3.

2 Application in Current Construction

3.2.1 Ethics in Training

Education of ethics is of one the important elements in daily life and it is widely applied in all
industries at all levels and not limited to students only. Particularly in engineering field, ethics
education should be continued during working life and not limited at university only as each
professional individual having the works with different values of ethics that may carry to ethical
and unethical behaviour. The study of The Profession and their prospects by Friedson in 1973
has stated that the leaders of professional community should be ensured to demonstrate the
importance of ethical behaviour among the members. There are two criteria obtained from
most cases in professional act which are offering services to members to assist one in
developing their own professionalism and creating satisfactory performance and ethical
behaviour in particular profession (Webster, 1991).

The roles that responsible in delivering these criteria in Malaysia are professional units
which are Board of Architects, Board of Quantity Surveyors and Board of Engineers that
specialised in regulation and practice of respective professions. Rick in the study of The
industry need: A code of conduct has stated that having more ethics training could reduce
and avoid unethical behaviour in construction industry apart of technical qualification and
ethical normative skill that could be obtained by training. The study of Professional code and
ethics for training professionals by Bergenhenegouwen in 1996 stated that training includes
situation where one need choose from several choices and solve the problem that require
judgement value based on ethical decisions.

As construction community are required to keep on updating with new developments,

the CPD or also known as Continuing Professional Development has become a significant
organised maintenance, enhancement and widen the knowledge and skills as well as
developing the required individual qualities in terms of implementing professional and
technical responsibilities through the working life of the practitioner (RICS, 1993). The training
of CPD could be done in different ways such as conferences, workshops, lectures and study
of its requirements. In order to introduce professional ethics behaviour and values, it is
recommended for any professional units in construction industry to deliver CPD courses by
working forums, discussion, talks and seminars.
 It is well-known that ethical issue is one of issues that is commonly arise during training
and working life of a professional individual, however, there are some units that do not
attending the training related to ethics. With CPD, it is predicted to enhance the construction
profession and improve service behaviour and professionalism but apart from that,
professional units or individual should be able to keep on updating to new development and
pertinent to clients and communities. Rizk in the study of Back to basics: An Islamic
perspective on business and work ethics, stated that training of ethics shall allow one to
assembly adopted action-guided code from moral theory perspective.

3.2.2 Workshop

Ethics education is not widely applied in all education levels and that includes the universities
as well. Most of the faculties presume that extra time will be needed in order to add in ethics
education as one of the teaching modules into the fundamental courses besides not having
capable individual or expert with experience that could teach this course as the faculty prefer
a formal classroom discussion (Cruz et al., 2003). Workshops are one of the options that
provide ethical issues and practice in the profession as it able to be conducted within the
professional communities or workplace. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the
institution that has adopted research practice seminars under the name of Engineering
Practice Workshops for more than 10 years. The workshop will be participated by junior and
senior faculty, postdoctoral partners, research team, graduate students and undergraduates
and these people will be joined into a vibrant and active discussion. This workshop aims to
offer opportunities for both faculty and senior professionals to review each expectation and
knowledge of various behaviour in any circumstances and issues.

The workshop allows both faculty and senior engineers with researchers to review and
discuss the aspects of professional practice which infrequently covered in formal classes.
Other than that, both students and professional team able to voice the concerns and share
one experience to give the group opportunity to determine and assess problems or issues
related to the field and discuss possible solutions. This collaboration might significantly
beneficial for both faculty and professional team to understand better the nature of each other
and aim for improvement as the next step.

Apart from that, both faculty and professional team will get to experience a discussion
regarding the ethical issues which rarely covered or discussed unless there are problems
occurred. Additionally, some problems may have different solutions as the individual or
professional team have different approach and perspective in solving certain problems due to
experiences. Hence, the workshop allows all participants to discover strategies in confronting
with related issues and discuss the solutions that have succeed before besides gaining the
lessons in a good and constructive way.

The workshop is held by examining certain topic and presenting its concept and
argument points first, followed by the presentation of the real-life case that may takes about
three to five minutes of briefing. This will be presented by panels that includes the professional
team, trainee and student where all presenter will speak out each perspective regarding the
issue. A discussion will be conducted by a facilitator and followed by the perspective and
opinion of the whole team in producing and criticizing the ideas of small teams. Usually, the
discussion will end up with more solutions to one ethical problem which each solution might
be acceptable or in opposite.

According to Whitbeck in the writing of Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research in

1998, all participants should imply the perspective of the ‘agent’ despite the ‘judge’ in order
to examine the actions of each character and analyse the effect of each choice. All participants
requested to specify the reasons behind every action that are considered acceptable or
unacceptable. This is to evaluate and analyse the effect of each ideas to both individual and
the profession itself. A Checklist for Ethical Decision-Making will be provided at the end of the
workshop as an instrument to estimate and focus on the ethical issues that possibly confronted
by the participants in the future.

To conclude, this workshop should be adopted and practiced in any discipline and
meetings as one of the components in any professional community programme or team
meeting in the workplace to strive for better improvement in practicing ethics in the
profession.
REFERENCES

Bird, S. J. (2003). Ethics as a core competency in science and engineering. Science and
Engineering Ethics, 9(4), 443–444. doi: 10.1007/s11948-003-0042-9

Mohamad, N., Rahman, H. A., Usman, I. M., & Tawil, N. M. (2015). Ethics Education and
Training for Construction Professionals in Malaysia. Asian Social Science, 11(4). doi:
10.5539/ass.v11n4p55