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Ethics

ES 225 - Engineering Professionalism and Ethics - an introduction to engineering decisions using moral theories, engineering codes of ethics, and engineering economics. A case-study approach is used to demonstrate the relationship between engineering decisions and a range of considerations: economic, professional, environmental, sustainability, ethical, health and safety, social, and political. The course also develops student technical writing skills as a tool for engineering communication.

For this class I wrote two papers, a PowerPoint presentation, and several memos dealing with ethical issues. For the first paper we did not learn many moral theories, so we used common sense to see whether the ethical issue was right or wrong. For the second paper, a large part of the paper dealt with applying the moral theories we learned in class. My paper was titled "The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse." This failure was the largest civil engineering failure in America. There was an oversight in the design of the suspended walkways which caused this failure.
Click here to view my paper. (Word format)

For my presentation I worked with one other person. We presented about the Three Gorges Dam that is currently being built as of 2002 on the Yangtze River in China. This dam will cause 1.2 million people to move out of their homes, but will give power to 40 million people currently without power. Much of the historic land around the dam will be flooded, but more floods will be prevented downstream.
Click here to view our presentation. (PowerPoint format - 1.81 mb)

In one memo we evaluated three different improvements to a dangerous highway. We had to find the best improvement taking into account many different costs and benefits, including a variable cost of human life.
Click here to view my memo.
Click here to view my Excel spreadsheet analyzing the costs/benefits.