Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/11/2024
4:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Location
Urbis
Categories
Ethical practice – What, Why and How?
National Football Museum, Manchester, Urbis Building, Cathedral Gardens, Todd St, Manchester M4 3BG
Overview
History shows us a catalogue of events that when deconstructed powerfully illustrate how influences such as power, politics and money, led to decisions that did not put social responsibility at the forefront of decision-making. Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, Piper Alpha to name but a few.
More recent events such the Boeing 737 Max fraud conspiracy, the Grenfell Tower tragedy and the ongoing inquiry, and the failings of the Horizon IT system at the Post Office and the ongoing inquiry have heightened awareness of the important role engineering and other professions play in both the safety and well-being of society, and the need to ensure ethical decision making and practices are at the forefront.
Ethical practice is fundamental to professional practice and social responsibility. Not only is it an effective insurance policy, mitigating risk, it can give organisations competitive advantage. Serious risks can occur when an organisational culture is at odds with its stated values and there is a gap between ‘what we say’ and ‘what we do’. Increasingly, professional institutions are laying out agendas for change requiring multi stakeholder engagement and codifying ethical practice for their members.
How can engineers, designers and other professionals incorporate ethical thinking into the infrastructure, products and services they develop so that future generations are not left to pick up the pieces?
Join us for a panel discussion on ethical practice that will consider issues such as:
- What does ethical practice mean ?
- What does good look like?
- What are the ethical challenges of current and emerging technologies?
Our panellists include:
Marlene Kanga – Chair of the IChemE Safety Centre
Bio: Dr Marlene Kanga is a Chartered Chemical Engineer, an Honorary Fellow of IChemE and an experienced Chair and non-executive Director.
She is an Officer of the Order of Australia, a national honour, awarded for “distinguished service to engineering, particularly as a global leader and role model to women, within professional organisations and business.”
Marlene studied chemical engineering at the Indian Institution of Technology, Bombay, India and has a Masters in process safety engineering from Imperial College London, UK, and a PhD from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has been involved in the process safety engineering industry in Australia and New Zealand, for more than 30 years, developing the land Use Safety Criteria for the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Planning which were adopted in regulations across Australia and New Zealand.
She was the 2017-2019 President of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO), the first chemical engineer to hold this position, and was National President of Engineers Australia in 2013. Marlene is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, an international Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the International Science Council, an Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia, a Foreign Fellow of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Academy of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow (honorary) of the engineering institutions of New Zealand and India.
She is currently a non-executive director of Endeavour Energy, Air Services Australia, Standards Australia and formerly of Sydney Water Corporation Innovation Science Australia and Chair of the Australian Department of Industry and Science R&D Incentives Committee, the largest government support program for industry R&D. She is a mentor for start-up boards and a director of iOmniscient Pty. Ltd. which has developed artificial intelligence for video technologies and Rux Energy which is commercialising new technologies for hydrogen storage.
Marlene was the 2018 Engineers Australia National Professional Engineer of the Year and received the 2019 Chemeca Medal for her contribution to chemical engineering in Australia and New Zealand and the 2023 Ada Lovelace Medal for outstanding Woman in Engineering. She has been listed among the 100 engineers making a contribution to Australia in the last 100 years as part of Engineers Australia Centenary celebrations in 2019, among the Top 100 Women of Influence and one of the Top 10 women engineers in Australia.
Prof David Bogle –Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering UCL, Past President, Institution of Chemical Engineers, Chair of Royal Academy of Engineering / Engineering Council Engineering Ethics Reference Group
Bio:
David Bogle is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Pro-Vice-Provost of the Doctoral School at University College London (UCL), overseeing early-career researchers across all disciplines. He joined UCL in 1990 after completing his education at Imperial College, three years of employment in industry and three years in academia in Australia. His expertise is in Process Systems Engineering and in Systems Biology working with a range of academic and industrial partners, particularly from the pharmaceutical industry. He served as President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers for 2022-3 and as Scientific Vice President of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) from 2017-2021. He was awarded the IChemE Council Medal in 2006 for his leading role in the 2005 Chemical Engineering World Congress and the Jacques Villermaux medal of the EFCE in 2023 for his contribution to the development of European Chemical Engineering.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2005. He chairs the Engineering Ethics Reference Group for the Royal Academy of Engineering and Engineering Council, leading a report released in February 2022 ‘Engineering Ethics: maintaining society’s trust in the engineering profession’.
Emma Crichton – Innovation Director, Engineers without Borders
Bio:
Engineering shapes the world we all live in. Emma works to reshape how we engineer, to ensure a safe and just future for all. She is a chartered civil engineer with six years of experience working on projects within the water industry in Scotland, and over five years of experience working in the social sector with Engineers Without Borders UK.
Emma is an emerging leader and advocate for globally responsible engineering, as demonstrated by her roles as Innovation Director at Engineers Without Borders UK, as a trustee at Azuko (an architecture charity), and trustee with Useful Simple Trust (a B-Corp and Social Enterprise). Additionally, she sits on the Engineering Council (UK regulator) board.
Emma has worked on a range of initiatives – all aimed to nurture a cultural shift, within engineering degrees and practice, towards prioritising the development of globally responsible engineers and professionals working in engineering.
Engineers Without Borders UK offers various programmes directly for engineering professionals including virtual design challenge Reshaping Engineering and the Global Responsibility Competency Compass, a learning tool for everyday professionals, endorsed by the Engineering Council.
Within education, Engineers Without Borders UK has delivered the Engineering for People Design Challenge (as part of university degrees) to 70,000 students since 2011 across South Africa, the UK, and the USA. Emma is coordinating a Systems Change Lab and led the development of the Reimagined Degree Map with the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Sarah Jayne Hitt – Professor of Liberal Studies, New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), Project Manager of Ethics and Sustainability Toolkits, Engineering Professors Council
Bio:
Sarah has been teaching in universities for almost 20 years in both the US and the UK. After earning her PhD in Literature (specializing in Native American Studies and Literature of the American West), she was surprised to find herself establishing a career in engineering education at the Colorado School of Mines. There, she served as the Director of the Writing Center, Director of the McBride Honors Program in Public Affairs, and Founding Director of a First Year Program designed to bring the arts into ethical engineering design and to recruit diverse students to engineering. While serving as lead for a module called “Nature and Human Values”, it received an “Exemplar in Engineering Ethics Education” award from the National Academy of Engineering.
In 2019 she moved to the UK to become Founding Professor of Liberal Studies at Hereford’s start-up higher education provider, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), specialising in bringing ethics, communication, sustainability, and a place-based approach to the curriculum. Now, she acts as Project Manager for the Engineering Professors’ Council’s Ethics and Sustainability Toolkits, is Visiting Professor in the School of Computing, Engineering, and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University, and is Lead for Transferable Skills at NMITE’s Centre for Advanced Timber Technology. She has recently authored chapters for the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research and the International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education.
Sponsored by RAS Ltd.
Supported by ISC
Bookings
Bookings are closed for this event.
