Engineering and Ethics

The other day I was joking about how architects get praised when a building is successful and popular, and engineers only get credit for a building if it falls down. While funny and true some of the time, it is important to note that architectural engineer's job is all about safety and that, while we don't save lives per se, our jobs need to be done as precisely as a doctor's, and are about keeping people safe whether they are in our buildings or not.

Engineering Ethics is all about making sure the choices we make while building a structure are the right things to do. Many professions will not lose much if they cut a few corners here or there. An author may still do well if his book has a plot hole or two, and a singer can be extremely popular even if her voice isn't exactly pitch-perfect.

Building engineers, on the other hand, have to make sure everything they do is perfect. They can't afford to cut corners, which sounds like an oxymoron of sorts. If an engineer takes a shortcut, it will almost certainly be becuase he wants to save some money. And this can work very well in the short term. But this isn't ethical. Even a small shortcut can be catastrophic when we are talking about a building, and this can end up costing a lot more in the long run than the engineer was hoping for.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. One of the most common
case studies in Engineering Ethics

Say you, the architectural engineer, are tasked with building a modest skyscraper. The project manager has given you your budget and you are all set to get your materials in order. You know you don't have an infinite supply of money, so what do you do when it comes to choosing your supplier for the steel framework? You can't get the top-of-the-line stuff on your budget, not by a long shot, so you decide to get the cheapest stuff you can find, which happens to be some small operation overseas who has promised you the absolute best price on the materials you need. Was this a good idea?

Of course not!

It's like when you are shopping for, say, electronics. You could by the five-dollar no-name earphones at the discount store, but it is extremely likely your cheap-o equipment will not even work when you take it out of the box. You are better off paying a few extra dollars to get a pair of headphones from a brand you trust. Wasn't that worth the extra money?

The same thing can be applied to engineering. Except getting the cheapest equipment could cost you more than a few extra dollars. If you don't make sure you are using quality materials on your project (or hire quality workers), your building may not stand up properly. And if something goes wrong, your building has a chance of collapsing. And that runs the risk of hurting people. Defnitely more of a dangerous game than just buying a cheap pair of headphones.

This is what happens when engineering ethics is ignored.

One of the first classes you'll take as an engineer at IIT (whether architectural or structural or any other type) is Engineering Ethics. Your professor will take an entire semester or more expanding on this topic and by the end of the class you can be confident that the decisions you make on the job are the right ones, whether the topic be managing construction, like I've mentioned here, or things such as whistleblowing and the general principles that all engineers should live by. If you're curious, the Wikipedia page has a lot of good info. There's even this site which has a lot of case studies for you to peruse.

This is not meant to scare you. This is meant to show you how important an engineer's job is, and even if you won't see your name on the building if it ever finds its way on the Register of Historic Buildings, you'll know that the reason it was able to stand up long enough to get onto that list is because you made the right decisions putting it together, and that in itself should be enough.