Question

What are the Engineering Ethical issues Such as (such as rights and obligations; conflict of interest; professionalism and mentoring; confidentiality; whistleblowing; bribery, fraud, and corruption) That Leads to the collapse of the WEST GATE BRIDGE in Melbourne Australia and how these can be prevented? Please write in essay style.

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Answer 1

SOLUTION :------->>>>>>

Following Engineering Ethics issues are faced when West Gate Bridge was collpase :--

• Rights and obligations : Various obligations must be done properly but carelessness seen in that case such as contractor , engineers , project managers should follow there respective obligations but they don't.

Various rights of labours , workers are killed and these workers are self responsible for because they are not follow there proper obligations such proper work , maintenance, contuinity in work etc. There were widespread labour strikes and the steel contractor had to be replaced in 1970. Then, along came news of the Milford Haven failure.

Companies not follow their rights and obligations :-- Freeman, Fox & Partners claimed its collapse was a-once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, but still undertook strengthening works on West Gate Bridge.

• Conflict of Interest : The contractor was fabricating half of each span on the ground – imagine cutting each span along its length, leaving two half-width spans. Each of these half-spans was then, in turn, lifted 50m up in the air and slid in to position. In this way, the contractor halved the load for each lift – albeit doubling the number of lifts. By the time of the Milford Haven collapse, the east and west spans of the West Gate Bridge, each 112m long, were ready for erection.

Then, one of the half-spans on the east side developed a problem. It was fabricated, but when it was lifted off its temporary trestles at ground level, it suddenly developed a buckle on the top free flange – the flange that would run down the centreline of the bridge when it would be connected to the other half-span.

The buckle occurred because of the decision to lift each half-span separately. While the free flange was stiffened longitudinally and transversally, there was a problem with both sets of stiffeners. The transverse stiffeners didn’t have the necessary stiffness to restrain the longitudinal stiffeners, and this lack of restraint resulted in the longitudinal stiffeners having a longer effective length (and therefore a lower buckling load) than anticipated.

• Professionalism and Mentoring : This mentoring is done :--

there was now a buckle in the flange plate, but rather than lowering the span back onto its trestles and removing the buckle while it was still at ground level, the decision was made to continue with the lift and somehow attempt to remove the buckle when the span was in its final position – at a height of 50m. But this buckle was significant – 380mm – and once the span was placed in position, there was no way it could be unloaded. Despite this, the lift went ahead.

Now they had to straighten the buckle in the air, and the method chosen was to remove bolts from some of the transverse splices in the top flange – essentially removing the top flange’s ability to carry compression stresses locally. Then, with the stress thus relieved, they could let the two flange plates slide over one another and flatten out the buckle. Once fattened, new holes were drilled or existing holes were widened in the overlapping plates, and new bolts installed.

• Confidentiality : The main confidentiality must be that due to carelessness approx. 35 people were died so for prevent any legal issues they hide various corruption, illegal works all works related information of the repectuve companies.

• Whistleblowing : The main whistleblowing is that the architecture design of bridge is first class there is no comparision of its beauty. Also dunamic looks very cute.

• Bribery , Fraud , Corruption :  The building process was going well at first though an unusual method was being used throughout the project. About 2 years into construction, problems began to show. There was an imbalance between several steel girders which made them not fix into position. Some engineers proposed putting 10 concrete blocks which weighed 8 tons individually, on each of the girders to put them into place which caused the bridge to buckle.

✓ Findings :-- It was found that Ward, aka Freeman Fox & Partners were responsible for giving the designs.The bridge was built unevenly and they tried to put concrete blocks on the girders. Their measurements were fixed in the rebuild and there were no problems during the process.

✓ Conclusion :-- It was structural engineer fault due to the failure of measuring properly and allowing to fixing the problem with concrete bricks, which resulted in the bridge buckling. The mess was cleaned up almost immediately. The ambulance got the injured, the firefighters put out the fire and the construction crew cleaned up the wreckage and started over. The bridge was reopened to the public in 1978.

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