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

Engineers have to make decisions concerning ethical issues during technological
design processes. In this thesis the kinds of ethical issues that engineers encounter
are described, together with the way engineers deal with them, with a focus on ethical
issues related to safety and sustainability. Four design processes were studied,
the design process for an ultra light car, for piping and equipment for chemical
installations, for a bridge and for a lightweight open truck trailer. A difference can be
seen between normal and radical design. During the normal design processes for the
bridge and piping and equipment for chemical installations engineers referred to
regulative frameworks to account for decisions about safety and sustainability. These
regulative frameworks give minimal requirements, (parts of) operationalisations,
rules and guidelines for use in normal design. Engineers do not, or only partly
use, the regulative frameworks in the radical design processes of an ultra light car
and a lightweight open truck trailer instead they relied on internal design team
norms for making decisions about ethical issues. Following the descriptive casestudy
research, the author discusses some preliminary notions for conditions
for warranted trust in engineers making normal and making radical designs.
‘Wonder en is
gheen wonder’