KG 08803 : ETHICS AND

LAW FOR ENGINEERS

Presented by :-
Ir.A.Sunderaeswaran
Nayar
RESPONSIBILITY IN ENGINEERING
COLUMBIA DISASTER (video)
• On January 16, 2003, the Columbia lifted off at Kennedy
Space Center for a the 28th, 16-day mission in space.
• The seven crews was scheduled to conduct numerous
scientific experiments and return to earth on February 1,
2003.
• During the lift off, a piece of insulating material that covered
the large external tank broke off and hit the shuttle’s left
wing.
• Cameras recorded the foam impact, but the images provided
insufficient detail to determine the location and extent of the
damage.
• Several engineers, including Rodney Rocha, requested that
attempts be made to get clearer images in concern that the
damage to the wing could cause a catastrophic failure. There
were also requests that the Columbia crew be directed to
examine the wing for possible damage.
COLUMBIA DISASTER (cont.)
• However, NASA management rejected the request, they
believed that the foam strikes, although a known problem,
could not cause significant damage and were not a safety-of-
flight issue. The foam strike were unknown to the Columbia
crew until shortly before reentry.
• Upon reentry into Earth atmosphere, indications of trouble
began. Because the heat-resistant tiles covering the left
wing’s leading edge had been damaged or missing,
superheated air (exceeding 5000˚F) entered the wing and
blew it apart, finally causing Columbia to go out of control
and disintegrate, mostly over east Texas. The entire crew
along with the spacecraft, is lost.
• The Columbia & Challenger events illustrates many of the
issues surrounding the notion of responsibility in the
engineering profession.
• Engineers played a central role in making the flight of the
Columbia possible.and also to safeguard the shuttle and
its travelers.
• From the start of the launch, engineers were on the
lookout for possible problems. Rodney Rocha and other
engineers on NASA's Debri Assessment Team became
concerned about flying debris. Noticing and assessing
such details was their responsibility.
• Responsibility is multi faceted. As a notion of
accountability,it may be applied to individual engineers,
teams of engineers, organisations etc.. It may focus on
legal liabilities,job-defined roles,expectations of
professional societies etc.
• Engineers are expected to commit themselves to
high standards of conduct: honesty, integrity,
fairness, protection of public safety, health and
welfare(NSPE Code of Ethics, BEM Code of
Professional Conducts). This is based on the special
roles engineers assume in their work and the
impact this work has on our lives. This is referred to
as role responsibility.
• Our dependence on the responsible exercise of
engineering expertise shows that society needs to
place trust in the responsible performance of
engineers , both as individuals and as members of
teams of engineers. Hence it is important for
engineers to not generate distrust.
• This has important implications for a professional's
approach to his responsibilities.
• The attitudes and dispositions that society expects
from a responsible engineer are integrity, honesty ,
a willingness to make some self-sacrifice , and some
degree of civic-mindedness.
• Apart from displaying basic engineering
competence,a responsible engineer is expected to
• Exhibit imaginativeness and perseverance
• Communicate clearly and informatively
• Committed to objectivity
• Open to acknowledging and correcting mistakes
• Work well with others
• Committed to quality, etc.
• Be capable of seeing the overall picture as well as
minute details.
ENGINEERING STANDARDS
• One way in which engineers can try to gain the trust
of those they serve is by committing themselves to a
code of ethics that endorses high standards of
performance e.g. NSPE Code of Ethics , BEM Code of
Ethics. These may be regulatory standards that
specify technical requirements for specific kinds of
engineering design e.g. certain safety standards
must be met in the design of buildings, bridges etc..
As such they focus predominantly on the results of
engineering practice i.e. whether the work satisfies
certain standards of quality or safety.
• Also engineering codes of ethics typically insist that
engineers conform to standards of competence ,
ENGINEERING STANDARDS
standards which have evolved through engineering
practice and which are commonly accepted in
engineering practice. Regulatory standards and
standards of competence are intended to provide
some assurance of quality,safety, and efficiency in
engineering.
• It can readily be agreed that engineers do play the
sort of vital societal role as stated in the NSPE
Preamble , which clearly emphasizes that engineers
are expected to use their specialised knowledge and
skills in ways that benefit employers,clients, and the
public and also that engineers must not betray the
trust placed in them. This can be referred to as
ENGINEERING STANDARDS
obligation- responsibility. Assessments of how well
engineers handle their obligation-responsibilities
are typically in terms of praise and blame. Society
is more inclined to blame shortcomings and
failures rather than to praise everyday competent
engineering practice.
• Society often speaks of an engineer as “being
responsible” for a mistake or as being someone
“responsible” for an accident. This is a
fundamentally negative and backward -looking
concept of responsibility. This is often referred to
as blame-responsibility. However assessments can
be positive also and not just negative.
• Responsibility: praiseworthy or blameworthy
• Negative / backward-looking concept of
responsibility: Blame-responsibility.
