Engineering Ethics

WVU Parking Group 12

Heather Roberts, Lance Pearce, Jacob Tyo, Jeffery Blankfeld

• 1957 Construction began on the Cypress Street Viaduct

• This freeway was built to connect to I-80 in the San Francisco Bay Area

• The final design was a reinforced concrete, 2km, two-tier highway with 5 lanes per deck

• However it was constructed over portions of soft mud where the bedrock was over 150m below the surface

• In 1971 stricter seismic criteria was required to increase resistance against earthquakes

• These precautions were voided

Cypress Street Viaduct

Cypress Street Viaduct

• October 17th, 1989 an earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale, Loma Prieta shook the San Francisco Bay area

• Nearly 1.4km out of the 2km stretch collapsed

• The soft bay mud that it was constructed on increased the amplitude of vibrations

• Breaks in the freeway almost exactly matched the angular frequency of the seismic waves

• Out of the total 65 deaths, 35 were due to the viaduct

Cypress Street Viaduct

• Well-graded soils help to dampen vibrations • Inadequate compensation for weak soil conditions• Insufficient reinforcement in concrete columns • Disaster could've been avoided if they followed

through with recommended upgrades • Todays reconstruction includes steel reinforcing

for compensation • Reconstruction cost estimated at $1.25 billion

Ford Pinto

• In the late 60’s Ford introduced the new affordable Ford Pinto

• Under 2000lbs and $2000• Production and design of typical car

took an average of 43 months where as the Pinto only took 25

• After initial crash tests were conducted a serious defect in the gas tank was revealed:

• In crashes over 25mph the gas tank always ruptured

• In crashes over 40mph it was likely that the doors would jam leaving the passengers with no escape

• No further changes were made to the Pinto before it was put on the market.

Ford Pinto

• Engineers were aware of the problem but did nothing to change it

• The cost of fixing the problem out weighed the cost of settling lawsuits

• One engineer quoted “Safety doesn’t sell”• These minor changes could’ve potentially prevented over

180 deaths due to fire

• 1976 Crown Center Redevelopment Corporation plans to design a Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City.

• 1976 Gillum-Colaco Inc. hired to be Structural Engineers for project.

• 1978 Project Prepared using Kansas City building codes.

• 1979 Construction begins as schematics are signed off.

• 1979 Minor roof collapse, construction continues as planned.

• 1981 Major walkway collapse killing 144 and injuring 200 more.

• 1984 Missouri Board of Ethics files suit against Gillum-Colaco charging negligence, incompetence, and unprofessional conduct.

Hyatt Regency Walkway

• 1984 G.C.E International, Inc. found guilty of all charges against them.

• Engineers involved lost licenses to practice engineering in Missouri.

• American Society of Civil Engineering states that structural engineers have full responsibility for design aspects and all liabilities.

• Duncan and Gillum now practicing in States other than Missouri.

• Main issues of concern involved here are:• Negligence

• Apathy

• Dishonesty

Hyatt Regency Walkway

• Potential ethical issues for our project include:• Wrongfully issuing tickets to payed customers.

• Not properly documenting infractions, leading to confusion if client wishes to dispute a ticket.

• Not securing all P.I.I in regards to credit card information, license plate numbers, names, student ID numbers.

• A full scale implementation of these solutions could reduce the amount of workforce needed to monitor parking.

• Efforts to avoid ethical issues:• Send all ticket notifications to University parking

authorities to issues tickets.

• Develop a secure database and webpage to host all information entered into the application.

• Re-assign the workforce to monitoring the system for crashes and bugs.

Parking Project