NSBE - Winter 2010/2011 - 51

ETHICS COuNT
Dr. Calvin Mackie, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and lifetime member of NSBE, is writing a book about leadership and the disaster. He says the spill raises ethical questions that engineers rarely like to face. “Ethics in engineering matters,” he says. “Engineering disasters occur when the technical people take shortcuts.” Yet Mackie, who lectures all over the country, says black students seldom seem interested in talking about the ethical dimensions of their profession. “They’re concerned with ‘Can I get a job?’ and ‘How much money will I make?’ It’s

“When a tragedy like this happens, people living outside the area, like me, get the work. But the people who live there don’t.” — Pamela Bingham, Bingham Consulting services
our responsibility to turn the conversation to ethics, character and morals. That’s why you see so many professional engineers so unhappy, hopping around from job to job. They’re too focused on trying to make a living and not enough on trying to make a life.” Adds Bingham, “as engineers, we have to make ethical calls every day. As an individual, you have to constantly assess what decisions you make, how it impacts people and how it impacts the environment. Engineering ethics should be integrated into every school’s curriculum.” from the site, which technicians using underwater robots quickly traced to as many as three leaks at the well. It quickly became clear that BP and the federal government were ill-prepared for such a disaster. As an ugly plume of oil gushed out of the blown well and a noxious oil slick oozed toward the coastal shores of at least four states, technicians struggled for weeks with how to — in the words of one — “drive a stake into the beast.” Technical terms from their failed attempts have entered popular lore: the shut-off valve, the containment dome, the topkill operation.

MuLTIPLE FAILuRES
BP says no single factor caused the explosion but rather a series of decisions made by “multiple companies and work teams.” “It is evident that a series of complex events, rather than a (Above) During an “abandon single mistake or failure led to ship” drill, scientists David the tragedy,” said BP’s outgoing Graves and Liza Baskin help chief executive Tony Hayward Regina Easley don her survival suit onboard the NOAA Ship in a September press release. Henry Bigelow. “Multiple parties, including BP, Halliburton and Transocean, were involved.” (Right) Emulsified oil remains on, and pooled below, vegetation The explosion occurred in Pass a Loutre, La., following late in the evening of April a previous week’s storm, May 20. The $350-million mobile 22, 2010. offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean and leased to BP, was operating with a crew of 126 in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, nearly 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Halliburton Energy Services was
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responsible for production casing and cementing the exploratory well. BP’s investigation lists a host of contributors to the accident: numerous instances of poor workmanship on the well, missed danger signals and the failure of critical components at critical moments. The explosion sent a tremendous spout of flames and thick black smoke shooting hundreds of feet into the air, taking the lives of 11 crew members and injuring 17 others. The rig burned for 36 hours before it sank. Soon after the rig disappeared beneath the waters, a large oil slick began to spiral outward

THE LONG vIEw
Meanwhile, scientists bickered with the Obama administration over the rate of the flow and the Continued on page 52

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• CAREER ENGINEER • winter 2010/11 • 51

NSBE - Winter 2010/2011

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