ENEG20001 Australian Engineering Practice: Reflective Report on Ethics

This report reflects on key aspects of Australian Engineering Practice, including the roles and responsibilities of engineers in teamwork, the importance of sustainability, and ethical considerations. It discusses the author's understanding of teamwork, drawing connections to the Trevelyan textbook, and emphasizes the significance of clearly defined roles and responsibilities for project success. The report further explores sustainability in engineering, highlighting its role in achieving better engineering solutions through materials management, waste reduction, product enhancement, and pollution prevention, citing the Photovoltaic Ombriere SUDI as an example. Ethical conflicts are addressed, emphasizing the values of honesty, determination, truthfulness, and neutrality in resolving such issues. Finally, the report covers information management and documentation, including processes for sharing information and ensuring version control, alongside examples of effective and unprofessional communication.

Running head: AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Australian Engineering Practice
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Table of Contents
Roles and Responsibilities to work in a team:...............................................................2
Sustainability in Engineering:........................................................................................2
One way in which sustainability leading to better engineering:................................2
Values for Responding in an Ethical Conflict:..............................................................3
Managing Information and Documentation:..................................................................4
Processes of Sharing Information:.............................................................................4
Process of ensuring that everyone works on the most recent version of a document:
................................................................................................................................................4
Effective Communication:.............................................................................................5
Example of Effective Communication using email:..................................................5
Example of Unprofessional Communication using email:........................................6
References:.....................................................................................................................7

2AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Roles and Responsibilities to work in a team:
For successful completion of any type of project, effective team work is very much
important (Martinelli and Milosevic 2016). While considering the project in the engineering
field value of the team work increases more. As per my thinking to complete any type of
engineering project successfully all the individual engineers in the team must follow and
properly execute their roles as well as their responsibilities. As an engineer while I am
working on a project with fellow team members, I must ensure my roles and responsibilities
towards the project and the team. As I have studied the “Trevelyan textbook”, if I am playing
the role of the project leader as an engineer then I must specify the roles of the other team
members and the goals of the project. I must be always focused on creating working
environment that will lead to the project success. As per the textbook “Trevelyan”, as an
engineer I also need to play the role of the project planner in which my responsibilities will
be planning, designing and organising the whole project. While I am working on a project
there can be various types of issues and problems. As an engineer I must carefully handle
those issue and problems to mitigate them properly.
Sustainability in Engineering:
The term ‘Sustainability’ in engineering defines that it is the designing process in
engineering which uses the resources and energy sustainably (Stansinoupolos et al. 2013). In
other words it is a type of engineering which does not compromise with the current natural
environment, leaving ability to the generations of the future for fulfilling their own needs.
One way in which sustainability leading to better engineering:
The sustainability is leading to better engineering solution by not compromising with
the nature and by achieving four goals. These four goals are the materials management, waste
reduction, product enhancement and the pollution prevention. One prior example of this type

3AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERING PRACTICE
of sustainability is the Photovoltaic Ombriere SUDI. This is a typical autonomous mobile
station which uses the solar energy to replenish the energy of the electric vehicles (Nykvist
and Nilsson 2015). By this sustainable innovation those four goals are achieved which was
mentioned previously.
I found this better because first of all this is using a renewable energy. As the
sustainable engineering is using the renewable energy, the non-renewable energy sources are
not depleting which is good for the present nature and the future generations. Also, in this
way the waste and the pollution is reduced and the overall product is enhanced.
Values for Responding in an Ethical Conflict:
While working in the engineering field, engineers can face various types of ethical
conflict. In such type of case their moral values are very much important as this can help
them to respond in this kind of situations. Such values are the honesty, determination,
truthfulness and neutrality.
While working, the engineers may face various situation in which they might be
benefitted by performing some unethical tasks but they must never do any type of unethical
work for their own benefit. This is the honesty which the engineers must posses.
Determination is another moral value for the engineers (Staub 2013). As per me, in an
ethical conflict situation, the engineers must determine the ethical way of performing some
particular task. Determining the ethical way will easily deal with the ethical conflict.
Every engineers must always speak the truth whenever they face some ethical conflict
(Gibson, Tanner and Wagner 2013). According to me, speaking the truth does not only
tackles the ethical conflict but also it helps in the better relation building which are important
to build a better workplace.

