Engineering Project Management

15Applying Our Ideas in the Real World, Ethics in Engineering

In many aspects of engineering and engineering project management, there are factors in tension with each other. In fact, we have seen many examples of this throughout this book: making the airplane lighter achieves better fuel efficiency, but makes the plane more expensive; hiring more people for your project might get it finished sooner, but probably increases the total cost at completion; and so forth. Every engineering management process that we have discussed is subject to similar tension when you go out into the real world and try to apply it. In this chapter, I help you understand how to use these techniques within the limitations of actual people, companies, and customers. I also discuss the sort of knowledge that you will need to acquire on a continuing basis as you move through your engineering project management career.

I conclude with a discussion on the important subject of ethics in engineering.

15.1 Applying Our Ideas in the Real World

I found my time as the manager of large, complex engineering projects to be a great life experience. I hope that you will too. I found it to be interesting and important, a very nice combination of attributes. It was also stressful; I suspect that anything that is both interesting and important is going to be, at times, stressful.

It can also consume your life for long periods of time; accepting the position of manager of a large, complex engineering project is ...