Electrical Issues in Engineering Ethics and Solutions : A Compilation of Cases

Abstract

Engineering Ethics is a growing concern, especially as interest in public and industrial safety increases. The knowledge of Engineering Ethics acquired by Engineering students in the Colleges and Universities is not sufficiently enough to prepare them to handle safety challenges in the industry as pupil Engineers. Knowledge of Engineering Ethical issues, and how there were solved is very crucial on perspective of industrial and public safety. The purpose of this project is to identify issues in Engineering Ethics, what caused the problem (s), and the solution strategy employed in solving the problems. A collection of different failed Engineering projects in the field of Electrical Engineering are compiled. It is observed that majority of the catastrophic failures, most of which could have been avoided, were directly attributed to poor ethical decisions or practices. Most of the failure cases found in the study were at the consumer level- the demographics affected by these failures is more diverse and potentially more vulnerable than that of a large scale disaster. The majority of the consumer goods related to these cases were attributed to poor materials used to manufacture them, as well as lack of proper quality tests and validation through field experimentation. Some of the failures were catastrophic, and resulted in large scale damages. This paper, therefore, highlights the dangers of lack of proper ethical practices in Electrical Engineering, and further reveals the need for proper ethical practices and decisions.