Critical Insight and Analysis - Technical and Managerial Aspects of this Project - Individual Project Report Engineering Assessment Answer

Individual Project Report Engineering Assessment Answer

What are we looking for in your individual project report?

You have undertaken a group project that requires a significant amount of team-work, however, it is important that we assess your own contribution to this project, as well as your own understanding of what you have done. This is why we are asking you to submit an individual project report. A key element of our assessment will be based on your own views on how well the project went, including your own critical insight and analysis into the technical and managerial aspects of this project. We are also interested in how you contributed to the group and the significance of your work in relation to the overall output of the group. It is here that we will be able to distinguish the abilities of individual students, as you will all have your own views on how the project went, and you will all have your own understanding and analysis of what went right or wrong.

Thus, we are not only interested in the volume of work you have carried out on this project, what we also want you to do is tell us what you have learnt and understood when undertaking the project and your contribution. At MEng level you should be able to go well beyond merely describing what it is you have done. You must also provide critical insight and analysis for your particular part of the project, and then do this for the project as a whole.

During your project you will have designed many things that will eventually go together to produce the final output of your project. You will finish some aspects of this work on your own, and for other aspects of the work you may have shared responsibility with other team members. This is not a problem when you come to write up the individual report. Individual team members can write about the development of similar areas of the project, where some overlap may exist, because what we will be assessing is the individual’s ability to write up their own contribution, as well as put forward their own views, insight and analysis into what has been done. We expect all of you to analyse and interpret things in your own way and so it is here that we can separate out individual achievement, as well as enable each student to demonstrate their abilities with respect to the learning outcomes of the module. Thus, by asking for an individual project report we are helping to ensure that students working in a group cannot try and take credit for the work of others.

Project Management

An important part of the learning experience is to look back and reflect on how a project or other exercise has gone once you have completed it. This is an important skill, which you need to develop for when you go out into industry. It is good practice to continually review the progress and quality of your work, and to learn from your mistakes and how you overcame problems. This will help you to be a better engineer and to continually improve your performance in the future.

This section is where you should discuss and review the management of the entire project, as well as your own individual contribution. You have been involved in a large project and worked as part of a team. Students often tell us of some of the problems of working in a team, especially when it comes to members not pulling their weight and the potential for this to impact on grades. Thus, we know you have lots of opinions about teamwork and this is not surprising because working in a team on a large project can be difficult and challenging. Therefore, it is this section where you can tell us what you think. Tell us how it went, what was your individual experience, what areas worked well, what areas did not work well, what problems did you find whilst working as part of a team, how did the team function, and so on.

We want you to compare how the entire project turned out with how the group originally planned. We want you to tell us what you have learnt from this exercise. Be critical. Pass judgment on the progress of your element of the project, as well as the project as a whole. What role did you play in the management of the project, was the project as a whole well managed? Are there things that, in hindsight, you should have done differently?

Consider the following

• Compare the outcomes of your individual project, as well as the group project, with the aims and objectives set out in the group project proposal.

• Did you and the group deliver what you set out to deliver?

• Was your original project plan sufficiently detailed?

• Was the allocation of tasks between team members fair and appropriate?

• What would you do differently if you did the project again?

• Did your team miss out elements in the project plan that you now realise you should have included?

• Did you include have to introduce elements into the group project that were not originally in the team plan? If so why?

• Did you have to change your role was on the project, if so why?

• Describe how the team meetings contributed to the management of your project.

• Did the amount of work allocated to you as part of the team change as you went through the project? If so, why?

• What have you learnt during this process about managing projects?

• What have you learnt about working in a team? What were the problems, how did you resolve these?

• What have you learnt about managing a team?

• What advice would you give someone setting out on a group project next year?

Analyse and discuss the problems you found as a group when undertaking the project. Discuss the decisions you had to make as a group during the project which enabled you to keep the project on course. For example,

• Did you find any problems when gathering data, interpreting data, using equipment, sourcing data, and so on?

• Did you have to review and reallocate tasks on the project because certain tasks were taking a long time and/or proved to be more difficult than expected?

• Did you have any problems with suppliers, should you have foreseen these problems?

• Did the technical aspects of the project proceed as planned?

• Did members of the team work together well and/or was the team well led?

• If you look back on your original project plan, can you see areas that you should have planned differently?

The presentation 

The presentation should focus on the most important achievements of the project. This is what you should have written up in your executive summary. Consider the following

• Focus on what is important, do not spend too much time describing boring background information.

• Focus on what you have achieved and what you have delivered.

• Describe the technical challenges you faced and how these were overcome.

• Review the technical merits of your final project, suggest where you may have gone wrong and where someone taking up the project would be able to find room for improvement.

• Describe the context of your project and its engineering relevance. This should include a review of the commercial, environmental and social impact of your project.

• Think carefully first about what you want to tell us, then focus on getting that over and a clear and concise way.

• Do not have too many slides.

• Do not fill slides full of large amounts of detail. Use graphs and figures, but make sure they are easy to read and are properly labelled.

ME5508 (MEng) Learning outcomes to be assessed in progress report:

• The principles of the engineering design process

• Techniques and Procedures required for the development of a satisfactory Product Design Specification.

• Objective methods to discriminate between various solutions and how to use these to select the optimum design.

• Engineering calculations and analysis to assess the performance of a design solution

• The selection of the appropriate materials, processing procedures, mechanical properties and manufacturing techniques

• Methods of scheduling, planning and monitoring the progress of Engineering Design Projects and Activities.

• That can synthesise and analyse technical and non-technical information to determine the design requirement and need.

• Which can assess market requirements and determine the criteria that must be met.

• Used to research and apply commercial, technical, social and environmental information.

• Required to develop and produce a Product Design Specification.

• Which can use lateral thinking methods and creative processes to find the maximum possible range of design ideas

• That can apply feasibility studies, approximate calculations, and systematic selection procedures to discriminate between different design solutions and ideas.

• Used to apply detailed engineering calculations, theories, techniques, formulae and data to determine the overall system performance and select the optimum design.

• Which can identify appropriate manufacturing processes, materials and production techniques

• Used to test and validate the selected design.

• That can use the appropriate scheduling and management techniques

• Used to prepare the final technical specification

• Which can communicate the final design solution through reports, sketches, drawings, manuals etc, and by using appropriate methods, including Computer Aided Engineering techniques.

• Teamwork and the use of appropriate organisational and management techniques in cross-disciplinary Engineering Design Projects.

• The detachment required to carry out a critical assessment of their work and methods of presenting their work satisfactorily in oral presentation and written reports.

• Communication skills required to justify their work effectively in technical and non-technical environments.

• A wide range of concepts, principles, formulae and data in the subject area of the project.

• Relevant experimental and/or numerical/analytical techniques.

• Background to the problem using a review of related literature and technical reports.

• Apply appropriate techniques that may include theories, formulae, data, and experimental and/or numerical techniques to solve problems presented by the project.

• Critically assess, analyse and interpret the results.

• Complete the project under given time and resource constraints.

• Effectively communicate the ideas and results within a written report and/or oral form.