Bribes are Bad

     Whether it be a street market in a third country or Wall Street everything is effected by economics. Economics changes with the times, through the dirty thirties and the internet boom. One of the main driving forces of economics is competition. Marketing, innovation, price dropping are a few different ways to make some one better in a competitive environment. These things all take time and many people are tempted to cut corners to get a similar effect for much less time and effort even if those things involve unethical or even illegal activities. In the field of engineering the act of giving or receiving bribes is both ethically and legally wrong, but they still persist perhaps because some are willing to let or even aid in corruption in order to better themselves.

     Bribery is the act of giving or promising someone compensation in order to sway judgment or try less hard than possible. There are many places in engineering where this takes place. One such place is when biding for a project. In order to “seal the deal” the bidding party may offer the other party a “down payment.” Another instance that this may occur is a manager might offer a lower employee some money to order lower quality parts and split the difference. These examples show situations where bribes intersect engineering.

     Engineers, however, are not unaware that bribes and other dubious actions take place within their fields. Many different branches have composed a code of ethics. Most codes have a section that says something like, “Licensees will neither accept nor offer bribes.” The first point in most codes is usually something like, “Licensees first priority is to the safety and benefit of the public.” Bribes cause people to either produce or settle for work that is less than their best. This action causes the public to potentially be at risk therefore breaking the paramount rule of an engineer.

     Accepting bribes can put both parties, briber and accepter, in legal trouble. Some ways this could occur is if a large scale project, like a bridge, fails and kills lots of people. In some cultures it is OK to bribe if not even expected, however in America it is illegal to bribe because it causes low quality products to be produced. Because of the breach of the code of ethics, one side affect could be the loss of the guilty person’s engineering license most likely never to receive it again.

     Completion is a fine line to success the economy. Stray too far on one end and that person will end up giving and receiving bribes, which will help for while. But in the end if or when he or she gets caught, it will end poorly for him or her and anyone else he or she has “helped” during his or her time in engineering. Not only are bribes dangerous and illegal but also unethical. They break two important parts of the code of ethics. In fact it break the foundational rule of engineering, “You are here to better mankind.”

A Review of Chinese Engineering

     The growth of population has a positive correlation to the increased use of transportation. Through this growth in transportation, roads and railways are built. But when one of these lines intersects a body of water or a canyon a bridge must be built in order to continue the expansion. People then trust the bridges to be just as safe as driving on any other section of the road. When one of these massive structures fails, people are much more leery about other projects built by the same company. One such bridge that underwent a similarly drastic change in public opinion is the Yangmingtan Bridge in China.

     A section of the bridge in northern China in the city of Harbin collapsed on August 24, 2012. The bridge was originally supposed to take three years to finish, but it was finished in only half of the time. It only stood for then months before this incident occurred. The bridge spans nine miles and cost almost $300 million. The initial reason why the bridge collapsed was four large over loaded trucks were parked on the same 300 foot section. This section flipped to the side then fell 100 feet to the ground. Only three people were killed and five people were injured.

     This disaster is saddening and puts mistrust in the Chinese engineers. But when this incident is put into context with all the other disasters that have happened lately in China it becomes more of a conspiracy about corruption. With the recent school collapses, the train crashes, and the six other bridges falling since July of 2011, the Chinese people have been questioning the truth of the building standards.

     I personally think that China needs to make some major reforms to their standards. They need to make more expanded safety procausions and make the punishment for not following these safety standards more severe. China also should make weigh stations similar to the ones on the United States highways. This will reduce the number of overloaded trucks on the road and also take away the excuse that the government used on the six bridge failures preceding the Yanmingtan bridge collapse.

     These catastrophes will hopefully wake China to the problem of the insufficient safety measures in its infrastructure. Better educating engineers and researching new technologies in civil engineering would be ways that these tragedies could have a positive effect on civil engineering. The most obvious area where the general public will be affected is primarily in the distrust of bridges made by China.

     The bridge is a means by which expansion past rivers and canyons occurs. It is a vessel that people trust their lives with every time they are used. The Yangmingtan Bridge broke peoples trust when it collapsed. It is one of many other infrastructures in China that has failed in the recent past which leads people to question the integrity of Chinese engineers and the like. Hopefully these recent catastrophes will awaken China to the need for change. Hopefully that change will bring about things that will benefit not only civil engineering as a whole but also the entire world.

