Iskander El Amri

ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2
Engineering Code Of Ethics Prevents Catastrophes

The Macondo oil well accident was a where 11 people lost

their lives and 5 million oil barrels were purred in the Gulf of Mexico.
The catastrophe affected the fauna and flora of the region since
thousands of animals were killed. After investigations, it turned out
that the accident was foreseeable and could have been avoided if
British Petroleum (BP) appointed competent engineers on this
project and did not violate the NSPE code of ethics. In this paper Im
going to analyze the NSPE and The industrial engineering institute
(IIE) code of ethics and how a proper application of these codes
could prevent engineering catastrophes.

The IIE, like all the other engineering societies, has rules or
canons to guide its members to act in a professional and ethical
way. The IIE code of ethics is composed of two parts: the
fundamental principles and the fundamental canons. There are four
fundamental principles and seven fundamental canons all of which
are inspired from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and
Technology (ABET) code of ethics. The IIE code of ethics holds all the
industrial engineers (IE) to high professional and moral standards for
example it pushes all the IEs for a life long learning to increase the
prestige and the competence of the engineering profession. It also
holds the IEs to paramount the health, safety and welfare of the

Iskander El Amri
ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2
public, to deny association with suspicious organization and only
release public statements in a truthful manner.

Out of the eleven principles provided by the IIE code of ethics,

the paramount of the health and safety of the public and the life
long

learning

to

improve

the

competence

and

prestige

of

engineering profession are most of the important points in this code.

Engineers are servant of the public, thus they must consider the
safety and health of the community as a prime aspect of their
designs. In fact this point can be considered as a maxim ( I should
protect the health and safety of the people), which transcends the
personal experience of the individual engineer to become a
universal rule to the engineering profession.
This practice will have a positive impact on the professional
development of the engineer since it will lead him to follow all the
other point of the code of ethics.
Science and technology are rapidly changing and with such a pace,
a competent engineer must keep learning about the new advances
in technology, science and regulations. Thus the IIE code of ethics
listed the life long learning as an important point. In fact, engineers
should always inspire better themselves to achieve Techne and
virtuosity.

The IIE code of ethics is very similar to the NSPE one, since
both of them hold the same fundamental canons. However the NSPE

Iskander El Amri
ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2
code of ethics goes more in depth in explaining the appropriate
professional conducts behind each of these canons. The NSPE code
is composed of 80% of prohibitive rules that warns the engineers of
unethical conducts and their implications. However both codes did
not discuss or approached poorly other fundamental issues faced by
engineers nowadays. Neither the NSPE nor the IIE discussed the
problem of forced labor. In fact, many US companies are moving
abroad to benefit from cheaper workforce. These decisions are
sometimes taken by engineers to save money and to have
competitive edge on other companies. However, these practices
hurt people including children in other countries forced to work long
hours, for a low wage and dangerous work conditions.

Both the NSPE and IIE code of ethics did not discuss
extensively the environmental challenges faced by the engineers of
today. During the last century, the environment was not important in
the engineering designs, which caused great harm to nature.
Recently all the governments around the world issued regulations to
limit the effect of the industry on the environment and unfortunately
the engineering code of ethics dont elaborate on this point.

After investigation, the root causes of the Macondo oil spill

were clearly tied to a deviance from the engineering code of ethics.
BP appointed non-licensed engineers to supervise this project, which
is clearly contradicting the second canon of the IIE and NSPE code of

Iskander El Amri
ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2
ethics. The incompetence of the engineers leading the Macondo
project caused a chain of improper decision that lead to a largescale catastrophe. Even though third parties warned the team of
danger of using fewer centralizers and weaker concrete mix during
the drilling process, the BP engineers preferred cost savings on the
safety of public. The microscopic vision and normalizing of deviance
lead the BP team to conduct in an irresponsible manner.

BP paid billions of dollars and lost its reputation as a top

engineering company because they didnt abide to the simple
guidelines of the engineering code of ethics. Simple practices and
internal regulations could have helped the company avoid this
disaster.

Engineering is a noble profession that aims to promote the

welfare and the safety of the public. All around the world engineers
have organized in groups and wrote codes to regulate the
profession. Most of the engineers try to follow the best engineering
practices and conform to the norms. But some due to their
incompetency, a small number of engineers will cause harm to the
public. Thus governments should only attribute an engineering title
to the professional engineers only.

Word count: 890

Iskander El Amri
ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2

Iskander El Amri
ENGR 482-928
Short paper 2
Bibliography
"Code of Ethics." Code of Ethics. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.

"Engineering Code of Ethics." Ethics. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.