Can You Top This? Extremes in Non-Ethical Behavior 8

[plasgears]

I am collaborating on a book tentatively entitled "Management by Disaster." This relates to the chapter on ethics. In facility management there is a tendency to direct plant resources and contractor connections towards personal gain.

An electrical engineer described a situation where the plant manager of a power plant had a large metal shed erected on his personal property at plant expense. Plant personnel were involved in the erection. Can you top this?

 

[Gymmeh]

The use of maintenance to mow their lawn, rake the leaves, plow driveway, clean road salt/sand (in the spring)...etc...

thats the best one I know of.

 

[IRstuff]

On the face of it, it certainly sounds egregious, but hearing 2nd or 3rd hand, we couldn't possibly know enough to really judge. If you had a standing army with nothing to do, what would you do to mitigate that?

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[EddyC]

So far, the most extreme unethical engineering behavior that I have seen was the design of a high pressure steam piping system without a single stress analysis calculation.

 

[zdas04]

There are a bunch of examples in Oil & Gas because we have frequent boom times where we spill incredible amounts of money. All of the stories I know are either second/third hand (and everything grows with the retelling) or the few that I have personal knowledge of are protected by NDA agreements (HR is really strict about not getting a company sued for liable).

There was the one about ... I guess I'd better not.

Good luck with getting something that can be published and is adequately documented to protect you from the lawyers.

David

 

[HgTX]

On the news recently: a large entitity (not mine) connected with the building of roads sent four employees off to a conference in Vienna. That's Vienna, Austria, not Vienna, Virginia. Flew them first class, and they didn't even attend any of the conferences. They were off on tourist trips all day, and just came back at night for hospitality and swag.(*)

Our agency has a "fraud awareness" film they show us in which they mention several cases of employees making inappropriate use of agency resources. My favorite was the guy who (if memory serves) used an agency truck to drive agency materials home and build himself a BBQ pit. Or maybe the guy who had a contractor deliver construction materials to his house. (The film didn't come with a "do not talk about this stuff" warning so I figure I can talk about it.)

Hg

(*)Cases like that are why, in my agency, it's very hard to get approval to attend out-of-state (never mind out-of-country) conferences at all, and even harder to get approval for multiple people. First class not even contemplated.



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[Unotec]

I've got one about a very high government official that had 50km of road built, with public funds, with "floating concrete" technology. It goes from his doorstep to his then fiancee, connecting both towns. Took away land from farmers to do so and justified it as a research for a potential new way of building highways. Oh, nobody is allowed on that road by the way. Ah, and the result, as expected, "not cost effective" however, the public funds still maintain the road.

 

[dcasto]

I know of a guy that had a whole house built by a contractor, that then hid it in invoices he approved. He was eventually caught. Total amount wa $100K in the early 80's.
The wosrt was a huge project that went bad. It went from $15MM to $45MM. In the end the FBI came in and two people are serving time for interstate transportation of stolen goods. Fake invoices, overall very bad management.

The kicker is that when the business group presented the project, engineering said it won't work and the estimate was way short. They went to the President of the company and he said go. The business group hired their own engineers and started the project. When it was at $30MKM, they called for help. when engineering went in it was too late.

The company was bought out as is was going under (it was more than this one project, but several with the same thread, the business groups thought they knew more than the engineers).

 

[MadMango]

Old job, owner's home damaged by flooding. Solution? Send the Facilities group (about 6 people) to fix his home. All associated costs went on company POs and were paid.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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[MiketheEngineer]

Large construction material supplier - early 1980's.

Had all kinds of people using the company's gas tank - plumbers, electricians, etc. Gas was expensive back then - relatively!!

Built himnself a complete house!!

Got caught - went to jail!!

 

[JStephen]

"owner's home damaged by flooding...All associated costs went on company POs and were paid."

Question: Is that actually unethical, if it's THE owner (not AN owner, not an employee)?

Seems like the biggest question would be tax liability for the benefit received.

 

[oldfieldguy]

A former upper management type tried to get one of my people to cut out a PE stamp and paste it on a drawing to make "PE-checked" drawings. This would have given him "plausible deniability" if the fake had been caught.

And that's just ONE of many cover-ups and misrepresentations. I don't work for him any more, and he doesn't work for the company he was with at the time of this incident. He now owns yet another company.

Ethics wasn't in his vocabulary.

old field guy

 

[MadMango]

JStephen, I think it is unethical because he was pulling resources from The Company to repair and pay for fixing his personal home. I should have said he was the founder and president of The Company, meaning there were others that he was responsible to, like his board of directors. Him being a sole proprietor would have been a better situation.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[greenone]

"In facility management there is a tendency to direct plant resources and contractor connections towards personal gain."

I think that's a bit broad-fraud can be found in any function that has access to resources.

My favorite: NYC in the 70s. Contractor hired to install new sewer main. City inspector on job site. All seems well. Until people start having trouble with sewer lines backing up. Investigation reveals brand new sewer manholes. No sewer.

 

[EddyC]

oldfieldguy,

The behavior you described is why I use embossing seals or rubber stamps with red ink.

 

[jmw]

EddyC,
Of course, with modern scanners and copiers, the ink colour and embossing are only of value to you in denial of having stamped something.
Without prior experience the recipient of any such drawing is quite likely not able to detect a fraud even if it is in black and white and not embossed.
The question is, if that is why you did it, have you had some experience of this before? Some of us wait till the horse has bolted before taking unusual steps.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[mechengdude]

For as blatant as it gets and recent check out this story of the engineer getting kickbacks for specifiying a particular type of chassis. What are these people thinking?

http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/jan/26/ex_force_protection_worker_admits_kickba28740/

 

[ajack1]

Are any of the above actually more unethical than a worker helping themselves for personal use only from the stationary cupboard or taken a few nuts and bolts from the stores for a personal project?

Is anything more unethical than theft, or does theft only become unethical if large sums of money are involved?

Now who on here has never done that?

 

[HgTX]

Do you honestly believe that every crime ever committed on the planet has exactly equal ethical value? You must hate a legal system that distinguishes petty larceny from grand theft.

Hg

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[controlnovice]

Contract inspector working on a capital project didn't approve a single concrete dike wall.

He recommended bringing in a 'different firm' to complete the work, at extra cost, instead of having the existing company fix it. Come to find out the 'different firm' was flying him to Mexico for hunting trips.

He was caught, fired, and ended up working for this very same 'different firm'.

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