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ENGINEERING &
ORGANISATION
CHAPTER TWO
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ENGINEERING FIRMS
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERING FIRMS
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ENGINEERING FIRMS
• Such firms typically engage in mechanical design work and act as an extension of a
company’s in-house engineering department.
• Companies often bring in an outside firm when they are short on staff, or when they
get a new project but do not want to hire staff and then lay them off when the
project ends.
• Consulting firms get hired to perform engineering work for many entities and types
of clients, both in the private and public sectors. These include:
• Land and property developers • Construction firms
• Government agencies and municipalities • Large engineering firms
• Industrial and commercial companies • Architects
• Hospitals • Private individuals
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERING FIRMS
• Government agencies often hire engineering firms for major projects such as a new
facility or structure being built.
• Many municipalities such as city and town governments hire a firm on a permanent,
on-going basis to serve as a municipal engineer and handle engineering-related
projects and services as they come up in the jurisdiction.
• Large engineering firms often serve as the prime firm to handle the overall
engineering effort on a major project and then hire smaller specialty firms as
subcontractors to carry out individual parts of the design work. These often include
mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP), geotechnical, structural, and
environmental engineering firms.
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ENGINEERING FIRMS
• Architects operate in similar fashion and hire structural and MEP engineering firms
to work as subs on a building project they designed.
• However, engineering firms also often work side by side with each other and
architects on a building project, all reporting to the building owner.
• When a private individual hires an engineer, it usually involves a house or building
inspection or investigating a structural problem.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
CLASS ACTIVITY 2
Truth or misconception?
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• There are many reasons why an engineer might want to work in the public sector.
For starters, the government is responsible for running a number of engineering
projects.
• Due to the array of projects tied to government work, there are lots of
opportunities for engineers of all disciplines to work within the public sector.
• Reported benefits of working in the public sector include:
• Security and stability – Although the private sector is prone to market shifts and
periods of instability, the public sector enjoys much more stability due to
government-backing. As a result, engineers who work for the public sector have
a much higher degree of security and can enjoy a certain level of protection
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
• Employment in the private sector consists of any work outside of local, state, and
federal agencies.
• The private sector is more focused on revenue than the public sector.
• An engineer may want to work in the private sector because it has more flexibility in
just about every aspect of employment. Hiring of employees is less stringent without
some of the strict guidelines of the public sector, and salaries tend to be more higher
and negotiable than the public sector.
• One of the major benefits of working in the private sector is that it allows you more
room to move around from one position to another. Though every organisation has
its own set of rules, they tend to be a little more flexible in this sector than in public
service.
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• Pay raises are also easier to obtain, as the decisions can be made from within the
company, instead of being based on central rules and regulations followed
throughout the entire state or government.
• Another benefit for working in the private sector is the ability to move up quickly in
an organisation.While this is not impossible to do in the public sector, it can often
prove more difficult, as there are tight restrictions placed on the entire process.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
The pros are excellent benefits. I'll be honest, the benefits are too generous in my opinion. Other pros
are, while you still need to be budget conscious, there isn't that stress of being billable and ensuring
company profit. I do still have some late nights, taking work home, and even the occasional all-nighter
for certain deadlines but it seems to be far less than when I was in private.
The cons are it could be hard to get into a public sector job. Also, I think the pay is typically a little
less than private sector. What I miss is the hardcore designing. You may get to do design in the public
sector, depending on how much design your agency does in-house but in my situation, we outsource
anything medium and above and keep only the smaller in-house. It becomes a lot more managing than
design.
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ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
Organisational Culture
• Organisational culture is a vital component within the organisation. An
organisation’s culture is defined as the norms, expectations, patterns and unwritten
rules inside a company, which shape our experience and determine if we are inside
or outside the company.
• The value of an organisation’s culture is not the identity of those inside the
organisation looking out, but how that identity captures the mind and heart of the
customers we serve.
• We need to recognise and deliver value to the customers and investors who give us
the right to exist as a company and we make sure our personal values ensure a
legacy of goodness.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
• Engineers must have some understanding of the organisation in which they are
employed. This knowledge helps engineers to understand:
• How they and their managers handle issues under the influence of the
organisation.
• How one can act in the organisation effectively, safely and in a morally
responsible way.
• In order to understand the organisational cultures in which engineers work, we first
must understand the types of companies:
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ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
Engineer-Oriented Companies
• In these firms, there is general agreement that quality takes priority over others,
except safety.
• Engineers often described their relationship to managers in these firms as one in
which negotiation or arriving at consensus was prominent.
• Managers would rarely overrule engineers when there was a significant engineering
issue, although they might make the final decision when issues as cost or marketing
are involved.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
Customer-Oriented Companies
• Decision making is similar to that of engineer-oriented firms, but with four significant
differences:
• Managers think of engineers as advocates of a point of view different from their
own. Managers focus on business factors such as timing and cost, while
engineers focus on quality and safety.
• More emphasis is placed on business considerations.
• While safety is the main priority, quality can be sacrificed to get the product
sold.
• Communication between engineers and managers may be somewhat more
difficult.
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ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
Finance-Oriented Companies
• These firms are more centralised. As such, engineers may receive less information for
making decisions.
• Consequently, engineers’ decisions are given less weight by managers.
• Managers are less inclined to try to reach consensus and engineers are seen as
having a staff and advisory function.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
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ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
• Thus, engineers have a dual loyalty – to their organisation and to their profession.
• These obligations included meeting the standards associated with good design and
accepted engineering practice.
• Engineers also attribute key importance to safety and therefore are more inclined to
be cautious.
