In engineering ethical principals describe the standards to which we must hold ourselves and peers. Firstly the work we produce as engineers produce will play safety critical roles in everyday life for millions of people for example aircraft and other vehicles which carry human. For this reason the engineering council statement of ethics states that we must work with accuracy and rigor in order to ensure that our work is to the highest standards and no unnecessary risks to lives are being taken. Under the umbrella of rigor and standards the engineering council states that we should only perform services in areas in which we are competent imploring us to respect our own ability and to know when to rely on the expertise of our peers. In my future as an engineer I hope to work on hydroelectric power systems which will require me to specialise primarily in electrical machines. For this reason I plan to dedicate additional time outside of my primary education to this field in order to assure I am capable of carrying out this work. Additionally I will require expertise from engineers of other fields mainly engineers specialising in turbine technology and civil engineering. This attitude is also echoed by the engineering council as one of its main points is leadership and communication which are both skills I will need to employ.
In addition to ethics and professionalism relating to an engineer’s competence and standards the engineering council describes our duty to respect life, law, the environment and public good. Respect for the environment is a particularly important point for me as career aspirations of working on hydro electric power are primarily motivated by my goal to advance the worlds shift to clean energy however the manner in which hydro electric dams are constructed can have severe negative implications for the local environment. Because of this I will have to make ethically challenging decisions weighing up local environmental damage and and the end goal of producing renewable energy.
After reading around external literature on engineering ethics I have found a study very relevant to ambitions which can be found here. https://www.bard.edu/cep/blog/?p=12930
I have chosen this article because it highlights the negative impact hydro electric dams can have on local environments particularly how they disrupt free flowing water ways and impact local communities.
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