PEB 702 Engineering & Society

Group A- CE

Tutorial Exercise 1. Exercise on Moral & Ethical Dilemmas

Situation: A City Engineer

Alex is a city Engineer/Director of Public Works for a medium-sized city. Alex is the
only licensed professional engineer in a position of responsibility within the city government
.The city Alex works in has several large food-processing plants that pull out large amounts of
waste from the sanitary system during canning season. Alex is responsible for the disposal
plant and reports of the operation. Alex tells Mark that the plant will not be able to withstand
a large amount of water during the rainy season and offers several possible ideas to fix this.
James says "that they will face the problem when it happens." Without James's permission
Alex notifies other city officials about the plant problem, but James removed Alex from the job
and gives it to Chris. Chris is a technician who is normally under Alex’s supervision. James
tells Chris to report directly to him and confirm this arrangement with a memo, which is copied
to Alex. Alex is put on probation. He gets a warning saying that if he discusses the matter
further then he will be terminated, but Alex continues to work as a City Engineer/Director of
Public Works; he takes no credit for the disposal plant, but continues to keep Chris informed
without James knowing. In the winter time heavy storms happen in the city. It becomes clear to
those involved that if the plant's waste water is not released into the local river, the ponds will
flood over and dumps all of the waste into the river. Under state law, this condition must be
reported to the State/nation Water Pollution Control Authority., the agency responsible for
monitoring and overseeing water quality in state streams and rivers. As an Engineer, what
would you do?

DUE: Tuesday, 11 February 2020

Group of 5 members

Group work Submission