Socially Responsible Engineering??? 7

[garpe]

How many have encountered this foolishness? A university near my office is offering a CEU class in "Socially Responsible Engineering." Topics include environmental risk and justice, engineering response to terrorism, green engineering, life cycle assessment. One at a time:
1. environmental risk and justice: as registered professionals the act of doing our job will deal with the risk assessment. The big decisions are made by the people that hire us, typically MBA's who could care less about risk of any kind except the next quarter's profits.
2. response to terrorism: addressed by codes, now limited to federal projects, specifically UFC 4-010-01. By the way, in my opinion, this document was written by someone not very well versed in ultimate strength vs allowable stress design. Again, unless there is a code requirement, this decision is in the hands of the owner. Most designers I deal with have no idea how to apply this document.
3. green engineering: when was the last time anyone was asked to design something using more material than necessary or in an inefficient manner? Engineering, by its nature, is the efficient use of materials and systems. I wary of this whole green movement because I've seen materials, such as wood, take a hit. There is too much room for politics. Engineers have always been "green" if that means using our resources efficiently.
4. life cycle assessment: Engineering econ people, take the class. Again, most commercial projects are built by owners whose "long term" view of the world extends out to when the building is fully depreciated and they can sell it. Life cycle assessment has part of some project for decades.
A lot of these types of decisions are out of our hands. Take the first space shuttle disaster. The engineers were warning management types that there were problems with the solid rocket O rings in cold temperatures before the launch. The MBA's were pushing the launch for business purposes. People died.
I really hope liberalism is not making inroads into the engineering profession as it did the banking industry. All manner of "good intentions" cannot over rule the laws of physics and common sense. Maybe this class will go away due to its total lack of relevance.

 

[PEDARRIN2]

I would tend to agree with every point, except for the green portion. Engineers tend to design things that perform efficiently, and perform per code requirements but not necessarily are the most efficient use of materials, especially water.

While I don't always agree with the green movement, in the realm of energy use, water use, they have forced engineers to design their systems to be more efficient users of resources.

I know HVAC and Electrical designers are designing systems that are more efficient energy users than required by ASHRAE 90.1 - although the bar keeps getting lowered each time the code is updated.

Case in point with water use; In the US, showers used to flow ~5 gpm, toilets used to flow ~4 gpm, and lavatories used to flow 2 gpm. Now they flow as low as 1.5 gpm, 1 gpm, and 0.5 gpm respectively. And for the most part, they work acceptably, when used in a system that takes the lower flow in to account.

 

[zdas04]

You both make good points. When I was reading garp's assertion that we are conservative by nature, I felt a twinge too. I've often modified a design repeatedly to optimize my materials usage (which seems kind of "green"), but rarely have I gone back and compared the constructability of the final project to the initial design--when I have done that I've usually found that my incremental efforts to save material costs have resulted in increases in construction costs (especially fuel) that are more non-green than the materials savings were green.

Engineering is about optimizing a long list of competing resources (one of which is the budget) in a way that makes a safe, non-polluting system that does what it is expected to do for the money available.

David

 

[dvd]

Substitute another choice of minority, or majority, into your statement about liberals and see if it makes any better sense. I don't think it is liberals as much as continuing education hucksters for the CEU issue (banking problem is cheating and greed not liberalism). We have hustlers influencing the PE boards into requiring CEU or PDH and then cashing in on selling classes. If a PE can't learn on their own in order to stay current, then there is a bigger problem.

... MBA's pushing a shuttle launch for business purposes??? in 1986?

 

[IRstuff]

??? wrong thread?

TTFN

FAQ731-376
Chinese prisoner wins Nobel Peace Prize

 

[rowingengineer]

I disagree, I can spend more time writing about risk, green, life cycle than I spend doing calcs some days. It all depends on your position, if you are in government I would expect that the majority of your work consider these items, from overall town planning to requirement for planning. As long as these subjects are full of appropriate content I would have not problems hiring someone that had completed the degree.

http://www.nceng.com.au/

"A safe structure will be the one whose weakest link is never overloaded by the greatest force to which the structure is subjected” Petroski 1992

 

[stevenal]

GARPE,
I don't understand. You call the class foolish and then go on to say you are already doing most of the things the class suggests. You will find most of these classes are not teaching anything new to the students, they are reinforcing what was already known. And just because owners don't always follow this tract does mean the class is foolish. Maybe they should open up the class to MBAs too.

