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

Ethical issues in engineering design
5.5.2 Decision making on ethical issues
In this case, decision making on ethical issues can be described as individual,
hierarchical and based on a regulative framework.
Compared with the foregoing DutchEVO case, decisions regarding ethical
issues were made more by individuals than by a complete design team. Ethical
issues were dealt with by the engineer that encountered the ethical issues for the
part he or she designed. Different engineers have different tasks and have to deal
with different ethical issues. The job engineer will be confronted with ethically
relevant questions concerning safety distances. Minimum safety distances are
defined in the framework but in some cases these safety distances cannot be
met, for example, if an older installation is changed. In other instances the job
engineer might want to keep greater than required safety distances. The stress
engineer has to make the decisions regarding load and accident scenarios. The
materials engineer has to choose between different materials. Not all engineers
will be confronted with all ethical issues. Some ethical issues will come up in the
work of the stress engineer others in the work of the job engineer.
If engineers encounter large problems in their design tasks, they are required
to discuss these problems with their superiors and the project manager. The
project manager will decide together with the engineer whether the problem can
be solved by the design team or not. In important decisions the customer is
involved in the decision making. Sometimes the Notified Body is informed of
the problem and asked for advice.
Legislation and codes give rules and guidelines for a lot of decisions
concerning ethical issues. In addition to the rules and guidelines, there are
Notified Bodies that should check the design before it is certified. The Notified
Bodies can provide engineers with advice.
5.5.2 Regulative framework
There was a regulative framework available for this case. The most important
part of the regulative framework was the PED (European Pressure Equipment
Directive). This PED is implemented in Dutch law. The legislation specifies a
minimum required level of safety. The PED is on most points very general and
goal oriented. If a harmonised European code is used in the design, an
assumption is made that the design complies with the legislation. At this
moment some national codes are still being used. The regulative framework
mandates that all new designs are checked by organisations licensed to check
whether a design complies with current legislation, i.e. Lloyd’s Register
Stoomwezen. Can this regulative framework be considered to be a normative
framework as defined by Grunwald? To answer this question, I will follow
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