FROM EFICIENCY TO SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Terms like Sustainable Development and Professional Business Ethics are more and more often used in Engineering professional exercise. The Professional Associations as regulatory organisms of the profession have to take care that the professional activity is made involving no detrimental effect to the natural and social environment, thus meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations. In the article the relevancy of including transversal ethical and social competences in the engineering studies has been highlighted. For this task, the authors describe their experience in the subject of extractive metallurgy, developed in the Industrial Engineering School of Badajoz. Achieving a proper way of approaching these contents requires a very fluid relation university–business activities. In the same way, based on these fi rst studies, interuniversity and interdisciplinary working networks might be created in order to study the optimal way for developing these competences.