NSPE Ethics Code The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) is the society of licensed professional engineers. The following is their fundamental canons.
Liabilty Any sort of legal obligation, including, for example, the obligation of a corporation to pay wages taxes.
Negligence is defined as the failure to be sufficiently careful in a matter in which one has a moral responsibility to exercise care.
Responsibility The moral sense of responsibility is the sense in which one is responsible for achieving (or maintaining) a good result in some matter.
Trench Boxes and the Construction Site Failure Trench digging is one of the oldest types of construction work in documented history. Historically, there have been between 100 and 300 people killed in the United States every year because of trench collapse.
Anhydrous Ammonia Hose Failure Since 1940, anhydrous ammonia has been used by farmers in the spring and early fall as a nitrogen fertilizer. Farmers typically rent the equipment necessary from the area farmer's cooperative.
Hyat Regency Walkways Collapse This case is appropriate for structural design, statics and materials classes in addition to it usefulness as a general overview of consequences of professional actions. The Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse provides a vivid example of the importance of accuracy and detail in engineering design and technical drawings (particularly regarding revisions), and the costly consequences of negligence in this realm.
The Aberdeen Three Case The case emphasizes an engineer's professional responsibility for public and worker safety and for the environment. It also stresses the obligation of a manager-engineer to oversee the actions of subordinates.
Trust and Trustworthiness in Research Acts of negligence and recklessness figure not only in misconduct, narrowly defined, but in many lesser betrayals and defections that undermine trust.
Joshua B. Kardon, "The Structural Engineer's Standard of Care." (Paper presented at International Conference on Ethics in Engineering and Computer Science, March 23, 1999.) Other keywords for this article: professional responsibility; competency in engineering; mistakes.
Relevant Literature on this Topic
Whitbeck, Caroline. 1998. Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research. New York: Cambridge University Press. Other keywords for this article: ethics and prudence; preferences vs. values; trust, distrust; ambiguity; moral ambiguity; responsibilities, general; professional responsibility; public safety; worker safety; laboratory safety; design process; engineering competence; environmental issues, global; environmental issues, chemical; conflict of interest; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; harassment, sexual harassment and aggression; workplace relationships; research misconduct; falsification and fabrication; plagiarism; authorship; human subjects in research; animals in scientific research.
Joseph R. Herkert, ed. 1999. Social, Ethical and Policy Implications of Engineering: Selected Readings. Piscataway, New Jersey: IEEE Press (in press). Other keywords for this: consumer safety; design and the environment; ethical codes and guidelines from professional societies; ethics and economics; ethics and the law; ethics support; global environmental issues; medical information; privacy; product quality; professional responsibility; professional societies; technical and scholarly societies; professionalism in computing; public safety; risk assessment; safety & performance; system security; whistleblowing.
Stanley H. Goldstein and Robert A. Rubin, "Engineering Ethics," Civil Engineering (October 1996): 41-4. Other keywords for this: public safety; professional responsibility; ethics and prudence; trust, distrust.