Uphold Professional Honor: An essential engineering skill
The branch of moral principles that guide a person’s behavior or conducting of an activity is the definition of ethics. Honesty, fairness, and integrity are important and basic human needs that not only professional engineers should take into account but everyone. However, engineering being a recognized learned profession expects the performance of the highest standards of moral values upholding the conduct of prestige and competence of those carrying the profession.
Due to corrupted behaviors and other nonprofessional practices, the American Society of Civil Engineers founded in 1852 became the nation’s oldest engineering society formed by a group of professional associations. Beginning structuring ethical standards regulating conduct, practices, and behaviors nonproper of professional practitioners in the field. During June 1914, the committee approved the first edition of ASCE’s Code of Ethics containing six canons; therefore, as the years have passed the code has had a couple of modifications and additions. In the most recent revision to the code in 2006, Canon 6 stated, any corrupted action shall not tolerate tolerance to dishonest and fraudulent practice, “Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and dignity of the engineering profession and shall act with zero-tolerance for bribery, fraud, and corruption.”
The corruption in the area of construction is considered the higher economy sector vulnerable to get corrupted. Expectedly a $17.5 trillion yearly global construction output by 2030, which approximately 10 to 30 percent losses through corruption. The main reasons, prone to corruption are due to the size of projects, uniqueness, and complexity of projects, political involvement, lack of “due diligence”, along with others. Consequently, the bigger the project, the bigger the opportunity to inflate costs, the unique the project, the easier to inflate costs and hide bribes given is hardly comparable with others.
According with the Chronicle of Higher Education, there has been a report of
approximately $5.9 million dollars paid directly, or indirectly to college employees. Therefore about 45 students and 11 college employees in 8 of the most elite universities in the country.
References
ASCE News. (2007, December). Development of the First ASCE Code of Ethics. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.asce.org/question-of-ethics-articles/dec-2007/.
Brown, S. (2019, March 12). What do you need to know about the Admissions-Bribery Scandal. Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://www.chronicle.com/article/8-Universities-Millionsin/245873.
Brenzel, K. (2018, April 1). Construction Corruption: NYC General Contractors. Retrieved October 29, 2019, from https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-anatomy-of-constructioncorruption/.
Carraro, B. (2017, January 26). Why is Construction so Prone to Corruption? Retrieved October 30, 2019, from https://geniebelt.com/blog/construction-prone-corruption.
Canon 6 of the ASCE Code of Ethics states, “Engineers shall act in such a manner as to uphold and enhance the honor, integrity, and dignity of the engineering profession and shall act with zero-tolerance for bribery, fraud, and corruption.”
Recently, the media has exposed examples of “pay-to-play” scandals over a broad range of organizations from college admissions to engineering and construction firms.
How does this affect the Civil Engineering profession?
Use of References – include at least three (3) references from a journal or other acceptable source. It is important to select references that support your argument. You should not just summarize or use quotes from these sources, but rather they should support your argument.
Citation Format for References – Provide the in-text and end of essay citation for the reference in APA style. Citations must be in this format for full credit. No exceptions.
Text of final essay (five (5) pages maximum). References and cover pages are not included in the five-page maximum.
