Practicing engineers, educators, students, professional organizations, and licensing boards are continually struggling with the application of ethical standards to the practice of engineering. Ethical dilemmas, by their very nature, are complex and usually involve conflicting regulatory, organizational, contractual, societal, and business practices. Resolution of ethical dilemmas can be complicated or impeded by engineers without a working knowledge of ethical requirements, coupled with an inability to distinguish among different sources of these requirements and their corresponding role in the professional and legal environments. Accordingly, engineers often are confronted with unexpected legal and professional consequences as a result of their decisions on ethical issues. This paper examines the sources of professional responsibility requirements for engineers, typical provisions, enforcement mechanisms, and the legal implications of engineering ethics in the professional liability context, and suggests some changes in the current approach to engineering ethics in both the formal education and professional development of engineers.

Linking natural and social sciences is required in engineering to communicate and solve problems. However, this linkage can be difficult to achieve in engineering education and difficult to reflect on in professional practice. Due to the difficulties, methods to bring social sciences into the engineering curriculum should be presented. This paper describes a project to construct a bridge in rural Guatemala. Engineers, students, and others volunteered to construct the bridge while learning about the culture. The study goal was to determine how the service activity supported social science and engineering education. Data including participant responses to written, free-response, and Likert scale questions were collected after project completion. The project was a positive experience for North American engineering participants in that they gained an increased understanding of professional and ethical responsibility. The experience enhanced the engineering profession, increased nonengineer’s appreciation of engineering, and supported educational items, such as increased understanding in engineering solutions in a societal context and the ability to function on a multidisciplinary team. Socioeconomic differences, food and diet, and the importance of infrastructure, for not only developing but also developed countries, is described. The bridge project also provides information regarding the positive, ethical work of engineers and serves as a pilot for developing new international engineering projects.

The loss of open space to poorly planned, low-density development with an emphasis on unnecessarily wide streets and unneeded parking areas is known as urban sprawl. Recognizing the adverse environmental and social costs of sprawl, the need for smart growth strategies, such as low-impact development, is evident. While sprawl is usually addressed from a transportation perspective, a more integrated viewpoint that includes hydrologic engineering is warranted. The important principles of smart growth that relate to hydrologic engineering are identified. To assist in the assessment of the effectiveness of smart growth development alternatives, metrics are introduced. The metrics can serve as a means for communities to plan growth and establish strategies for development that will avoid the detrimental effects of urban sprawl.

The Editorial Board of the American Society of Civil Engineers Journal of Composites for Construction (Lawrence C. Bank, Editor) sponsored a survey of the civil/structural engineering programs around the world on the subject of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites, excluding the traditional steel–concrete composite construction and fiber reinforced concrete. This paper summarizes the main results from the survey. During the last decade, considerable focus has been devoted to the use of FRP composites in construction. The main driving force is the need for revitalizing the aging infrastructure with innovative materials and structural systems that last longer and require less maintenance. As the construction industry embraces FRPs in the field, the need for educating civil engineers with background on the subject has become more evident. Despite a significant number of field applications and laboratory research, the survey shows that FRPs have not yet been fully implemented in the engineering curricula, and the classrooms are still lagging behind. To improve this situation, civil engineering and their extension programs must provide sufficient training on unique features of FRPs so that engineers could design or specify them in construction. This survey should be repeated as a gauging tool again at the end of this decade.

On January 28, 2002, the Hawaii Supreme Court issued a decision known as the Okada Trucking decision that caused quite a stir in the construction community. The decision disturbed a long standing practice in contracting that permitted licensed general contractors to perform almost all specialty work on projects that qualified as general contracting projects, without having to obtain the applicable specialty licenses. This work describes the evolution of the Okada decision, its varying interpretations, some of its impact on the construction community, attempts to mitigate its negative results, and gives a proposed permanent solution. Initially thought of as a decision of enormous impact, its negative effects have been muted by a common sense approach and cooperation among various competing groups in the industry and the Contractors License Board. Although serious problems remain, there is hope for a solution with the continued spirit of cooperation in the industry.

As television documentaries and newspaper articles increasingly report the insurgence of lawsuits associated with toxic mold, professionals serving in the construction industry are reevaluating the design, supervision, and work associated with projects in an effort to reduce the possibility of water intrusion and toxic mold growth. The first step in preventing your name from being counted among possible defendants in a toxic mold lawsuit is to be informed of the different types of mold as well as the environments that cause these toxic molds to flourish. A knowledge of the several theories of liabilities and the successful defenses in past toxic mold litigation will also provide perspective. Finally, a survey of current efforts by both government and quasi-public agencies to address the problem of toxic mold will conclude this review of the latest defect in the construction industry: mold.

Frequently during the progression of a construction project, the design professional is forced into the role of a judge of project disputes between the owner and contractor. These disputes generally involve substantial claims for extra compensation or extra time and have significant impact on the owner and contractor’s financial position on the project. The architect or engineer will be pressured by the owner, who controls whether the design professional gets paid. The contractor, however, may threaten to pursue legal claims against design professionals if they make the contractor’s job more expensive or fail to give it the appropriate time extension. In many cases, design professionals must admit or deny whether their services were defective in some nature. In addition to these pressures, the design professional is not necessarily trained or comfortable with acting as a judge and interpreting the meaning of contract terms. Generally, when an architect or engineer performs this judicial function, they are immune from any liability for the results of decisions. However, the design professional must make the decision in good faith and with impartiality. In addition, design professionals must only decide those matters that their contract obligates design professionals to decide. This paper will address the nature of the designer’s role as judge and the limits of the designer’s immunity with respect to the designer’s contract obligations and good faith and impartiality requirements.