Civil engineers help to create and improve the structure of
the buildings. All buildings need to be strengthened over time, to keep people
in or around the building safe. Maintaining buildings also helps to minimized
the damaged done to buildings in natural disasters and can even keep the
buildings standing strong. As a civil engineer working at a company, it will consist
of multiple ethical responsibilities in the field.
Safety
An ethical responsibility that civil engineers face when working on a project is safety. When
creating a design or when improving and maintaining a building, it is important to consider the safety of the community. Being responsible for the safety of others, also means correctly viewing, accepting, and changing the design of the building.
Being sure that the building will be well structured, strong, and stable is the
most important thing needed to keep the community safe. The ethical responsibility for safety was neglected on July 17th, 1981, where more than 100 people
were killed when two walk ways in the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel
collapsed. It is said that the reason that the walkway collapsed was because of
design changes, poor communication, and poor calculations. The engineers would make design changes over the phone. These changes were unprofessional because
of the they were not documented on the planner. The changes were not visual to everybody involved in the project either. The engineer’s ignorance of the safety of others caused them and their firms to get their licensed revoked. Change of plans should always be written down
and well calculated in order to avoid any horrific events again.
Equality and Respect
Equality and respect towards a coworker or employee is an ethical responsibility
that civil engineers must encounter. Civil Engineers must be able to treat all
of their workers and coworkers with equality, and still be able to respect a person regardless of the person’s race,
religion, gender, and age. Seeing their workers and coworkers with equality
will help to run the project smoothly. If a person would come to have any doubt
of the project, being able to question the group without receiving any
disrespect is a very important feature that a team must have. A team with
equal respect between each other is the best way to keep the project running smoothly
and effectively. Civil engineers always have to work with a group of people, so
being able to respect all kinds of people no matter what, is a must for a civil
engineers.
Working as a civil engineer comes with ethical responsibilities
that all civil engineers must follow. Not following these ethical responsibilities
can cause horrific accidents in the project. Also another down side of not acknowledging
these responsibilities can also lead to a revoke of an engineer’s license, and
can also create a negative display towards the firm. All these ethical responsibilities
should be followed as strictly as possible to keep the project running as
effectively as possible.
Resources:
This was a very informative piece on the field of Civil Engineering. I liked the inclusion of tragic examples that extenuated the cost of not abiding by certain ethics. I would have liked variation to one of the examples, seeing as how the professor previously covered an example of a blog in class that cited the exact same Hyatt Ballroom incident. I read the opinion piece you listed as a citation, and I was pleased that your composition did not sound like an exact summary of their ideas. You successfully introduced your own opinions and perspective regarding the topic.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few minor grievances I have with your composition style and grammar though. It was confusing at times to read through sudden capitalization such as "A Team". One consistent flaw I found within your paragraphs involved switching tenses. For example, your first paragraph sentence of- "Maintaining buildings also helps to minimized the damaged done to buildings"- could have fared better if minimized was changed to minimize. Under your safety clause, the sentence -The engineers would also make design changes over the phone which is very unprofessional.- could be best reworded into "The engineers also made design changes over the phone. Such changes were unprofessional because they were not documented on paper nor made accessible to everybody involved with the project." Under your Respect clause, it would have been welcoming to see more diverse and exciting word choices. Nevertheless, your blog still hit a lot of my high marks, and I truly enjoyed reading it.