 

[TheTick]

Ultimately, what will make these things important is when customers and employers start saying they are important.

 

[moltenmetal]

I'm a little concerned with this "movement", which is a form of social engineering.

The idea in some people's heads is that the reason that we as a society don't give proper consideration to risk or the environment or other issues of a societal/values nature, is that engineers are ignorant in respect to those issues and view their jobs too narrowly. Hence, the way to fix it is to better educate engineers about their responsibilties to society in these matters. And these folks do have a point: many schools don't teach anything of the sort, sticking to a purely technical education without societal/values context except perhaps in one "ethics of engineering" preparatory course which is optional.

What concerns me is that this sort of an education puts young engineers in a situation of responsibility without authority: it presumes that engineers have control over these issues, rather than the people who control the purse strings and the schedule and hence are in real control over the constraints within which any particular work is done. Responsibility without authority is my own personal definition of destructive workplace stress.

Of course, a practicing engineer has to make their peace with this reality: engineering is the art of the possible. Your job as an engineer is to do the best you can within the constraints, once you've determined which constraints are real and which are just preferences. As a professional engineer you also have the responsibility to refuse to do that job if the constraints make the result inevitably unsafe for the public, require the breaking of laws etc.

While no education is a waste, this particular type of education should be a mandatory part of an MBA's education FIRST, since these are usually the folks who end up in control of the financial constraints. Put that in place first, and then we can criticize engineers for their ignorance in such matters.

 

[TheTick]

What concerns me is that this sort of an education puts young engineers in a situation of responsibility without authority

Interesting point. There always needs to be balance in the "power triangle": responsibility x authority x accoountability. Otherwise, "empowerment" is useless blather.

 

[moon161]

OK, I'll bite. FWIW I advocate green positions, not ashamed of it. I think 'green' and social responsibility are points of view that recognize not only your bosse's/clients resources as design inputs, but the commons as well, i.e. Clean air, water, safe & healthy people.

It's an easy point of view to argue against until you realize that you and your children live downstream of somebody else.

 

[moltenmetal]

moon161: considering "the commons" in the way you're describing is just part of professional engineering, which requires us to hold the public safety as paramount. How broadly you define the public safety is a value judgment and will determine what clients (and employers) you can feel comfortable working for.

As long as the position taken when raising these issues with a client is an ethical rather than an ideological one, it's totally reasonable.

 

[moon161]

Garpe:

//The MBA's were pushing the launch for business purposes. People died.
I really hope liberalism is not making inroads into the engineering profession as it did the banking industry. All manner of "good intentions" cannot over rule the laws of physics and common sense. Maybe this class will go away due to its total lack of relevance. //

Liberalism, like whistleblower protection and journalist shield laws maybe.

DVD:
//... MBA's pushing a shuttle launch for business purposes??? in 1986?//

Yes, I've seen Roger Boisjoly, one of Morton-Thiokol's engineers speak at some length on the issue.

http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/7123.aspx

http://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/ProfPractice/Exemplars/BehavingWell/RB-intro/Override.aspx

 

[beej67]

I don't see why you guys are getting your nickers in a twist.

Some clients want to pay more to be 'green.' Some of those 'green' elements of their design will actually pay dividends over the long term, that will more than pay for the 'green' efforts during construction. And yet, most clients would never have even thought about some of those 'green initiatives' in their design if they hadn't been to some class talking about 'green initiatives' or 'socially responsible engineering.'

I'm a LEED AP, and I've done about a dozen LEED projects. Some of the LEED points are silly, some are valuable, some will make the client back tons of money on the back end. Almost all of them are a valuable way to bring about changes in the business model of development that will help everyone in the long term.




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