Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

Ethical issues in engineering design
yachting case they could not research the problem or solve it within the budget
of the project. They did, however, inform the customer about this possible
problem. In the trailer case, the customer only wanted a lightweight trailer that
would not be too expensive. Since, the customer was focused on the structure,
this is what the engineers focused on. If the customer wanted a trailer that was
safe in traffic then he should have indicated this in his requirements. In this
case, traffic safety was not included in the requirements except for a short
statement that the trailer should meet legal requirements.
When asked in the interviews, the engineers told me that they would design a
trailer that was too high according to the regulations if that is what the customer
wanted. They said that as long as they thought that a design would be safe, safe
here most of the time interpreted as structurally reliable, they would do what a
customer asked them. Liz told me that she had had some doubts in another
project where they had to design a trailer that was too high according to
regulation. She was not the project manager for that project. She asked a
representative from an organisation of transport businesses in the Netherlands
whether it was common practice to design trailers higher than permitted by the
regulations. The representative told her that that was indeed done regularly.
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Liz: ‘When you hear that they do that [produce trailers too high] all the
time and that it is in one way or another possible to drive with these
trailers,… well yes we designed a trailer that was 4,15 m high. But I did
not completely agree with this.’
Hans said that they usually design according to regulations. If the customer
wants a trailer that is too high, the customer has to specify this. Hans indicated
that he would go against the regulations if asked to do so by a customer as long as
he had the idea that the design was safe or structurally reliable. He also said that
whether or not to go against the regulations depended on the product being
designed. According to Hans this would not happen in airplane design because
there the plane has to fulfil FAA criteria, otherwise it cannot be flown.
A reason given by the engineers as to why the engineering company should
not be responsible for including certain issues in the requirements in addition to
what the customer wants is that they do not know what kind of problems there
are with a product. An engineering company does projects for very different
industries and products. They do not, and cannot, have in-depth knowledge of
the problems encountered with such a variety of products during, production or
in use. The customer has the experience and should know what can go wrong.
Transportation companies come to the customer when something has gone
wrong with a trailer. The customer knows how his customers (transportation
companies and drivers) used or misused his products. According to the