Individual Liability and the Development of Defensive Engineering in Professional Practice
Publication: Journal of Civil Engineering Education
Volume 146, Issue 4
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed increased individual sanctions for engineers in the event of a major failure such as the Deepwater Horizon blowout. The medical profession experienced a similar trend, which has been well-documented. Fears of litigation have resulted in defensive medicine, practices aimed at reducing doctors’ risk of legal liability, sometimes to the detriment of patient care. To date, the emergence of defensive engineering has received only minimal attention. An exploratory survey was conducted with Australian engineers () about their responses to personal liability concerns, guided by observable trends among medical doctors. The analysis compared reported engineering practices with those adopted in the medical profession. The prevalence of consideration of liability and adoption of defensive practices is such that defensive engineering can be considered to be established behavior. Engineers are responding particularly by using extra or augmented resources and increased reliance on routine. Some defensive practices are more insidious in medicine than in engineering, giving insight into the potential path these concerns could take if left unchecked, including the impact on current trends in civil engineering education.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are proprietary or confidential in nature and may only be provided with restrictions (e.g., anonymized data). Data are summarized in the text and Tables 3 and 4. Raw survey data are proprietary and therefore are not available.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded in part by the Energy Pipelines Cooperative Research Centre, supported through the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program. The cash and in-kind support from the Australian Pipelines and Gas Association Research and Standards Committee is gratefully acknowledged. We acknowledge the support of Engineers Australia Queensland Division in distributing the survey. We also acknowledge the survey participants who contributed to this study. Many of the respondents expressed a desire to contribute to the future of their profession and they saw our survey as a vehicle to do so. They deserve our sincere thanks.
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Journal of Civil Engineering Education
Volume 146 • Issue 4 • October 2020
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©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 6, 2019
Accepted: May 21, 2020
Published online: Jun 25, 2020
Published in print: Oct 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Nov 25, 2020
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