• The function of managers is different, in the sense that they direct the activities of
the organisations, including the activities of engineers.
• Rather than being oriented towards technical standards, they are more likely to be
governed by organisational standards, and in some cases by their own personal
moral beliefs.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
ENGINEERS IN ORGANISATIONS
• Engineers are expected to give advice, even in decisions properly made by managers.
Management decisions can often benefit from the advice of engineers, such as
advising on improvements in design, alternative designs and ways to make a product
more attractive.
• Furthermore, engineers may be in the best position to anticipate the sorts of
problems products could have down the road. Engineers forewarn managers of
future problems and advise them of available alternatives.
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CLASS ACTIVITY 3
How can organisations ensure their project is safe for public use?
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
• Moral values are embedded in the engineering process itself, rather than merely
imposed on it by external rules and laws.
• Ethical issues arise as a product develops from a mental concept to physical
completion (refer to next slide).
• Engineers encounter both moral and technical problems concerning:
• Variability in the materials available to them
• The quality of work by co-workers at all levels
• Pressures imposed by time and the impulse of the marketplace
• Relationships of authority within corporations
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• Idea, specific request, • Concept, goals, • Scheduling of tasks • Advertising, sales and • Geriatric service:
or market demand preliminary design • Purchasing financing Rebuilding, recycling
• Performance components and • Operating and parts • Disposal of materials
specifications materials manuals and wastes
• Preliminary analysis • Fabrication of parts • Shipping and
• Detailed analysis: • Assembly / installation, operator
Simulation / construction training.
prototyping • Quality control / • Provisions for safety
• Specifications for testing measures and devices
materials and • Use of the product
components • Field service:
• Detailed shop drawings Maintenance, repairs,
spare parts
• Monitoring social and
environmental effects
• Reporting findings to
parties at possible risk
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
• Dealing with the complexity requires close cooperation among the engineers of
many different departments and disciplines.
• It is not uncommon for engineering organisations to suffer from “silo mentality”
which makes engineers disregard or hold in low esteem the work carried out by
other groups other than their own.
• It will be difficult to improve a design or even to rectify mistakes under such
circumstances.
• Engineers do well to establish contact with colleagues so that information can be
exchanged freely. Such contacts become important when there is a need to tackle
morally complex problems.
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• Problems that arise in the stages of the engineering process may be caused by:
• Lack of vision as a result of overlooking suitable alternatives, or accepting alternatives
without critical thinking.
• Incompetence among engineers carrying out technical tasks.
• Lack of time or proper materials, which are attributed to poor management.
• Silo mentality, which keeps information compartmentalised rather than shared across
different departments.
• The notion that there are safety engineers somewhere down the line to catch potential
problems.
• Improper use or disposal of the product by an unwary owner or user.
• Dishonesty in any activity in the engineering process.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
• Engineers need foresight, caution and the ability to construct scenarios to help them
imagine who may be affected indirectly by their products and decisions, in good or
harmful ways.
• There are many elements that link to engineers either personally or through their
work to clients, the community, organisations representing their industry, their
profession, the government, and even the natural environment (refer to next slide).
• The problem of conflicting priorities and loyalties is one engineers will come across
again and again. This will require engineers to make the right decisions because some
decisions could threaten the engineer’s job security.
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Manager Colleagues
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What is Ethics?
• Ethics is a system of moral principles. They affect how
people make decisions and lead their lives.
• Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals
and society, and is also described as moral philosophy.
• Ethics covers the following:
• how to live a good life
• our rights and responsibilities
• the language of right and wrong
• moral decisions - what is good and bad?
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
• Example:
If I want to get to an important meeting on
time, it might be prudent to exceed the
speed limits as I drive to the meeting. In this
case, I must speed.
But we know that morally, it is wrong to
speed.Therefore, from a moral perspective, I
must not speed.
• This is often the case, where there is a
difference between what one must do
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morally and what one must do to achieve a non-moral goal, such as an economic
goal.
• The kinds of situations that are particularly challenging in ethics are those that
involve an ethical dilemma.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
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CLASS ACTIVITY 4
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Engineering Ethics
Microethics Macroethics
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Microethics
• Personal ethics – include personal qualities like decency, honesty and truthfulness.
Technical ethics and ethical responsibility also define the engineer.
• Technical Ethics
• the technical decisions and judgements made by engineers.
• microlevel analysis of individual technologies or practitioners.
• respecting intellectual property rights.
• Ethical responsibility
• making wise choices when such choices unexpectedly present themselves.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
Macroethics
• Macroethics is generally not captured by professional codes of conduct. Macroethics
covers certain professional and social ethics as follows:
• Professional ethics – is concerned with
• the collective social responsibility of the engineering profession.
• the collective action that can transcend international boundaries.
• issues that affect all members of the profession.
• ethical implications such as risk and product liability.
• Social ethics – is concerned with
• technology policy decisions at the societal level.
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• The ASCE Code of Ethics outlines 8 canons (rules) for civil engineers to follow:
• Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the
public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable
development in the performance of their professional duties.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
5. Reputation By Merit
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• Engineers shall, in all matters related to their profession, treat all persons
fairly and encourage equitable participation without regard to gender or
gender identity, race, national origin, ethnicity, religion, age, sexual
orientation, disability, political affiliation, or family, marital, or economic
status.
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
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BFC 32202 – ENGINEERS & SOCIETY
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• Watch the given videos on “Self-Driving Cars” or “Autonomous Cars”, the latest
engineering product that is taking the world by storm.
• Ponder on the following questions and share your thoughts:
Would you trust your vehicle to make decisions for you on the road?
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