Assignment 3: Engineering Roles, Sustainable Development, and Ethics

This assignment delves into the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of engineers, emphasizing the critical importance of sustainable development principles. It explores how engineers must balance technical expertise with environmental considerations, exemplified by historical shifts from u...Read More

Assignment
3. Discuss engineers' roles, responsibilities and the need to employ principles
of sustainable development.
Sustainable development is the development that meets the need of the present without harming the
environment, ecosystem and natural resources for coming generation (Barkemeyer et al., 2014).
‘Engineering is the professional art of applying science to the optimum conversion of the resources of
nature to benefit man. The words engineer and ingenious are derived from the same Latin root
“ingenerate” meaning “to create”.
Associated with engineering is a great body of special knowledge; preparation for professional practice
involves extensive training in the application of that knowledge (Luederitz, Lang and Von Wehrden,
2013). Engineering is an art requiring the judgment necessary to adapt knowledge to practical purposes,
the imagination to conceive original solutions to problems, and the ability to predict performance and
cost of new devices or processes.
The function of the scientist is to know, while that of the engineer is to do. The scientist adds to the
store of verified, systematized knowledge of the physical world; the engineer brings this knowledge to
bear on practical problems. Engineering is based principally on physics, chemistry & mathematics and
their extensions into materials science, solid and fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, transfer and rate
processes, system analysis, computer programming, electronics and optronic.’ (Reid, 2013)
Engineers roles and responsibilities:
Engineers vision is made broad during making them technically strong. Where engineering study and
codes make sure the integrity and safety of the development there developing the sustainable
development is the primarily focused priority of engineers. Engineers primary role is to seek out the
solution that leads the best development solution regarding need and consumption. If we look back in
history, we will come to know the things that were being used cannot be classified as sustainable
developments but now development of things is now finding its way to sustainable developments
(Smith, Gardoni and Murphy, 2014).
For example, tetra fluorocarbon gas was used as a refrigerant which was playing its role in the depletion
of the ozone causing environmental hazards and non-securing environmental future. Engineers
successfully replaced it with ecofriendly gas making refrigeration a sustainable development. The first
used engine efficiency was merely 4% causing environmental pollution and increase in entropy while not
engines with high efficiency are being developed. Moreover, the concept of hydrogen fuel is going to
make engines purely sustainable development (Borenstein, Herkert and Miller, 2017). These all things
are done with the help of engineering principles that is need of the present and future and is done by
Engineers. Engineers create things and then refine it to the best product regarding economy, socially,
and health impact.

b. How do you understand sustainability in engineering? Discuss one way in
which sustainability can lead to a 'better' engineering solution? How did you
define
‘better’?
Engineering refines product and try to make them sustainable. For example, if we would be able to
control fusion reaction and harness its energy in electrical way by using super conductor products then it
can bring the prosperity to the society. It can reduce the poverty as the energy will be very cheap and
endless with no environmental pollution (Haapala et al., 2013).
Sustainable engineering should be based on principles that support sustainable development, as defined
in the upper sections of this lesson. Engineering forms an interface between the design (i.e., the idea
how to provide a sustainable solution to a technical problem) and implementation and production. In
case of technology development, engineering phase is linked to almost every level of technology
readiness spectrum. Sustainable engineering principles should be contemplated and applied early to
ensure that technology development and scale-up follow the environmentally benign route. It will be
hard to turn back to redo and redesign things from later stages! In that sense, the sustainable
engineering principles should be considered in decision making for both research and industrial projects
as well as in policy making and decisions regarding funding of technological research (Miller et al., 2014).
There have been multiple attempts by academic and industrial institutions to formulate sustainable
engineering principles. All of them fall within the triangle with Environmental, Social, and Economic
values as cornerstones. The overarching goal is to generate a balanced solution to any engineering
problem. If an engineering project benefits one of these three aspects, but ignores the others, we have a
lopsided system which creates tension, instability, and new problems in the long run.
c. Your values are important in determining how you might respond if you
found yourself in a situation of ethical conflict. Try to identify at least two values
that you believe have an impact on how you live and work.
Respect, honesty, dignity and integrity makes your character professional. The impact of these values
will be in such a way that by grasping these values makes your social life better and strong resulting in
good living and working environment.
4. Manage information and documentation.
a. Having many members of a team work on a project together means that you
can achieve a great deal more than if you were working by yourself. However, it
also creates some challenges. One challenge is ensuring version control of reports
and drawings. What processes has your team put in place to share information
and ensure that everyone works on the most recent version of a document?

