • This example teaches a lot about project management
  12. Competition
    • Although engineering industry is very competitive, safety is not
    • Many companies are willing to share safety policies, safety is usually main concern
    • e.g. DOW
    • Part of safety is to meet all the current laws and codes
    • Also to learn from all past mistakes, by yourself and previous engineers; never make same mistake twice
  13. Future Design Constraints
    • Design MUST be safe..doesn't make sense, must be more specific and give it meaning
    • Design must be safe..according to Ontario Building Code (makes more sense)
  14. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
    Recognize what you don't want to happen, see what steps you take that lead to faults (start from beginning)
  15. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) -
    - Recognize what you don't want to happen, work backwards and see how you can prevent it from happening (start from end)
  16. Hazard and Operability (HAZOP)
    Ask what if, and figure out solutions
  17. Fail-Safe and Fail-Fail-Safe -
    • - Having a back-up plan, and a back-up plan for that one as well
    • All techniques recognize that failure happens, but they predict the consequences so you can change the product and lessen those consequences
  18. Sustainability
    • Sustainable design and an excellent design are coherent, both important to each other
    • Must ensure you meet needs of present, without comprising future generations
  19. Economics
    • Must keep in mind the life cycle cost, not just the initial cost
    • Life Cycle Costing: Initial, operating, end of life (e.g. cost to take down CN Tower)
    • Cost to innovate
  20. Environment
    • Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions
    • Every part you use has a GHG emission (e.g. TBWC project)
    • The energy required to produce it (including transportation, collection of parts, manufacturing)
    • It is your aim as an engineer to reduce/eliminate as much of this as possible
    • Also keep in mind other non-renewable resources
  21. Cradle to Cradle design: 
    • End of life starts next life of that product
    • Important to build so that you can assemble, maintain, disassemble, and reuse (e.g. no glue, duct tape)
  22. Social
    Social Life Cycle: Measured by health, education, happiness, and freedom
  23. Users and Non-Users:
    Make sure you design for everyone, people who use the product but also figure out who will be affected by it and how
  24. Today's and Tomorrow's Generation:  
    :  Design with the future in mind, don't compromise or limit future generations, keep in mind how they will be impacted by your design (waste, end of life, repair, etc)
  25. Local and Global:
    • Is your design made for local and global people, if so keep in mind global laws, ways of life, norms, etc. If not, keep in mind how your product will affect or be affected by global population
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Author
alazeidan
ID
252425
Card Set
Cases
Description
Cases
Updated