Question

The state government of Perak has recently announced the building of a suspension bridge between Pulau Pangkor and Peninsular Malaysia. The construction cost of the bridge is estimated at RM100 million and this 4-lane bridge will take approximately 3 years to complete. This infrastructure project is expected to encounter many technical challenges and require the involvement of various parties, particularly engineers of different disciplines and expertise. Predict engineering-related ethical issues that may possibly occur during the construction of the suspension bridge. Discuss on the root causes of each ethical issue you have identified. Finally, propose the efforts that can be duly taken by a professional engineer to prevent the ethical issues you have mentioned.
(20 markah/marks)

Answer 1

Suspension bridges would require high quality technology as these are intense structures and are always used in places where the amount of traffic is high. Due to the reasons various parties and high discipline engineers are being involved in these types of projects. There is always possibilities of occurring of ethical issues in construction of these high budgeting suspension bridges. We'll discuss about the issues which are arise, the causes of these issues and how to tackle all these one by one. So below is the list of the issues -

1) There are safety issues as if failure may occur in the bridge.

2) The project may not be completed in the given time and that would lead in delaying of transportation and other projects related to that area.

3) Sustainability issues may occur as the quality of the materials used may harm the environment.

4) Diversity issues regarding the gender and colour of the people working for the project.

There are various reasons for the occurrence of these types of ethical issues. These may include the greed in project managers, for preserving maximum profit they may lead to the structure of less quality. The time and budget assigned to the project is not sufficient. The materials provided may be of low quality. So what we have to do is to solve these issues by following some steps so below are the few steps which can reduce the effects of the ethical issues caused in construction of a suspension bridge -

• The budget as well as time assigned to the project should be sufficient so there is no greed and time issue.
• Highly qualified and experienced engineers should be assigned to provide good quality in project.
• Proper guidance should be given and time to time checking is required for the quality check.
• Good quality material should be provided so that it would lead in sustainable development of the structure.