Ethical issues
The report describes the ethical issues that took place in the Occidental engineering case and identifies the potential consequences of the issues. The Occidental engineering is working on a project to make a prototype of the air traffic control system that is funded through a contract from Federal Aviation Agency (Valavanis & Vachtsevanos, 2015). The company obtained the project by bidding for it at an extremely less amount. The prototype is tested by Wayne Davidson after completion and he found an error in the prototype that could make the system lose the track of aircraft. The project manager, Deborah Shepherd, advises Davidson to deliver the project as it as they cannot miss the deadline. Davidson finds it unsafe, however Shepherd assures him that they will make the changes after FAA requests for changes. The project was delivered without any modification. The report identifies the potential breaches of the ethical standards of the Project Management Institute.
There are several ethical issues that took place due to the Safe Skies project of building a prototype for air traffic control system that was accepted by the Occidental engineering firm. The company obtained the project by accepting the project at low bid that is an ethical issue as it may affect the employees working on that project. The company did not have sufficient financial resources to make the project as it was accepted at low bid. The lack of resources affected the organisational culture as less number of workers were burdened with huge amount of work (Kerzner & Kerzner, 2017). It was against the ethics of the company as the organisations are required to indulge sufficient employees for a work. Another ethical issue that took place was delivering of the erroneous project. The company was required to provide an efficient project, however an error was detected by Davidson in the prototype. Deborah Shepherd insisted Davidson to deliver the project without correcting the error to submit it on time and protect the jobs of the people. However, it was unethical as the company knowingly delivered the erroneous project. Shepherd ensured Davidson that the FAA tests every project before implementing it, therefore the company will correct the error when FAA will request for change. However, this was against the ethics of the company as it was illegal and unprofessional to deliver erroneous project intentionally.
The Occidental engineering firm knew the importance of the project and therefore, it obtained the project by bidding for it at an extremely lesser amount than it would require for making the efficient project. The consequences that the stakeholders will have to face due to the aggressive bid is the financial instability, less resources for the project and less fund for the project (McFarland, 2018). The stakeholders will not be able to provide sufficient resources to the workers to complete the task in an efficient manner, as the fund for the project is low. Another consequence that the stakeholders might face is loss on the project as it was underfunded due to the bidding at low amount. However, the company indulged less number of workers in the project to avoid the loss on the project. The other risks that are involved in the project are that the employees were burdened with the high amount of work as the less number of workers were indulged in the project due low fund (Caron, 2013). Shepherd insisted Davidson to deliver the erroneous project that could harm the reputation of the company and the prototype that was tested by Wayne could harm the safety of the aircraft as the system might lose tracks of them if that prototype is implemented in the system.
The ethical standards of the Project Management Institute are based on several values of ethics and standards (Muller, 2017). In the Occidental engineering firm case, the ethical standards of PMI were breached for the accomplishment of the project. The following paragraphs identify the potential breaches of PMI ethical standards by the project management team of the company.
The team members gave their full effort in the project, as they understood the importance of the project for their company. However, the project manager did not fulfil her responsibility as she insisted Davidson to deliver the erroneous prototype. It was responsibility of the project manager to ensure that her company is delivering an efficient project.
The companies are required to be honest with their clients according to ethical standards of PMI (Garel, 2013). However, in Occidental Engineering case, this ethical standard of PMI was violated as Shepherd knowingly delivered the erroneous prototype without informing the FAA.
The company obtained the project at an extremely low bid that was not a fair decision as the company was going through a shaky financial condition (Too & Weaver, 2014). Therefore, the project went underfunded and understaffed due to which less number of workers were burdened with large amount of work.
The company could have requested the Federal Aviation Agency for some more time instead of delivering the flawed project on time to avoid violation of ethical code. The company accepted the project by bidding for it in the amount that was less than the amount required for making an efficient project. They should have provided sufficient resources and staffs to the team that was working on the project. It was required by Davidson to remain stuck to his decision as he was responsible for testing the projects before delivering them (Richardson, 2014). Shepherd was the project manager and it was her duty to provide efficient project to FAA. Therefore, she should not have passed the flawed project.
Conclusion:
It can be concluded from the above discussion that the measure taken by Occidental engineering firm to get the project was unethical as it affected the workers of the project team. They had to work for eighteen hours a day to complete the work within the deadline as the project was understaffed and underfunded. The project manager, Deborah Shepherd insisted Wayne Davidson to deliver the flawed project without modifying the errors to meet the deadline. This decision taken by the project manager was unethical. The ethical standards of the Project Management Institute were also violated due to the measures that were taken by the company.
References:
Caron, F. (2013). Introduction to Project Risk. In Managing the Continuum: Certainty, Uncertainty, Unpredictability in Large Engineering Projects (pp. 51-56). Springer, Milano.
Garel, G. (2013). A history of project management models: From pre-models to the standard models. International Journal of Project Management, 31(5), 663-669.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
McFarland, M. (2018). Occidental Engineering Case Study: Part 1. Retrieved from https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/more/engineering-ethics/engineering-ethics-cases/occidental-engineering-case-study-part-1/
Muller, R. (2017). Project governance. Routledge.
Richardson, G. L. (2014). Project management theory and practice. Auerbach Publications.
Too, E. G., & Weaver, P. (2014). The management of project management: A conceptual framework for project governance. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), 1382-1394.
Valavanis, K. P., & Vachtsevanos, G. J. (2015). Future of unmanned aviation. In Handbook of unmanned aerial vehicles(pp. 2993-3009). Springer, Dordrecht.
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