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Electrical and Electronics Engineering Please refer to the following codes of ethics:
National Society for Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of
Ethics: http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Code of
Ethics: http://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html
Clemson University is located in South Carolina. Electrical and Electronics Engineering Each state has its own laws regarding the
practice of engineering, but they are relatively similar. Here is the link to the South Carolina
Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Surveyors Law and Regulations website:
https://llr.sc.gov/eng/laws.aspx for general information and links to various documents. The
statute for engineers is at this link: Electrical and Electronics Engineering
https://llr.sc.gov/eng/PDF_Files/Engineers&SurveyorsStatute2018.pdf
Please consider the following scenarios, and answer the following questions with
explanations of your thought process, referring to the appropriate code or law as applicable.
It is expected that your answers will be at least one paragraph for each situation.
1. You are a licensed professional engineering (PE) and you are one of the owners of a
small engineering design firm. Your firm has taken a job for the design of the power
system in a small office building. The building is served with 208V, three-phase, 60 Hz
power from the utility and the service is 100kVA. The design involves sizing the
conductors, the circuit breakers, and layout of the electrical service for the building. This
is a relatively small project, and the design is fairly simple. You have done this type of
job many times, and have many examples of similar jobs to draw from so you don’t have
to start from a “clean sheet of paper.” You have other more complex designs that you are
working on and looming deadlines, and this small project is not your top priority but the
deadline for completion is nearing. You have a close friend who is a recent electrical
engineering graduate and you decide that this would be a good experience for your friend
to undertake. He is not an employee of your company, and you would pay him out of
your pocket for his time on the design. He will submit the design to you, you pay him for
his time, and then you seal the design drawings and present them to your client. What
do you think about this situation? Do you think there was an ethical issue involved in
what you did? Why or why not? Under what circumstances and conditions do you think
it is ethical to present your friend’s work to the client? Should you disclose that someone
else did the work to the client?
2. You are working as a product development engineer for a company that is one of the
leaders in air compressors driven by electric motors. One of your company’s competitors
has recently developed a new product called a “Rotaxal” which uses a new motor design
that increases energy efficiency by 25%. Your company is interested in developing a
competing product using a similar motor design, but does not want to be accused of
infringing patents. You engage your team of engineers and a patent attorney to assist with
an evaluation of the Rotaxal. Your company wants to keep the evaluation of the Rotaxal a
secret until you have decided if you can design a competing product and it is ready for the
market. As part of your evaluation of the competition, your company purchases several
samples of the Rotaxal from Amazon and they are shipped to your home to minimize the
possibility that the competitor would discover that your company is evaluating the
Rotaxal. You take the product samples to your company’s lab and evaluate them
carefully. During this evaluation, you discover a serious flaw in the design of the Rotaxal
that has the potential of seriously shocking a user under certain abnormal conditions. You
evaluate several samples of the product, and each of them has this issue. The flaw is not
obvious and would likely not be discovered unless someone was looking for the flaw. But
the flaw represents a serious hazard to a user of the Rotaxal under these abnormal
conditions. However, the likelihood of someone using the Rotaxal in this condition is low.
But, it is standard design practice to ensure a design is immune to this problem.
What do you do now with this discovery? Do you have an ethical duty to report this flaw?
Do you tell your competitor about this issue? This would divulge that your company is
evaluating the Rotaxal and may be developing a competing product. Since the likelihood
of someone using the Rotaxal in the hazardous situation is low, then do you say nothing?
Suppose you decide to report the issue through a third party so that you can maintain
anonymity. After discussing this with your supervisor, he/she directs you not to divulge the
information since your company is the only one that could have discovered this flaw. What
would you do now Electrical and Electronics Engineering