Communication is very effective medium to communicate information. Now a day’s numerous ways are
available to communicate. Some modern means are cell phone text, calls and emails or via internet
social networking.
To cope with challenges of communication we made a group on a social site and used this source to
communicate. Every new information is added on this group and sent via email and a text message
regarding updates was sent to every member of the group (Bezos et al., 2014).
We chose social site as a communication medium since everyone uses it on daily basis. It keeps group
members updated every minute. Successfully this idea solved the communication problem significantly
in very easy manner.
5.
a. It is important as a professional that you learn to communicate appropriately
with a range of stakeholders and mediums. Email is one medium that is
commonly used in current practice. Give an example of an email you have sent to
either your team or facilitator that demonstrates your ability to communicate
effectively and professionally. What do you think makes this an effective
communication? Give an example of an email that you think is unprofessional. It
does not need to be a genuine email, you can write a mock email.
There is a sharp difference in professional and nonprofessional communication. Professional
communication specially in writing take care of rules of writing so that the audience can understand the
author vividly without any ambiguity.
For example, here is an email showing professional communication.
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Cc: [e-mail], [e-mail]
Subject ABC Project and Communication Guidelines
Dear ABC Project Team Member,
Welcome to ABC Project. I look forward to work with each of you. The project will be starting soon and I
have selected all of you because you people have potential to bring out the creative solution and
implementing the principal of engineering to give your idea a physical existence. I’m expecting all of you
to yield maximum output of your expertise. I will be heading up this project.
I need to set some ground rules for project communication using this thread:
1. Only communicate with project members.
2. Focus on one thought per email.

3. If the email isn’t about the project don’t include it in this thread.
4. If you have a question, review the entire thread to make sure someone hasn’t already answered it.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Anonymous
ABC Project Team Lead
An example of non-professional
Same as letter head.
Subject Get things done on time!!!
Member 1!!!
What is wrong with you? You don’t seem to have gotten anything done If it kept going on like that I will
exclude you from the project and then you will find yourself in trouble.  

References
Barkemeyer, R., Holt, D., Preuss, L. and Tsang, S., 2014. What happened to the ‘development’in
sustainable development? Business guidelines two decades after Brundtland. sustainable
development, 22(1), pp.15-32.
Bezos, J.P., Spiegel, J.R. and McAuliffe, J., Amazon. Com, Inc., 2014. Services for enabling users to
share information regarding E-commerce transactions. U.S. Patent 8,744,929.
Borenstein, J., Herkert, J. and Miller, K., 2017. Self-Driving Cars: Ethical Responsibilities of Design
Engineers. IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 36(2), pp.67-75.
Haapala, K.R., Zhao, F., Camelio, J., Sutherland, J.W., Skerlos, S.J., Dornfeld, D.A., Jawahir, I.S., Clarens,
A.F. and Rickli, J.L., 2013. A review of engineering research in sustainable manufacturing. Journal of
Manufacturing Science and Engineering, 135(4), p.041013.
Luederitz, C., Lang, D.J. and Von Wehrden, H., 2013. A systematic review of guiding principles for
sustainable urban neighborhood development. Landscape and Urban Planning, 118, pp.40-52.
Miller, T.R., Wiek, A., Sarewitz, D., Robinson, J., Olsson, L., Kriebel, D. and Loorbach, D., 2014. The
future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda. Sustainability science, 9(2),
pp.239-246.
Reid, D., 2013. Sustainable development: an introductory guide. Routledge.
Smith, J., Gardoni, P. and Murphy, C., 2014. The responsibilities of engineers. Science and engineering
ethics, 20(2), pp.519-538.