Ethics are self guided rules that effects a person through their performance in things.
What Ethics should an Engineer have?
An engineer should have the morals to desire that with the completion of whatever is at hand, that it should not fail or endanger the lives of others.
Why should an Engineer have these Ethics?
Most projects an engineer is involved in relate to other jobs or situations where that project would be around a vast number of people. So if that project fails, there is a potential for harm towards all those individuals.
Examples of Engineering projects LACKINGEthics...
1. (Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse): In Kansas City, Missouri a hotel in under construction. The building desires to implement the use of not only one walkway but one for each of their four floors. For their fourth walkway, the supports designed for it would consist of steel rods going from the ceiling to the walkway. Unfortunately, The design of these supports would not prove to be very efficient. These supports could have broke construction guidelines and safety codes due to how improperly they held the walkways themselves. Those very same sketchy supports would go on to not only hold up the weight of the fourth walkway, but also basically the second walkway as well. The second walkway would be held by the fourth walkway which by doing so would ultimately cause all the strain to go to the steel rods. With a disregard for these blaring issues, on July first of 1980 the fully constructed "Hyatt Regency Hotel" was opened to the public. A little over a year later, those supports gave way letting those two walkways crash down upon mass amounts of people on the ground level. The casualties of this projects failure were 200 injuries to 144 deaths. (Uyeno, slide 2) 2. (Tacoma Narrows Bridge): Sometime in 1940, the construction of what was to be known at the time as, "the third longest suspended bridge in the world" was finished. The name of this magnificent bridge came to be known as the, "Tacoma Narrows Bridge." The location of this monolith was in Washington going across the Puget Sound. Unfortunately, the prioritized desire to make the bridge thinner and more aerodynamic than any other, caused the eventual downfall of this structure. Their overall objective with this project lead them to overlook the winds that would be constantly going against it. Four months after the construction finalization, the bridge had collapsed. The bridge had been violently tossed around from the wind because of how thin it was made. There were no casualties from this incident. (Uyeno, slide 5) 3. (Saint Francis Dam): Around Los Angeles in 1926, a construction project has just been finished that will allow water for the countless inhabitants of the city. The project was for building a dam, and the name it was given was the, "Saint Francis Dam." Unfortunately, certain aspects of the dams construction were not properly put into consideration. In the San Fancisquito Canyon where they chose the location of the dam to be constructed, was made up of landslides that happened long ago. These landslides provided a bad base to build off of even though the location severed as an excellent choke point for the dam. Though this did not matter for what would happen later on. On March twelfth of 1928, the dam broke and gave way to fifty-two miles of water. The casualties included 432 deaths with an unspecified amount caught within the flood zone. (Uyeno, slide 7)