• Engineer as ‘being responsible’ for a mistake or as
being one of those ‘responsible’ for an accident
• Failures in the design, or functioning of engineered
products
• Organizations can (and are) liable in law, and this can
have important implications for the moral
responsibilities of their employees, including engineers.
THE STANDARD OF CARE
• Applying those standards (code of ethics) requires
professional judgment
• No engineering product can be expected to be
‘absolutely’ safe
• There are economic costs associated with safety
improvements
• There can be some uncertainty about standard of
safety for the product
• It is unrealistic for the public to expect all failures
and mistakes as culpable;
• Engineers must do their best to anticipate and
avoid failures and mishaps
THE STANDARD OF CARE
• Joshua B. Kardon:
• Although some errors in engineering judgment and
practice can be expected to occur as a matter of course,
not all errors are acceptable
• ‘An engineer is not liable, or responsible, for damages for every
error. Society has decided, through case law, that when you hire
an engineer, you buy the engineer’s normal errors. However, if
the error is shown to have been worse than a certain level of
error, the engineer is liable. That level, the line between non-
negligent and negligent error is the “standard of care”’.
• ‘A trier of fact, a judge or jury, has to determine what the
standard of care is and whether an engineer has failed to
achieve that level of performance. They do so by hearing expert
testimony. People who are qualified as experts express opinions
as to the standard of care and as to the defendant engineer’s
performance relative to that standard’.
THE STANDARD OF CARE
• Joshua B. Kardon:
• ‘A good working definition of the standard of care of a
professional is: that level or quality of service ordinarily
provided by other normally competent practitioners of good
standing in that field, contemporaneously providing similar
services in the same locality and under same circumstances.’
• No formal statement of what specifically satisfies
the standard
• An appeal is being made to what is commonly and
ordinarily done (or not done) by competent
engineers
• NSPE Code of Ethics: ‘engineers to adhere to the
highest principles of ethical conduct’
RESPONSIBLE OVERSIGHT
• Engineers who have responsible charge for a
project are expected to exercise careful oversight
before putting their official stamp of approval on
the project.
• Two well known cases:
• Hyatt Regency Walkway Disaster
• Citicorp Building
HYATT REGENCY WALKWAY DISASTER
HYATT REGENCY WALKWAY DISASTER
HYATT REGENCY WALKWAY DISASTER
• Those in charge of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency
hotel were charged with professional negligence in
regard to the catastrophic collapse
• Although those in charge did not authorize the
change of design of the walkway support,
responsible monitoring on their part would have
made them aware of the proposed change.
CITICORP BUILDING
• William LeMessurier, the chief structural engineer
of Manhattan’s 59-storey Citicorp Building, was
surprised to learn that its major structural joints
were bolted rather than deep-welded together, after
the building was completed
• Initially he was confident that the building still
satisfied the New York City building code’s
requirement (wind force from 90˚ angle)
• Despite satisfying the code, he decided to calculate
what might happen if the wind struck at 45˚, since
the 1st floor began equivalent to 9 stories above
ground, four pillars of the ground support placed in
between the four corners rather than at the corners
themselves.
CITICORP BUILDING
• Further calculations by LeMessurier determined
that bolted joints rendered the structure more
vulnerable to high winds
• He concluded that the building was not safe enough,
and hence corrections were needed. This meant
reinforcing the bolted joints
• In this case, standard engineering practice of
meeting code requirements may not be enough
• The Hyatt Regency case, is a clear illustration of
culpable failure. The original design itself failed to
meet building code requirements. The design
change made matters worse.
CITICORP BUILDING
BLAME-RESPONSIBILTY & CAUSATION
• Relationship of responsibility of harm to causation
of harm
• In the Columbia disaster, the investigation board
focused on the ‘causes’ of the accident. The
identification of individuals who should be held
responsible and accountable was not its primary
mission
• 3 types of explanations of the accident: physical
cause, organizational causes, and individuals
responsible for the accident.
• Organizations / Corporations (NASA or General
Motors), can they be morally responsible agents,
like humans?
BLAME-RESPONSIBILTY & CAUSATION
• Organizations / Corporations, (similar to people):
• Have a decision-making mechanism
• Have policies that guide their decision making
• Have “interest”: making a profit, maintaining good
public image, etc.
• Organizations / Corporations can be held
responsible at least in 3 senses:
• They can be criticized for causing harm
• Can be asked to make reparations for wrong done
• An organization that has harmed others is in need of
reform
• One concern on treating organizations as morally
responsible agents, is the fear that individual
responsibility might be displaced.
 LIABILITY
• Concept of legal liability for causing harm
• To be legally liable for causing harm is to warrant
punishment for harms
• Liability for harm implies: the person caused the
harm, the conditions under which the harm was
caused
• 1) A person can intentionally cause harm
• 2) A person can recklessly cause harm by not aiming
to cause harm, but by being aware that harm is
likely to result
• 3) A still weaker kind of legal liability is associated
with negligently causing harm.
