Social Responsibility of Engineers in Sustainable Construction

Structural engineers face vital challenges within the 21st century and among them, global environmental challenges should be a priority for Civil engineers. Civil engineering is one of the most vital production activities that human affecting the natural environment. With the rise in global warming and global climate change, sustainable construction is turning into a first-rate focus for the world. Earth with finite natural resources and an ever-growing built environment, engineers of the future must consider the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of structural design. Every structural engineer can take steps to mitigate the environmental impact of structural design. In future there is growing demand for engineers who are knowledgeable of environmental issues in construction. With the help of this essay an attempt is made to identify social responsibility of engineers, the role of civil engineers in sustainable construction. This paper focuses on the necessity of the sustainable construction & construction practices with relation to the current world scenario.

Social Responsibility of Engineers: Sustainability and Development in Construction

Sustainability suggests that full filing the present need without compromising with future generation needs. Brundtland report gave the precise definition of sustainable development as “meeting the needs of present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs”. 

The rapid development of economic construction maybe a double edged sword. It offers us an excellent wealth however conjointly causes the deterioration of ecological atmosphere. In today’s society the thought of sustainability is presumably additional current than at any other purpose and time. As our demand for merchandise, infrastructure and lifestyle amenities grow, so should our awareness that we live in a fragile balance between meeting these needs and meeting these needs in a way that has least impact to the environment and does not jeopardize our own public health and safety. Combined with the global trend of sustainable development, as civil engineering practitioners, we should eliminate or mitigate the environmental problems may arise in the project, such as reduction of water resources, deterioration of water quality, ground subsidence, soil erosion, landslides, buildings thaw settlement, cracking ...... and many other disasters, in the bud in large-scale economic constructions, so that the construction can make benefit for mankind and make life environment get sustainable development and improvement. Therefore, civil engineering sustainable development has become an awfully deserve discussion and study.

We as Civil Engineers and future Civil Engineers have our social responsibility within the Sustainable Development in meeting the requirements of the general public. We tend to area unit those designing and building the infrastructures that support us as a society. A Civil Engineers utmost responsibility is sustainability.

“Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public and shall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their professional duties.”

Sustainability by definition is that the methodology of employing a resource in a way that the resource isn’t depleted or permanently damaged.

Traditionally the idea of sustainability has been applied to relating biological systems (the Earth) and human systems (society). Sustainable Development is the challenge of meeting human needs for natural resources, industrial products, energy, food, transportation, shelter, and effective waste management whereas preserving and protecting environmental quality and the natural resource base essential for future development.

Three Stages/Phases of Construction Processes

Generally constructed in accordance with the basic construction procedures. The preliminary design, technical design and construction design three stages are the three steps within the design parts.

Preliminary design phase is mainly following the construction tasks, through research, considering its functional requirements, the amount of investment, material supply, environmental and hydrogeological conditions, structure and construction, equipment, power and construction, etc., to make a preliminary design. It includes the proposed project program drawing, brochures and budget. Reviewing and approving the preliminary design documents is the basis of the construction preparation work.

Technical design, also known as 'expanded preliminary design', for large, complex projects, this step is essential. The content of technical design is to coordinate the preparation of related types of drawings, specifications and budget. The submitting and approval technical design document is the basis of preparing construction drawings and equipment orders and also monitoring the capital appropriation and use of funds. Finally, construction design includes determining the size of the whole project, materials, and the structure of construction drawings, construction, equipment, specifications, calculations and budgets.

Construction drawing design phase is to determine the main dimensions, materials, structure, construction, equipment, etc. of the whole project, thus rendering the guidance of construction drawings, specifications, calculations and budget. Therefore, the construction design stage work is more complex and sophisticated. It includes selecting materials, scantlings determination, and reasonable arrangement and structural measures adopting, equipment location, etc. The slight difference may play a very big impact on the durability, security and economy of the whole project. Therefore, the issue of sustainable development at this stage needs further study, such as: the use of innovative methods and new materials has led to existing norms behind the development of the times, which requires promptly to make overall revision of the existing norms; research and develop design optimization software and actively carry out optimization design, to form the project structurally 'security, economic,' and so on. They are all the work in construction design stage of sustainable development strategy.

