John
Your 2nd para could be “correct”, but hopefully “not quite” because, maybe, some of those involved will have learned lessons for the future, or at least all that left “niggling memories” in their minds of what “someone” said in the past about something that they themselves had dismissed at the time, would prod them to actually looking a little more closely at some issues that have now arisen. ;-) “Hope springs eternal”! John E Allen W. London, UK From: John Woodgate [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 December 2016 10:57 To: 'John Allen'; [email protected] Subject: RE: [PSES] Practical ethics? -- text version It's a very long and cherished tradition in the British Army that it does not use foresight. Your exclusion almost certainly stemmed from your sticking to hard facts and not 'dressing up' your opinions to make them more acceptable. You might say that that is unethical, but look at it another way – you can be as ethical as you wish, but if your ethical opinions and acts are rejected, your ethical stance has had no effect, Indeed, it may well have encouraged non-ethical people. With best wishes DESIGN IT IN! OOO – Own Opinions Only <http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk/> www.jmwa.demon.co.uk J M Woodgate and Associates Rayleigh England Sylvae in aeternum manent. From: John Allen [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2016 10:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PSES] Practical ethics? -- text version I had similar problems with customers as well, especially when the company I worked for was doing sub-contract Safety Case work for a supplier of armoured tractors for the UK MoD! Neither our customer "wanted to know" when I raised some safety-related "issues" about issues about the tractors and what they were going to be used for in Kandahar province during the time the Royal Engineers were working there to support UK ground forces in the fight against the Taliban, such as the following question: “These vehicles will be used at night with night vision goggles (NVG), and so have the users been trained in using them at night with such goggles?” (if you thought even slightly "hard" about the subject you could foresee a lot of very realistic hazardous situations!) The initial, and for a long time, response was simply that the troops had been trained to use NVG (“and that was good enough”) – but, as the Safety Case Engineer on the project, I could not “let go” of the issue until I considered that it was well on the way to being dealt with. It took about a year, but, finally, “someone” in the Army decided that they would have to do night-time trials with those vehicles using NVG, and I think that they were then “rather surprised” to find out that there were a lot of unforeseen and hazardous issues with trying to use them under the typical operating conditions – so much so that they mandated that similar trials should be performed on any vehicle type to be used with NVG. There were also a number of other, sometimes less potentially serious, hazard issues with those projects that I did not “let go of” until I considered they were well on the way to being solved, and, generally, they were. You could say that I had been “vindicated”, but all the above cut little ice with the MoD project team or our direct sub-contract customer, and the latter then stated emphatically that they did not want me working on any future safety case project for them! That, of course, made me “less than popular” with my own company’s management, and resulted in my being given little or no new “chargeable” work for most of the rest of the time I worked for them, which, in turn, made my situation there far more stressful L. “Ethics” versus “personal survival”??? John E Allen W. London, UK -----Original Message----- From: Cortland Richmond [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 27 December 2016 00:35 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PSES] Practical ethics? -- text version One problem for engineers is that they work for people whose intent is to make money, and who are remarkably resistant to spending any more than is necessary to barely meet requirements and get products on the market. That is actually forgivable; what isn't forgivable is a willingness to accept not meeting performance, regulatory, or even safety requirements, accepting settlements and fines as part of the cost of doing business to make a little more on each unit that goes out the door. I wonder if ethics classes are doing anything to fix that. Ethics Lesson: Many years ago, late at night, an armed helicopter landed at a base where I was stationed, with a radio problem that kept the pilot from talking to troops under attack. I was unable to fix the problem no matter what I replaced, and over the next few days, no one else in our maintenance shop could figure it out either. But soldiers probably died that night because their close air support was gone. Finally, I had the crew-chief run the rotor speed up to what the pilot had reported and, at some risk to myself, followed the cabling the length of the airframe until I found one assembly at the tip of the tail fin, right next to the spinning rotor, where the RF was being interrupted and reflected. Taking it inside to the test bench, I discovered an internal capacitor lead had crystallized and broken, and -- at just one engine setting -- the ends of the break were vibrating enough to render radio transmissions unintelligible. I might take some pride in finding that when nobody else could -- but people may have died because I was too tired, too lazy, or just not thinking well enough to to try that earlier. Died. That's an ethics class no one should have to take. Three rubber grommets could have prevented it, and I wonder how much was saved by leaving them out... How many wounded or dead (if any) I can't say. I once shut down a manager complaining an AED's EMC Test Plan I'd been contracted to write was too hard to pass and too expensive to meet. Never mind that the requirements had been increased, and all their own engineers were busy bringing existing products up to the new standard; when he asked why I'd made the test so hard I told him: "I don't want you to kill people whose lives you're trying to save." Ethics -- the hard way. Cortland Richmond -- 26 December 2016 > - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. 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To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <[email protected]> Mike Cantwell <[email protected]> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <[email protected]> David Heald: <[email protected]>
