Engineering For Societal Betterment: Positive And Negative Impacts

Environmental Impact and Eco-Friendly Development

Write about the Reflective Writing for Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education.

During my early college days as an engineering student, I decided to work towards ensuring a safe environment. Being a student of mechanical engineering, I have always had to deal with construction of structures  and various models.. While I was attending a workshop on learning how to construct, I realized that the heat and pollution emitted from these harm the environment in various ways. In my academic curriculum, I came across varied topics that could be used to societal betterment. As an engineer my duty is to apply my professor’s instructions into the best interests of the humans and society. With the help of my professor and instructor I learnt how to utilize my knowledge for societal betterment, building machines that will cause lesser harm to the environment. Engineering has a wide impact on society because we are constructing and building the future and all our knowledge should be driven towards making the world an environmentally safe place. I was taught that environment is harmed by the rays that are emitted and therefore it is our duty as engineers to ensure that eco-friendly machines are built that do not cause detriment to the nature (Holden, Linnerud and Banister 2017). My course work has been most driven towards making socially relevant equipments that help in creating sustainable models.

Positive impact:. Machines and equipments needed by engineers  have damaging effect on the environment as a result of which humans can suffer tremendous hazards. The essential duty of an engineer is to use eco-friendly gadgets that will preserve the nature and also not use up all resources. It is my duty as an engineer to not run after economic gratification but to take risk driven initiatives that will ultimately lead to a sustained environment. I am duty bound to engage myself in the production of machines that produce less harmful emissions and apply less harmful techniques to improve energy efficiency.

Negative impact: While having to build a bridge in a remote village, we had to resettle an indigenous tribe and hence the land where they grew up were not accessible to them anymore. Their economic rights were hampered and they could not co-exist with their tribe in their own habitat. This is a professional hazard we have to undertake to ensure that the society betters from our work but the sometimes humans of a certain tribe face the collateral damage.

Positive and Negative Impacts of Documenting Authentic Data

In one of the workshops that I attended, I was explained about the importance of preserving the nature and the concept of sustainable development. I was told during the workshop that preserving the nature is a primary duty as an engineer because we are building machines and devising instruments that can alter the harmonious construct of the nature (Le blanc 2015). The workshop focused on ensuring that all engineers are taught how to preserve the natural resources and not exhaust them because the resources are limited and as a human race, we cannot survive if the resources deplete. The duty extends to ensuring that the future generation is not devoid of natural resources (Charles Jr, Chmidheiny and Watts 2017).

Engineering schools are taking up courses that help in water resource management; explore the social impact of engineering on students. We have to be taught w to direct our education towards preserving the nature and course works need to be tailor made to involve students in ensuring human rights is made priority. 

Documentation  is part of our learning and it is the art of managing documents that are necessary for our projects and keeping them handy and correct. Paperwork is at the core of every big company because they provide documentation (Glatz 2014).  Engineers have to be very efficient in managing documents and analyze data (Barry and Herkert 2015). Engineers provide large-scale input and insight into the working of an instrument or a gadget. To work efficiently, it is very important for us to manage and compile all the day. We have to be very efficient and prompt. As an employee of the company, I was made to handle all the documents, compile them and preserve them for future references. 

Positive impact: As an engineer, my work does not limit itself to only construction of manufacture of instruments but also maintain an authentic and reliable database. Working in the company, I not only used my theoretical knowledge to form opinions but also recorded them as documents for future use. Through my experiences, I came to realize that many calculations go into formulating a device and this need to be authentic and without errors. As an employee, I was made to conduct surveys to reach a consensus and that required meticulous calculations and error free deductions which always had to be verified by seniors and experienced professionals. 

Negative impact: Human are fallible and sometimes our errors lead to large scale destruction.  I had to prepare blueprints, graphs, drawings, charts and diagrams and any fallacy would have led large-scale destructions of property and human life. If I do not keep a record of all the authentic data that I am using in my work, there might be errors and can lead to collapse of bridges or buildings and harm the huge chunk of humans. Poor documentation and wrong information cannot be ignored in case of engineers because we are devising projects that have a futuristic element. These paper works take a lot of time and are time consuming in the sense that manual labour can be very time intensive.  (Hann 2015).

