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

6 Designing a Bridge
Ethical issues with regard to the design of a bridge might not be that obvious. Yet,
safety plays an important part in the design process of a large bridge. Not just
safety for the people and drivers of the vehicles using the bridge but also for
workers working on the bridge during its construction and for ships passing
underneath a bridge. Accidents that happen on a bridge might lead to cars or
trucks hitting some structural part of the bridge. People might want to dive from
the bridge into the water, etc. A case-study about the design of a bridge is
presented in this chapter. The design problem is introduced in the first section.
The stakeholders and their wishes and requirements are introduced in the second
section. The main difficulty in this design process was trying to reconcile all the
requirements and wishes of all the stakeholders. The legislation and codes
pertaining to safety and sustainability for bridges form the focus of the third
section. These codes and legislation constitute the regulative framework for
bridge design. This section is followed by a section on the division of
responsibilities and the organisation of the design process for bridges. The
results are summarised and the regulative frameworks evaluated in section 6.5.
How far the regulative framework complies with Grunwald’s requirements and
can therefore be considered a normative framework is established.
6.1 The design problem
Ingenieursbureau Amsterdam (IBA) is the municipal engineering company of
the city of Amsterdam which designed the bridge in this case-study. The IBA is
responsible for the engineering design of bridges, tunnels and other
infrastructure projects in Amsterdam. The IBA is a part of the municipality of
Amsterdam and has a lot of experience with designing and building of bridges in
Amsterdam. Under European law Amsterdam has to tender their assignments.
Hence the IBA does not get an assignment automatically, it has to compete with
other engineering companies. This case deals with a phase of a design process for
a bridge over a large canal. The bridge will provide the eastern access for a new
estate called IJburg in Amsterdam. IJburg is located in a region with a lot of
waterways. The different parts of IJburg will be connected by bridges. The bridge
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