Question

In a turnkey project, the turnkey contractor requested you as a consultant to put up irregular (i.e. non-conforming to current engineering practice) proposals to maximize profits from the project. Discuss the key points that you must address so as not to compromise on your professional ethics. Demonstrate your solution through a simple case study/example.

Answering Format for the question you had selected:

1. What are your personal belief and stand on this matter?

2. What is the ethical and/or legal issue to be considered? Please state this with reference to the correct Rules and Regulations on Engineering Ethics and Professionalism / standards / codes for engineers. You need to mention the code/standard in your essay.

3. Identify and describe potential stakeholders.

4. Identify alternative ways to resolve the issue, and discuss their potential effects on all stakeholders.

Answer 1

Let me provide an example in IT environment where we had a turnkey support project wherein we were supposed to provide Infrastructure support for our client. We had our existing team of Network folks who were specialized in Network Data Domain. In the new turnkey support project, the clients were asking us to support Network Data, Voice and Security. This was a high budget urgent project and the contractor (Sales team in this case) were pushing us (the IT Operations team) to go ahead and announce that we have the required Network Voice and Security expertise too and that we are ready to take up the project at the earliest.

1. In any environment, satisfying the customer plus the belief that customer comes before anyone else is the motto for any thriving business. In this case, even though it was an urgent project, we cant take up the two additional verticals as we didnt have the necessary expertise. Network Security is highly critical and any breaches would lead to leaking customer data which would prove harmful for both my company as well as my customer

2. As per the Code of ethics for Engineers, they are supposed to perform services only in their area of expertise and not outside. First, it is an ethical issue wherein we are promising to deliver something which we have no idea about. Secondly, as suggested in answer 1, if there is a breach in security then there are mulitple legal problems that we would have to face

3. Potential Stakeholders are our IT Operations team who is the service provider, Sales team who is the contractor in this case, and the Client who is the service recipient/customer

4. There were two alternative ways - a) Cross train the expert resources on the two new verticals. This will take more time and cant be achieved due to the urgency in schedule of the project. b) Recruit new resources with experience in the two new verticals. This was the selected option. It did hit the Profit Margin but, we ended up in the good books of the client who in-turn provided us more projects