Obligation of Registered Professional Engineers - Essay Example

Choice A: The foremost, the primary obligation of engineers is to the public welfare

Explanation
The main of the exercise is for the student to determine or resolve the ethical dilemma of where the engineer’s obligation is rested on. The choices are the public welfare who will use the product of the engineer’s work, the engineer’s employer who provides the engineer his or her employment, and correspondingly, wages that financially sustain the engineer. Or it could be neither to employers nor the government. The most ethical choice is that the engineer’s obligation rest foremost on the public welfare.

The profession of engineering is unique in many aspects that made ethics paramount in the practice. Engineering is concerned with the construction of structures and these structures are not used by their customers alone. The product of the work of engineers is not also solely used by his or her employers but by the customer and many other groups of people. This is particularly true in public structures where the structure will be used by the general public. Thus, unlike in any other profession, the stakeholders in the engineering profession are many but the most important stakeholder of an engineer’s work is the general public and this explains why the first and foremost obligation of a registered professional engineer is to the satisfy public welfare.

The stakeholders in engineering are not just those who invest monetarily in projects or construction works but more importantly, the public who uses those constructions where they rely on it for their use or for their safety. Thus, before anything or anyone else, the public’s welfare must be considered first in the profession of engineering. Read More