Engineering Ethics

Instructor
Eng. Mohammed Alsaeed Othman

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 Lecture 05
Commitment on Safety:
Risk and Accident
References:
1. Charles B. Fleddermann (2012), Engineering Ethics, 4th Edition, Prentice Hall
• Chapter 5
2. Mike W. Martin and Roland Schinzinger (2010), Introduction to Engineering
Ethics, 2nd Edition, MacGraw-Hill Higher Education
• Chapter 5

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 Lecture Content
1. Safety and Risk
1.1. Definitions
1.2. Engineers and Safety
1.3. Designing for Safety
1.4. Risk–Benefit Analysis
2. Accidents

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 Introduction
• No duty of the engineer is more important than her
duty to protect the safety and well-being of the
public.

• The codes of ethics of the professional engineering

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 1. Safety and Risk
The engineering codes of ethics show that engineers have a responsibility to
society to produce products, structures, and processes that are safe.
There is an implied warranty with regard to all products that they will perform as
advertised.
There is an implied warranty that products are safe to use.

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 1.1. Definitions
• Safety is at the same time a very precise and a very vague term.
• Risk is a key element in any engineering design; it is impossible
to design anything to be completely risk free.
• The American Heritage Dictionary defines:
• Risk as the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
• Safety as freedom from damage, injury, or risk.
• We engage in risky behavior when we do something that is
unsafe, and something is unsafe if it involves substantial risk.

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 Safety and risk are
essentially subjective
and depend on many
factors:
• Voluntary vs. involuntary risk.
• Short-term vs. long-term consequences.
• Expected probability.
• Reversible effects.
• Threshold levels for risk.
• Delayed vs. immediate risk.
• Thus, whether something is unsafe or risky often depends
on who is asked.
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 1.2. Engineers and Safety
• How can we be sure that our designs are safe?
• First, the minimum requirement is that a design must comply
with the applicable laws.
• Second, a design must meet the standard of “accepted
engineering practice.”
• Third, alternative designs that are potentially safer must be
explored.
• Fourth, the engineer must attempt to foresee potential
misuses of the product by the consumer and must design to
avoid these problems.
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 Note
• Once the product is designed, both prototypes and
finished devices must be rigorously tested.
• This testing is not just to determine whether the product
meets the specifications.
• It should also involve testing to see if the product is safe.
• It is essential that in any engineering design, all safety
systems be tested to ensure that they work as intended.

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 1.3. Designing for Safety
• How should safety be incorporated into the engineering design
process?
1. Define the problem. This step includes determining the needs and
requirements and often involves determining the constraints.
2. Generate several solutions. Multiple alternative designs are created.
3. Analyze each solution to determine the pros and cons of each. This
step involves determining the consequences of each design solution
and determining whether it solves the problem.
4. Test the solutions.
5. Select the best solution.
6. Implement the chosen solution.
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 There are many things that make
this a difficult task for the engineer
• The design engineer often must deal in uncertainties.
• Many of the risks can only be expressed as probabilities and often are no
more than educated guesses.
• There are synergistic effects between probabilities, especially in a new
and innovative design for which the interaction of risks will be unknown.
• Risk is also increased by the rapid pace at which engineering designs
must be carried out.
• The prudent approach to minimizing risk in a design is a “go slow”
approach, in which care is taken to ensure that all possibilities have been
adequately explored and that testing has been sufficiently thorough.

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 Discuss Question

• Are minimizing risks and designing for safety always

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 1.4. Risk–Benefit Analysis
• In risk–benefit analysis, the risks and benefits of a
project are assigned dollar amounts, and the most
favorable ratio between risks and benefits is sought.
• This task is especially difficult in risk–benefit analysis
because risks are much harder to quantify and more
difficult to put a realistic price tag on.

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 Discuss Question
• How we can assess and reducing risk?

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 Accidents

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 Types of Accidents
• Procedural
• the result of someone making a bad choice or not following
established procedures.
• Engineered
• are caused by flaws in the design
• Systemic
• They are characteristic of very complex technologies and the
complex organizations that are required to operate them.

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 Discussion Question?
• What are the implications of this systemic type of
accident for the design engineer?

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