Incident At Morales Ethical Dilemmas

Incident at Morales is a short video that brings to attention ethical dilemmas that could be faced in the engineering work field. Phaust Chemical is a company that develops paint removers. They have thus far, dominated the paint remover market. Chemitoil, a competing company of Phaust, has recently plan to introduce a paint remover that competes with Phaust in the market. As a result, Phaust now has a high desire to quickly build a new plant and develop a paint remover in order to stay competitive. Phaust decides to construct a new chemical plant in Mexico in order to save costs. Fred Martinez, a chemical engineer, is hired by Phaust to design the new plant. Fred was a Chemitoil consultant when they were building their own plant for their new …show more content…
Chemistre, Phaust’s parent company, cut twenty percent of the budget. As a result, Fred is met with several tough decisions. Instead of lowering production rates as a result of the budget cuts, Fred is urged to cut construction costs. Fred is then confronted with several other engineering issues. He has to decide whether or not to use expensive controls manufactured by Lutz and Lutz, which is a product that Phaust has used in all of their plants. One of the reasons Phaust chose to build the plant in Mexico is because of their lax environmental policy. Fred mush decide whether to line the evaporation ponds to prevent hazardous materials to seep into the groundwater supply and be dangerous for the local population of where they are setting up the plant. In addition, Fred must choose to purchase pipes and connectors made from stainless steel, or a high pressure alloy. Finally, as a precautionary measure, Fred must decide whether after the automatic controls fail, whether to allow an individual to control the process manually. These where all of the engineering challenges that Fred faced in Incident at Morales. The tradeoff of cost and effectiveness versus personal safety and quality was …show more content…
For one, the only reason Fred was hired for the Phaust job was because he was a consultant for Chemitoil when they were designing their own plant for the new paint remover. This was Fred’s first plant design project, he was definitely not qualified for the project and yet he accepted the job anyways. This project was a major deal for Fred, a great opportunity since he had to design and build an entire plant from the ground up. However, it is important for engineers to recognize when a project is too big to handle. Fred also knew that Phaust was a direct competitor for Chemitoil, for whom he consulted for. Even if he did not sign a non-disclosure agreement, it was still morally and ethically questionable for Fred to accept the position in the first place. But Fred did except the position, even though he perhaps needed more industrial experience before accepting a plant design and build position. The team meeting in regards for the new plant was met with tension. It was obvious that the team at Phuast was dysfunctional. There were poor communication issues and each member of the subsystem was out for themselves.