Question

In practicing their profession, engineers may cause safety and hazards to another party or environment as a result of their unprofessional practices. Explain and assess the legal implications of these professional negligence in the engineering practices

Answer 1

Ans. Engineers may cause safety and hazards to another party or Environment as a result of their unprofessional Practices. The Unethical practices may comprise of but not restricted to : Conflict of Interest, Bribery, Fraud,inflation of Bills, professional incompetence, Professional Misconduct, intimidation, poor work delivery etc. Other reported untrustworthy practices are associated with carelessness, misinterpretation, sharp practices, break of certainty.

The Consequences of these unethical practices and professional negligence can lead to risk of Lives and property, Risk to Environment, Reduction in confidence for the profession,Loss of Income by Clients and Govrnments, Needless and Baseless expenditures etc.

The following are the legal implications of the professional negligence in the engineering practices:

i. Unfairness in tendering process may lead to absorption of poor Contractors or poor Performance for the project . For personal interests by alloting work to the biased firm, Risk to Lives and damage to the Environment can occur as it may lead to faulty designs and construction.

ii. Overbilling done by Engineering firms to mint money may cause economic loss to the Clients or Government.

iii. If the Engineers accept professional comissions or bribe or extort any other financial advantage from the Contractors, Their professional judgements may be compromised which may lead to loss of Lives.

iv. The unethical practices regarding the use of poor Quality Materials or Cheap Materials or mining from lands without taking legal permissions from authority or through proper Channel in construction may cause severe damage and harm to the Environment and reduce the Quality and Service life of Structure .

v. Engineers sometimes, when make decisions wrong,generally donot admit errors or refrain from distorting which may cause risk of lives and damage to environment.

vi. Corruption can lead to severe impact on the faulty construction and poor quality structure risking lot of lives and damage to environment.

vii. Faulty Construction practices like disposing harmful effluents in rivers may lead to loss of lives of aquatic animals.