Engineers failing in a project that has been done by them or what we can call “Engineer Failure” which is a result that is subject to happen and it might also happen or had happened to extremely professional engineers. Hence why engineer spend a numerous amount of time to revise and check their projects and works and make sure that it’s up to the required standard, safe for human beings’ usage, and it’s beneficial for both the development and raising the living quality. Engineers that put every small detail into consideration to try and come with a high-quality well-designed project while disregarding their own benefit those can be called “Ethical Engineers”. On the other hand, there are some engineers that doesn’t put ethics into real matters. Therefore, the result of their project can create horrible disasters and the consequences may be unforgiveable for how distractive they are.
One of these remarkable “Engineer Failure” projects was the St. Francis Dam project. The St. Francis Dam was one of nine other dams located in Los Angles, California in The United States of America. Also, the St. Francis Dam was a bended solid gravity dam developed somewhere in the range of 1924 and 1926 to give a capacity repository to the Los Angeles Aqueduct framework which at that point crumbled in 1928 ('St. Francis Dam (California, 1928) | Case Study,' n.d.). In other words, the St. Francis Dam was an essential project for the city of Los Angeles to provide and secure water sources because of its location and the St. Francis Dam did fail to complete its purpose after two years after the construction ended.
In addition, the St. Francis Dam was under the initiative of General Manager and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply William Mulholland (Alvi, n.d.). In other words, William Mullholland was the one supervising the building process. Also, Mullholland was the one to qualify whether the work that is being done is done the right way with the right quality and standards or it is the opposite of all what have been mentioned previously.
Moreover, the St. Francis Dam crumbling was a consequence for disregarding the small details and not doing enough studies to make sure that. The dam is qualified for the task it supposed to do over those years. Practically, this means that the supervisor of the construction was doing his job unethically. For example, some of the reasons that caused the disaster of St. Francis Dam are:
Firstly, in spite of the fact that a regarded engineer who was very practiced, Mulholland was 'self-taught' for a fact and broad perusing and needed college training in building. Additionally, while he had directed the structure and development of 22 dams, this included just one earlier solid gravity dam, the others being dike dams (Alvi, n.d.). This means that Mulholland lacked experience to perform this duty and it seems that he didn’t use any help from experts.
Secondly, Mulholland ruled the venture, yet his consideration was to a great extent somewhere else and generally every day work was appointed to underqualified people (Alvi, n.d.). In other words, Mulholland didn’t put enough time and effort into a project that he was supervising.
Thirdly, spilling splits shaped in the dam beginning in 1926 and kept on exacerbating until the dam broke down, however, these splits were rejected by Mulholland and others as being ordinary for such dams, and were essentially fixed to the degree conceivable, as opposed to treated as auxiliary cautioning signs. Mulholland's last such examination of the dam was just 12 hours preceding its break down (Alvi, n.d.). This indicates that the supervisor of the construction knew that there was a clear issue with the structure but decided that it is not significant. Therefore, he dealt with it without put those leaks into higher level of consideration.