 LIABILITY
• In law, a successful charge of negligence must meet four
conditions:
• 1) Legal obligation to conform to certain standards of
conduct is present.
• 2) Failure to conform to certain standards of conduct
• 3) There is a reasonably close causal connection between
the conduct and the resulting harm.
• 4) Actual loss or damage to the interests of another
• Professional negligence: failure to perform duties that
professionals have implicitly / explicitly assumed by
virtue of being professionals.
• If an engineer does not exercise standard care according
to recognized standards of his profession, and is therefore
negligent, he can be responsible for the harm done.
 LIABILITY
• Strict liability: no attribution of fault or blame, but
legal responsibility to provide compensation, make
repairs or etc.
• Even strict liability directed at corporations,
engineers have responsibilities to their employer to
help minimize strict liability to be imposed on the
organization.
• So strict liability can have moral implications for
individual engineers.
 GOOD WORKS
• Ideally, the standard of care reflects a concern to
protect others from harm and wrongdoing.
• Good works: that a person has gone ‘above and
beyond the call of duty’ or ‘the extra mile’, can be
undertaken by groups as well as individuals
• Those involved may view themselves as simply doing
what need to be done. Taking on the responsibility in
the first place was fully optional.
• Is it really important to emphasize good works in
engineering? What if engineers only meet their basic
obligations?
• Good works may not always be welcome, may be
discouraged: organizations, tight schedule, limited
budget, etc.
 DESIGN STANDARDS
• In designing products, engineers are expected to
hold considerations of public safety paramount.
• Standard of practice
• Courts of law are unwilling to simply equate the
standard of care with current formal standards of
practise, i.e. formal standards are not sufficient
• Standards are still important because:
• Standards are one of the principal mechanisms for
managing complexity of any sort, including
technological complexity. Standardized terminology,
physical properties and procedures all play a role in
constraining the size of the universe in which the
practitioner must make decisions (Stuart Shapiro)
 THE RANGE OF STANDARDS OF
•PRACTICE
Standards of practise may be local in scope but
reflect global standards of safety and good
engineering practice.
• Professional standards of engineering practice can
cross national boundaries (Vivien Weil):
• Peter Palchinsky (Russian engineer) principles:
• 1) Gather full and reliable information about the
specific situation
• 2) View engineering plans and projects in context,
taking into account impacts on workers, the need of
workers, systems of transportations and
communication, resources needed, resources
accessibility, economic feasibility, impacts on users
and on the other affected parties.
THE PROBLEM OF MANY HANDS
• So many people are responsible for the tragedy that
it is irrational and unfair to pin the responsibility on
any individual person.
• Larry May: If harm has resulted from collective
inaction, the degree of individual responsibility of
each member of a putative group for the harm
should vary based on the role of each member
could, counterfactually, have played in preventing
the inaction
• Similarly for responsibility for action in groups:
degree of responsibility of each member of the
group depends on the extent to which the member
caused the action by some action reasonably
avoidable on his part.
IMPEDIMENTS TO RESPONSIBLE ACTIONS
• Self-interest
• Personal hopes and ambitions that are not restricted to
professional ideals
• Self-deception
• an intentional avoidance of truths we would find it painful to
confront self-consciously
• Fear
• of acknowledging our mistakes, of losing our jobs, of some sort
of punishments or other bad consequences
• Ignorance
• turning away from information to avoid having to deal with the
challenges it may pose, lack of imagination, not looking at the
right places, failure to persist, pressure of deadlines
• Egocentric
• tend to interpret situations from very limited perspectives and
it takes special efforts to acquire a more objective viewpoint
IMPEDIMENTS TO RESPONSIBLE ACTIONS
• Microscopic vision
• whereas egocentric thinking tends to be inaccurate
(failing to understand the perspectives of others),
microscopic vision may be highly accurate and precise
but our field of vision is greatly limited
• engineers sometimes need to raise their eyes from
their world of scientific and technical expertise and
look around them in order to understand the larger
implications of what they are doing
• Uncritical Acceptance of Authority
• the importance of engineers exercising independent,
objective judgment in performing their functions
• Groupthink
IMPEDIMENTS TO RESPONSIBLE ACTIONS
• Groupthink
• an illusion of invulnerability of the group to failure
• a strong ‘‘we-feeling’’ that views outsiders as adversaries or enemies
• encourages shared stereotypes of others
• rationalizations that tend to shift responsibility to others
• an illusion of morality that assumes the inherent morality of the
group and thereby discourages careful examination of the moral
implications of what the group is doing
• a tendency of individual members toward self-censorship, resulting
from a desire not to ‘‘rock the boat’’
• an illusion of unanimity, construing silence of a group member as
consent; an application of direct pressure on those who show signs
of disagreement
• often exercised by the group leader who intervenes in an effort to
keep the group unified
• Mind-guarding, or protecting the group from dissenting views by
preventing their introduction (by, for example, outsiders who wish to
present their views to the group).
THANK YOU !