The Importance of Communication Skills in Engineering

Engineers like us are required to do massive paper work before an assignment finally takes off and these documents should lay down all the intricate details of the project. The onus is on the engineers like us who prepare the blueprint for the workers to work on and if there an inaccuracy in those blueprints, there will be a major collapse of the entire project. As an engineer I have to prepare various quality assurance projects that ascertain the quality of a project. Asset documentation is also a part of an engineer’s work wherein I have to document assets of the company and make sure they are credible, reliable and free from errors.

Clients keep changing the requirements and to keep a track of that, digital documentation is very important because that will save a lot of time and will also reduce chances of making errors.  All these information also need to be properly managed by me to ensure no mistakes are made while preparing a project. Being part of a diverse subject like engineering, manual documentation should be replaced by digital documentation. (Borenstein and Arkin 2016).

Communication is expression of thoughts and ideas across a wide range of topics. As an engineer, my work entails that I work on technology but that does not limit my communication. Throughout the day, I have to interact with my team mates, give them instructions and head them into new projects.

Positive impact: Not limiting my interactions to engineers, I also communicate with my clients, seniors to me who are more experienced to gain knowledge into any subject I am working on. In my profession, communication skill is a must have because without interaction it is impossible to convey my plans across to my team. Being the head of the team and being in a managerial position, I have to communicate with my team mates and it is imperative that I give them all the details regarding the nature of the project, their work, the deadline, the procedure they need to follow for the smooth functioning of the project.

Negative impact: Even though my field is more technical in nature, the marketing aspect of my career requires that I communicate with the clients and investors to market myself better. My teams is varied combination of people from different ethnicities and background and therefore requires me to communicate in different languages to express my opinion. That is an effective hindrance to communication in a team of varied differences. 

Effective communication helps in guiding the team into working on the right requirements (Carter et al.2016). The art of articulating ideas to the team members is an essential aspect of engineering and as a team member I am expected to be adept at it. As an engineer I also need to collaborate with other engineers and to do that I need to communicate my plans effectively. Collaborators need efficient prowess over language and communication and only then will they make any attempt to merge with my plans. Engineering being a multi-disciplinary subject area, I need to have knowledge of vast ideas and utilize them in my projects. To grow as an industry, I need to meet investors and convince them about the authenticity of my project for them to fund me. An investor will be convinced in my work only if I can articulate my plans in a well structured and formulated way.

Being conversant in technological language and knowing my field will not suffice and therefore I need to inculcate the talent of expressing my views to a non technological audience in the least complex ways. I have to have a grasp of knowledge and language skills to communicate to a larger audience because my profession entails working with workers and technicians who do not have the academic qualification to understand technical terms. There is a need for language training so that people feel comfortable expressing their opinions.  Language is a barrier breaker because in my team people come from various backgrounds and varied technical proficiency, hence to put across my views and make my team function to the mark, I need to communicate efficiently. 

Barry, B.E. and Herkert, J.R., 2015. Engineering ethics. In Cambridge handbook of engineering education research. Cambridge University Press.

Borenstein, J. and Arkin, R., 2016. Robotic nudges: the ethics of engineering a more socially just human being. Science and engineering ethics, 22(1), pp.31-46.

Carter, D.F., Ro, H.K., Alcott, B. and Lattuca, L.R., 2016. Co-curricular connections: The role of undergraduate research experiences in promoting engineering students’ communication, teamwork, and leadership skills. Research in Higher Education, 57(3), pp.363-393.

Charles Jr, O.H., Schmidheiny, S. and Watts, P., 2017. Walking the talk: The business case for sustainable development. Routledge

Glatz, B., 2014. Ethics in Engineering.

Han, H., 2015. Virtue ethics, positive psychology, and a new model of science and engineering ethics education. Science and engineering ethics, 21(2), pp.441-460.

Holden, E., Linnerud, K. and Banister, D., 2017. The imperatives of sustainable development. Sustainable Development, 25(3), pp.213-226

Koizumi, H., 2017. Ethics-Based-Engineering: Importance of Academy’s Initiative Toward Human Security and Well-Being. In Healthcare Engineering (pp. 1-7). Springer, Singapore.

Le Blanc, D., 2015. Towards integration at last? The sustainable development goals as a network of targets. Sustainable Development, 23(3), pp.176-187.

Trabia, M., Longo, J.A. and Wainscott, S., 2016. Training Graduate Engineering Students in Ethics.