Identifying the Role of Civil Engineers

Civil Engineering ought to be inspired from early stage toward sustainable construction. They must be encouraged to think out of the box, develop critical thinking and facilitate good judgment. This will be done by giving them additional exposure to practical field based problem and permitting them to return up with different innovative solution rather than going with traditional solution, and then analysing solution with technicality, feasibility and necessary aspects. They must understand and know why a specific judgment appear to be good and must be able to unambiguously defend the justification for making choice. The necessity for informed decision making is another important principle in sustainable development which should be cultivated in civil engineers.

When a client approaches a Civil Engineer to design a new project this immediately incorporates a mutli-discipline process that may involve biologists, geologists, community interests groups, regulatory enforcement agencies and the business community. All of these groups have an interest in the project and seeing that the project is completed in a way not to put their interests at risk. It is the Civil Engineers responsibility to ethically combine all the disciplines interests and produce a design that meets the client’s goals.

The concept of Sustainable Development is one that an engineer should never feel that they must violate in order to ethically complete a project. For an engineer to violate the concept of Sustainable Development in a project the size of a manufacturing facility, or any project they are endanger the safety, health and wellbeing of the public and potentially damaging the environment. Knowingly doing this not only is unethical but in severe cases may even be considered criminal. At no time should violation of sustainable development be a solution to issues encountered in the practice of engineering.

The building considering social, environmental and economic factors is believed to be fully sustainable building. These brief feature includes:

• Use of Pollution Free Measure While Manufacturing. Use of such method will lead to environment sustainability.
• Reducing waste production during manufacturing. This leads to increasing resource efficiency of building materials. For example salvaging existing steelwork is far desirable to recycling because of high energy requirement for recycling steel.
• Embodied Energy Reduction. Embodied energy is the energy required in production of a material, this also include raw material collection. Use of processes that save energy will lead to reduction in embodied energy reduction. Natural material have less embodied energy, hence civil engineer must explore alternative in natural material. For example Strawbale construction, consisting of straw, a plant fragment is non-living and left over after harvesting is an epitome of sustainable construction.
• Construction Waste Reduction. This saves landfilling space and cost saving. Use of renewable energy system. Designing and constructing building in such a way that it eliminate or compensate the traditionally used methods for cooling, heating etc.
• Longer Life. This include low maintenance cost, durability of material, reusability, recyclability. Other common point includes water conservation, i.e. use of waste water or water harvested from rain in use, use of nontoxic materials, use of renewable energy systems.

Civil Engineering Organizations and Sustainability

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) acknowledges that environment gets effected by structure and stresses on strengthening and broadening the education of engineers and have laid some policies like:

• Encouraging various political, social, economic and technical aspects related to sustainable development.
• Improving skills, knowledge and information to facilitate sustainable future.
• Preferring economic methods that use natural resources.
• Encouraging multidisciplinary, integrated and multi objective goals in every step of design and construction.
• Promoting performance based standard and guidelines.

US Green Building Council has documented its own certificate process in form of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). LEED has its rating system given by judging building in following areas:

• Sustainable Sites
• Water Efficiency
• Energy and atmosphere
• Material and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Innovation and design process

Conclusion

Sustainable development is both time and space concept. The study of sustainable development in civil engineering design phase can guide the future design work. As global warming increasing, ice cap melting and climate changing, its needless to say sustainable construction is the demand of current scenario. Civil engineer must opt for more environment friendly materials, should bring recyclable material for use and must come up with creative solution to support sustainable design practice.

Refrences

• Sustainability in civil construction By Pradeep Kumar Gautam.
• Study on Civil Engineering Sustainable Development Strategy. By Xianglan Li and Li Guo.
• Sustainable Engineering: The Future of Structural Design. By J.A. Ochsendorf.
• ASCE Code of Ethics, 1996.
• Brundtland report (1987).
• Sustainability and Structural Engineering by Lisa Aukeman.
• Sustainable Engineering: The Future of Structural Design by J.A. Ochsendorf.
• Sustainability and critical thinking in civil engineering curriculum by Thomas J. Siller.
• Sustainable Architecture Module: Qualities, Use, and Examples of Sustainable Building Materials by Jong-Jin Kim Brenda Rigdon.
• SP 34 (1987): Handbook on Concrete Reinforcement and Detailing.