This forum is a continuation of a regular series of columns on engineering ethics based on the Applied Ethics Case of the Month program, sponsored by the National Institute for Engineering Ethics (NIEE), Texas Tech University.

The Case-of-the-Month program consists of applied ethics cases taken from actual professional practice and presented in narrative format on the NIEE's interactive Web site, with the names of the participants and the locations altered to preserve anonymity. Each case is linked to a series of suggested solutions, not all of which are necessarily ethical but which represent reactions commonly found in professional practice. Web site visitors are given the opportunity to vote on their preferred course of action for the dilemma, as well as to offer commentary. Results are tabulated at the end of the voting period and the statiscal responses are reported, along with commentary and in some cases, the actual solution for the case.

Actual real-life situations are the central notion upon which the program is founded. Such ethics cases stimulate greater attention to ethical issues, and they allow readers the opportunity to avoid similar pitfalls in their own careers. In addition to individual review and reflection, the case histories may also provide a convenient focus for informal brown-bag discussions in firms and agencies.

Those interested in the program are encouraged to visit the NIEE's Case-of-the-Month Web site at the following Internet address: http://www.niee.org/Case-of-the-Month/. Results and discussion appear on the Web site and also appear in this forum section of the Journal of Professional Issues in Engi-neering Education and Practice. A more detailed description of this program appeared in the January 1998 issue of this journal.

The engineering concepts necessary for fully describing contaminant transport processes in soil and groundwater have been largely neglected by traditional civil engineering curricula in the United States. New lecture and laboratory modules have been developed and integrated into the undergraduate soil mechanics course for civil engineering students at the Colorado School of Mines. The lecture module includes theoretical development of the advection-dispersion equation and a set of practical example problems designed to clarify the relative importance of advection, dispersion, and molecular diffusion in realistic contaminant transport scenarios. The laboratory experiment is developed using relatively inexpensive soil permeability testing equipment common to most academic and industrial geotechnical engineering laboratories. Unlike conventional chemical transport testing, which requires relatively complicated, time consuming, and expensive analytical instrumentation, the new laboratory exercise relies on the use of simple colored dye for simulating the movement of a contaminant through a one-dimensional soil column. The key soil parameters governing the transport of the dye, including the diffusion coefficient, hydraulic conductivity, dispersion coefficient, and retardation coefficient, are quantified by observing the location and color intensity of the dye as it moves through the column. Emphasis is placed on maximizing the simplicity and visual impact of the experimental exercise. The effectiveness of the lecture and laboratory modules is assessed through a student survey.

This paper presents a detailed exposition of professionalism, carefully situated within the social, theoretical, and temporal context of the decades immediately following World War II. This classic conception of professionalism involves three attributes—knowledge, organization, and the ethic of professional service. Such an approach presumes a functionalist view of society specific to the middle years of the Twentieth Century, a time characterized by a high degree of occupational specialization, shared norms and values, stability, and the tendency to maintain equilibrium in the presence of social change. A clear picture of this classic view of professionalism is the first step toward understanding the contemporary meaning of professionalism for today’s engineering education and practice issues.

For the last seven years, a summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates site in structural engineering, funded by the National Science Foundation, has operated at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. During this time, 33 students from 22 colleges and universities have participated in the site. Participants are recruited nationally and have come from as far away as California and Puerto Rico. The program is intended to provide students interested in graduate studies with an introduction to research methods, and to provide students who will not continue their studies past a bachelor of science in civil engineering with a better understanding of how research provides the theoretical foundation of engineering practice. Students work individually with faculty on literature reviews, computer modeling, laboratory testing, and field research. Three students have researched structural failure case studies and the technical and ethical lessons to be learned from them. Participants also have the opportunity to tour construction sites and construction material manufacturers’ and fabricators’ facilities. During the past three years, an ethics seminar series has been added. At the end of the program, students prepare research papers and Web pages documenting their work and present their results to faculty, students, and other participants.

The recent publication of the U.K. Society of Construction Law’s protocol for dealing with delay claims has finally provided a good opportunity to make progress with a continuing difficulty that besets most substantial construction projects. The protocol makes recommendations on the issues that arise when delay claims must be managed. A report of recent research is conducted to test how U.K. professionals understand some of these issues and how they deal with them in practice. The conclusions show some areas of good agreement, notably in the way that early completion should be handled and the way that prolongation costs should be assessed. There are, however, areas that give rise to some concern. The methodology “time impact analysis” appears not to be well used in practice, and it also seems that contractors will have difficulty with the position taken on float ownership and concurrent delays.

California Civil Code §§895 through 945.5, also known as “SB 800,” has dramatically changed the legal landscape for residential construction projects in California. The law sets forth new, legislatively defined, actionable defects; a detailed prelitigation repair process; and available damages and defenses. This paper examines the impacts of the law on design professionals and concludes that the law appears to have supplanted the standard of care for design professionals in connection with residential construction—meaning that their services may now be measured against codified standards instead of against the performance of their peers. Alternatively, rather than supplanting the standard of care, the law may have the practical effect of shifting the burden of proof from homeowner claimants to the allegedly negligent design professionals, thereby requiring the defendant design professional to show that their services comply with the standard of care in order to escape liability. In either event, the playing field has changed dramatically for design professionals. This paper suggests ways in which design professionals might tailor their practices to best position themselves for claims which are sure to arise out of SB 800.