Social sustainability and engineering Assignment

Running head: Social Sustainability and Engineering
Social Sustainability and Engineering
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1Social sustainability and engineering
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2Social sustainability and engineering

3Social sustainability and engineering
Introduction:
Engineering is the science and technology that is used to meet the demands and
needs of the society, which includes construction of buildings, bridges, tunnels, vessels
or aircrafts, and developing newer technologies and infrastructure. To meet such needs,
the engineers and the managers often needs to devise a mutual strategy to address the
demands, and can lead to shortcuts be taken in this process, in order to cut costs or
margins. These shortcuts also increase the risks of errors and thus engineering failures
and disasters that are caused due to design failures. Such can even cause massive loss
of property as well as lives. Different engineering failures have occurred within our
modern history. The deepwater Horizon explosion was a significant engineering
accident that occurred in 2010 that resulted in the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil
drilling rig, the death of 11 workers, injury of 17 others and a massive oil spill into the
Gulf of Mexico, that lead to an unimaginable environmental impact, due to which it was
considered the largest environmental disaster in the US history [1; 2].
The Disaster:
Background to the Incident:
$560 Million USD platform for the Deepwater Oil Rig was built by Hyundai Heavy
Industries. The rig was owned by Transocean, under the lease of BP until September
2013. It became operational on 2010, operating at a depth of 5,000 feet. The rig acted
as an exploratory well, for the construction of a well 18,360 feet deep. The plan was
plug and suspend the well as a subsea producer, after the construction and cementing
was complete. The well was due to be tested for its integrity and a cement plug to be set
which will allow the well to be temporarily abandoned [3].