Delegation of site supervisory duties
The duty of a plant engineer in a manufacturing company was to ensure proper consumption and disposal of chemicals used for production. Being tied down by paperwork, the plant engineer seldom had chance to conduct on-site supervision over the workers in the factory. To ease the problem, he assigned a technical assistant to carry out the inspection for him.
When several chemical workers had developed serious skin problems and complain about the hostile working environment, the plant engineer began to realize that some of the workers had continuously misused the chemicals. Worse still, chemical wastes were not properly disposed of and might have leaked to a river nearby through the drainage of factory without treatment.
The plant engineer breached the Rules of Conduct of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers by failing to discharge his supervisory role with due diligence and care, resulting in chemical pollution to the environment and potential safety and health hazards to the workers and the public.
To comply with the standard, the plant engineer should accept responsibility for his actions and have the supervisory control tightened up. He should ensure that the persons to whom he delegates the authority are sufficiently competent to carry out the associated responsibility.
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