Ethics In Construction

Introduction

Many professions in the world are guided by principles to ensure that they relate well and provide quality services to humanity. The construction industry, for example, serves a very important role in the infrastructural development of a country, and any mistake by the engineers or architects can cause huge losses of property and deaths. Imagine a bridge or a skyscraper collapsing while people are on board; it can be catastrophic. Ethics is, therefore, a set of rules that are set by profession to guide how the people interact with one another and ensure that all the decisions made are in the best interest of the parties involved.

Encouraging Safety in Buildings

In the USA, the government has put up institutions to oversee the building of houses and other infrastructure to ensure that standards are always followed. In any building, therefore, three major players are involved to ensure everything goes right. The building owner, the design professional or engineer, and finally, the public officer who goes through the drawing to ensure that it meets the standards of the country. Once the public officer authorizes the building to be built, the constructor begins the work. Before approving the building, however, the public officer must ensure that the safety, welfare, and health of the public is taken care of and ensure that the people partaking the project are competent and permitted by the relevant bodies to perform the work (Banks, Sarah, 24).

Ethical standards begin to apply as early as this stage, if the people are unethical and love short cuts, they may give bribe so that their design is approved. If the public officer is not ethical, many problems are likely to originate at this stage. All the threats and vulnerabilities are supposed to be identified and worked on at this stage (Lohne, Jardar, et al., 12). If the building is to be built in a windy environment, the public officer should ask questions on how the designer or engineer is planning to handle the problem using the design and application of scientific concepts.

The “City-Corp” Case

The “City-Corp” case is one of the sturdiest buildings even though some errors were noted, and ethical behaviors saved lives. The parties to the building all played their part to ensure that the project was successful, the president of the building was John S Reed who gave the job to design the skyscraper to Engineer William J. LeMessurier did a perfect job in the early 1970s. The building was adjacent to St. Peter, and therefore, creativity had to be used to utilize their land to make the building stronger as it ought to be. The creative engineer came up with a feasible design that was approved to put one cantilever in the middle for supporting the building. There were errors in the diagonal calculations, which neither he nor the public officer noticed. As a result, the building was built.

Ethics demands that whenever a problem is spotted, it should be discussed and solved to save lives. Ethics is a personal choice, and unless a person chooses to be ethical, many problems can occur in the world today. The construction professor from his vast knowledge of cantilever beam knew that it could never be at the center. He passed the information to his student, Diane Hartley, who called LeMessurier to discuss the problem. He was able to realize that the calculations had an error, and the approaching hurricane could be very problematic to the building. The professor and his student were in an ethical dilemma, but it could not match that of LeMessurier because after confirming with his friend Davenport who was an engineering expert in beam behaviors in windy conditions, he was also honest and confirmed that truly, there was a problem.

Making the ethical decision

Admitting that one has made a mistake is not only a sign of maturity but also a sign of wisdom and ethical behavior. If the mess could be discovered, LeMessurier would risk being declared bankrupt, and his assets could be frozen. Further, the professional disgrace which was looming was also too much to bear considering how he was bragging to his students and the way he talked to Diane Hartley that her professor had no idea of what he was talking about. He had either to make a choice of watering his pride and run to hiding and wait for a tragedy to attack and kill the people, the other option was to commit suicide so that the coming problem could not find him. However, he made the solemn decision to SAVE LIVES, which was an ethical decision and the hardest. By making that decision, LeMessurier proved to be honest, reliable, and accountable for all the errors he made and opted to correct the mistakes with immediate effect.

The owner of the building upon receiving the news also made a decision that was for the benefit of the people residing in the building. For him, the $8 Million repair charges were nothing compared to the life of the people using the building, which was at stake (Whitbeck, and Plosky, 9). Ethics will always ask a question, “Which decision will work better for the people?” and through the administering of ethical standards, the degree of trustworthiness and integrity is increased in the people. Diane Hartley and LeMessurier made ethical behaviors of discussing the faults and accepting the mistakes, respectively, and in the end, they were celebrated as heroes.

Conclusion

Ethics guides people to decide the right way to act or behave. When performing a job that affects many people, ethical behavior is mandatory to ensure that all the decisions made are in line with the safety and well-being of the people involved. In the case of a mistake, a catastrophe can befall the project, causing deaths and damages. LeMessurier realized the mistakes, and even though he had the option of eloping, he chose to be ethical, and it saved lives. We can all chose to be ethical in our various professions to make lives better.

Works Cited

1. Banks, Sarah. ‘Everyday ethics in professional life: Social work as ethics work.’ Ethics and Social Welfare 10.1 (2016): 35-52.
2. Lohne, Jardar, et al. ‘Ethical behavior in the design phase of AEC projects.’ International Journal of Managing Projects in Business 10.2 (2017): 330-345.
3. Whitbeck, Caroline, and Eric Plosky. ‘William LeMessurier-The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis: A Lesson in Professional Behavior.’ (2006).