Three Gorges Dam

     Since the discovery of electricity inventors have been thinking of creative new ways to use it. Whether it is Thomas Edison’s light bulb or Bill Gates’ personal computer, they have all created a need for power generation. Early on water and wind mills were used to produce energy, but it was not enough to sustain the industrial age. People then turned to coal. In more recent times countries have used nuclear power plants because of its large outputs of energy. The down side is that this process creates large quantities of byproducts that are fairly difficult to dispose of. That is the very reason why sustainable “green” energy has been researched. This research has brought about wind turbines and solar panels. The problem with them is they fail to produce enough energy to replace the older ways of production. Fortunately, there exists a way to harvest large quantities of energy with small amounts of pollution, dams. Dams, as well as almost everything else, have been welcomed with mixed opinions. The Three Gorges Dam (TGD) is no different.

     TGD is the world’s largest Dam. It is composed of 27.96 million meters cubed of concrete and is located on the Yangtze River in China. Construction was started in 1994 and was finished in 2008 except for a ship lift, an elevator for ships. When finished the lift will be the world’s largest lift, yet only take a bit over thirty minutes for the whole transportation process of one ship as opposed to the almost four hours it currently takes a ship to maneuver through the locking system. One of the major reasons that TGD was build was to help prevent the flooding of Shanghai, a very large city downstream. The way that TGD does this is by storing excess water during the flood session and releasing it during the dry session therefore maintaining a more constant level. It will also be a vessel to increase shipping capacity along the Yangtze by widening its banks and deepening its bottom. One of the main perks of TGD is that at full capacity it produces 22500MW of power per year which is comparable to about 15 nuclear power plants or 750,000 wind turbines. The Itapúa dam was the world’s largest dam by producing more than 12000MW per year until TGD was built.

     Even though TGD has many positives it also has many negatives. For instance, it displaced over 1.3 million people in order to build the dam and flood upstream of the dam. This is a large number, but when you think of the 13 million in Shanghai that they are protecting from flood it does not seem so bad. However, the Chinese government did a poor job with retrieving ancient artifacts form sites. More than 1300 sites went under water and many where unexplored at all. During the flooding process also many habitats where either changed or destroyed.

The Three Gorges Dam has its draw backs, but it is much better in almost every aspect that anything else out there right now. From wind to nuclear, I think that Hydroelectric is the best mode for creating power. I also think that The TGD is a masterpiece to dams.

     As children almost everyone aspires to be someone great whether it is an astronaut, doctor, or firefighter. When I was a child I was no different. My dream came to me while building channels and pits out of mud in my family’s garden or building helicopters or spaceships with Lego’s I decided that I wanted to be an engineer. In high school when I took a class on CADD I revised my dream to either architecture or Civil Engineering because I wanted to help build and design things. I eventually chose Civil Engineering because I wanted to do something with building dams and bridges. I am currently a junior studying Civil Engineering at North Dakota State University. When I tell people that, many do not know what Civil Engineers actually do. Civil Engineering is actually a very broad major that encompasses many things like consulting, building and designing structures, constructing and designing transportation systems, and transporting water and waste water.

     Engineers have a job that may go unnoticed for many people. They make sure a product (motorcycle, new building, bridge, etc.) meets if not even exceeds safety standards, is economically efficient, and long lasting. Civil engineers in particular do this to bridges, roads, buildings, and water and waste water systems. The main interest of a civil engineer is safety because we do not want to build anything that would be a risk or danger to the public. One of their main values is ethical actions when it comes to everything they deal with. Engineers are expected to follow a code of ethics with the first and for most expectation being to look out for the good of mankind.

     People like to group things to help them understand the world around them. These groups or classes are called stereotypes. The stereo typical engineer is a man with poor communication skills therefore he has few friends, yet is on genius level intelligence. He usually cannot tell people what he is doing because he over uses jargon and does not simplify his thoughts. Engineers are realizing these things are a poor representation because they cannot get funded if the public is not given a valid reason that justifies the spending the projects will need. One physicist who has noticed this trend is Michio Kaku. He is attempting to change what people think of the sciences by informing the public of the benefits of research.

     The main purpose Civil Engineers have to the world is to make sure that their product is as safe as possible. They also have the duty to uphold the honor code through ethical work. The field needs people who are willing to be a mouth piece to the public. The more I learn about Civil Engineering the more glad I am that I chose it as my major and the more excited I am to graduate and start to put things into practice that I have learned in school. A small goal of mine is to make children want to be something great like a civil engineer.