Perceived Unethical Engineering in Road Construction in Zambia

The value of money in the engineering projects procured and constructed in Zambia has attracted attention especially in the road subsector. The public has vested interest in the public road infrastructure, especially road construction. The public uses visual assessments to check the quality and life spans of new road projects before defects appear to measure durability. There are many assertions of shoddy works, and the public consider the engineers involved in the feasibility study and detailed engineering design, procurement, construction supervision and construction of road infrastructure to be corrupt or unethical for accepting shoddy works. Members of the public access road projects quality by visually comparing different projects without understanding the scope of the works procured. A desktop study of five selected projects was undertaken by considering their theoretical design life without taking into account axle loads as these are urban roads and were expected to be lightly trafficked. Data of the five newly constructed urban roads with a design life of 15 years was collected from progress reports of a road agency in Zambia. The service life of the roads was considered before a rehabilitation was undertaken to check whether the roads had the envisaged project design life inclusive of the required maintenance regime. The year of construction and the year of failure/reconstruction were noted to determine the years of service of the roads. Any failure of a road before seven years of service was considered premature. While engineers may have certified that the construction met the required technical standards using the structural laboratory tests, the functional performance of the road projects through premature failure revealed problems in the quality and durability of the projects. The question is whether the perceived unethical behavior of engineers leads to premature failure of road infrastructure, ultimately leading to loss of value for money for public funds. The chapter aims to shed light on the importance of ethical engineering practice and concludes that perceived negligence and unethical behavior from the engineers play a key role in final road infrastructure quality with the public not trusting the engineers. It was concluded that financing modalities, procurement methods and not applying international best practice principles of contract management lead to poor value for money which can be directly linked to unethical engineering decisions.