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Neutrality is one of the main factor of dealing with the ethical conflict (Noddings
2013). According to me, neutrality is important for dealing with the ethical factor because it
resists the engineers to take any type of biased decisions. Thus always ethically correct
decision are made.
Managing Information and Documentation:
While working as a team there can be various type of challenges in the team. One of
this challenge is the version control. For this information and documentation needs to be
managed.
Processes of Sharing Information:
As per me there are various options of sharing the information among the fellow team
members. The main requirement of sharing the information is the effective communication
among the team members. For an effective communication open meeting is the best option
which will easily share the information within the team (Austin and Pinkleton 2015). Another
process of effective information sharing is the emails. Through the emails anyone can be
contacted at any time and the information can be shared easily.
Process of ensuring that everyone works on the most recent version of a
document:
To ensure that everyone is working on the most recent version of the document,
process of the version control can be used. This version control are two types which are the
Centralised version control and the Distributed version control.
In the centralised type of version control, every users get the own working copy and
in this system only a central repository available (Gadd and Newman 2016). As the data will
be modified through the central repository it will be visible to the other team members and
they can proceed with the work according to the modification.

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In the distributed version control, every users got the own working copy and own
repository (Shirey et al. 2015). There is also a central repository. Users need to store their
modification in their own repository and need to push the modification to the central
repository so that others can see the modification. The user also need to pull data from the
central repository to see the modification of the other team members.
Effective Communication:
Example of Effective Communication using email:
To: Alex Hunter, Junior Team Footballer
From: Bob Walker, Senior Team Manager
Date: 20/08/18
Subject: Transfer to Senior Team
Dear Mr. Hunter,
Your recent performance in the junior team was great and it has pleased me very
much. You are the main reason behind the recent success of our junior team. Thus
considering your current performance in the junior team I am happy to inform you that the
management has decided you to promote to the senior football team. Hope you also wanted
the same. Please reply me on your decision whether you want to join the senior team or not,
so that we can proceed further on this situation.
Sincerely,
Bob Walker
Considering the above email, it is perfect example of the effective communion
because the email is containing proper subject for the recipient’s assistance. Also the email

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not only elaborated the main subject but also guided the reader what the sender wants from
him. Thus it can be considered as an effective communication where all the aspects of the
communication is clear.
Example of Unprofessional Communication using email:
To: Alex Hunter, Junior Team Footballer
From: Bob Walker, Senior Team Manager
Date: 20/08/18
Dear Mr. Hunter,
I am informing you that you have been selected for the senior football team. So,
please reply us soon for further discussion.
Thank you,
Bob Walker
The above email is an unprofessional type of email because first of all the subject of
the email is given. So, the reader might face difficulty in understanding the email properly.
Also, in this email why the footballer got promoted is not mentioned which will surely create
a question in the reader’s mind why he got promoted which is an example of the
unprofessional communication. Also, what reply the sender wants is not mentioned in the
email. Such things making it very unprofessional communication.

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References:
Austin, E.W. and Pinkleton, B.E., 2015. Strategic public relations management: Planning
and managing effective communication campaigns. Routledge.
Gadd, M. and Newman, P., 2016, October. Checkout my map: Version control for fleetwide
visual localisation. In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ International
Conference on (pp. 5729-5736). IEEE.
Gibson, R., Tanner, C. and Wagner, A.F., 2013. Preferences for truthfulness: Heterogeneity
among and within individuals. American Economic Review, 103(1), pp.532-48.
Martinelli, R.J. and Milosevic, D.Z., 2016. Project management toolbox: tools and
techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Noddings, N., 2013. Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. Univ of
California Press.
Nykvist, B. and Nilsson, M., 2015. Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric
vehicles. nature climate change, 5(4), p.329.
Shirey, R.G., Hopkinson, K.M., Stewart, K.E., Hodson, D.D. and Borghetti, B.J., 2015,
January. Analysis of implementations to secure git for use as an encrypted distributed version
control system. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference
on (pp. 5310-5319). IEEE.
Stansinoupolos, P., Smith, M.H., Hargroves, K. and Desha, C., 2013. Whole system design:
An integrated approach to sustainable engineering. Routledge.
Staub, E., 2013. Positive social behavior and morality: Social and personal influences.
Elsevier.