On Tuesday, August 23rd IEEE (PI)² Austin hosted a Professional Meeting on “Engineering Ethics”  

Will Griffin is Chief Ethics Officer of Hypergiant, an enterprise A.I. company based in Austin, Texas, was unexpectedly unable to attend because of a personal emergency.  Top of Mind Ethics is a heuristic that helps engineers, designers, product managers — anyone involved in the solution process — to integrate ethics into their workflows.  Kris Denhel showed a 10-minute YOUtube TED Talk presented by Will Griffen on ethics presenting this concept.

James Mercier, retired after decades of professional careers in the US and the world, in his role as a Professional Engineer and Master Electrician,  presented “Examples of Failure to Follow the Engineering Code”  and reviewed a primary section of the Code, S.137.55: “Engineers shall protect the Health, Safety, Property and Welfare of individuals, clients, business or public entities or members of the general population” (paraphrased). He reviewed this requirement in retrospect of the Fukushima failure when a tsunami hit the plant. Subsequent reviews found that designers ignored the probability of a large tsunami and failed to design accordingly.  Plan reviewers failed to catch the flaw or require additional simulations.

There were a few design changes that would have improved the outcome even with the plant below the record tsunami level:

• Protection of emergency power supplies, including diesel generators and batteries, by moving them to higher elevation or by placing them in watertight bunkers;
• Establishment of watertight connections between emergency power supplies and key safety systems; and
• Enhancement of the protection of seawater pumps (which were used to transfer heat from the plant to the ocean and to cool diesel generators) and/or constructing a backup means to dissipate heatProfessional Engineers must be able to cast a wide net, almost always working with Engineers in other disciplines, to make sure their goal of Protecting the Public is met as the primary outcome.