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

Piping and equipment
In a turn-key contract the engineering company is also responsible for the
construction. So it is in its own interest to make a design that is easy to construct
economically, efficiently and within the codes. Under a reimbursable contract the
engineering company is only responsible for the design, not for construction;
therefore problems are more likely to occur with a reimbursable contract.
Although there are opportunities to include sustainability concerns in the design
of (petro) chemical installations sustainability is assigned little attention and
importance in piping and equipment design. An installation is designed to have a
certain lifespan and what is done after that has expired is not the concern of the
engineers. The engineers do not know if some of the materials of an installation
will be recycled or whether the installation will be demolished and no material
recycled. In the interviews engineers indicated that they considered recycling
unimportant. According to the engineers, Notified Bodies and customers also
regarded sustainability to be of no interest.
Some systems for predicting the costs of installations have a built in bias for
cheap, not very durable and sustainable, materials. A former engineering
specialist told me that in a company she had worked for, the costs for
maintenance were taken to be a percentage of the cost for building. Stainless steel
is more expensive but needs less maintenance than other steels. However,
making the choice to use stainless steel cannot be economically justified if the
maintenance costs are taken to be a percentage of the building costs. Only very
small diameter pipelines that are very costly to paint are made of stainless steel.
In this company specific guideline, an inherent bias towards short life-time and
maintenance intensive materials can be distinguished. If such types of guidelines
exist it is very difficult to introduce new, more expensive, materials even if these
would be more durable and/or sustainable.
Another ethical issue that was brought up by some of the interviewees is that
companies have less knowledge nowadays. Large chemical producing companies
no longer have engineering departments such departments have been outsourced
and/or closed. Engineering consultancy companies hire young engineers without
experience, experienced engineers are too expensive and they (have to) leave the
consultancy companies. Some organisations, to save money, for example the
Stoomwezen, have had a vacancy stop, no new people had been hired during six
years. The older engineers are retiring while the young engineers have not gained
a lot of experience. Moreover, internal education has been neglected. An
experienced engineer makes more money for a company when he or she is
working for a customer then when he or she is educating his or her younger
colleagues. This means that the knowledge and experience required to design
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