K/615/1475 Engineering Design - Pearson BTEC Level 4 Higher National Certificate in Engineering
Assignment - Engineering Design Plan
Learning Outcome 1: Plan a design solution and prepare an engineering design specification in response to a stakeholder's design brief and requirements.
Assignment Brief
Scenario:
Your company has set up a new design department and you have been appointed as an engineering designer to work on a design project for the release of a new product.
Your manager requires that you as the designer, produce a professional report for his/her approval, with a view to achieving project funding from the board of directors.
Activity:
To develop your report, you will firstly assume the role of the company stakeholder or client and formulate a design brief for the product or design solution.
The design brief will be the main starting point for the design process and will describe in enough detail the essential elements of the product/design and its main functions that the design is intended to address.
You will then take on the role of engineering designer and develop the design brief into a detailed design specification, after which you will need to compare your specification with a typical published industrial design specification.
Finally, you will need to research project management techniques and develop a Gantt chart (indicating the critical path) for the design activities in assignment A2.
Task:
Your report needs to address the following tasks and labelled them as sections 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6:
a) Design Brief - An explanation of the key requirements of the design brief and how these have influenced the preparation of your design specification.
b) Design Specification - Your design specification should typically include functional requirements, environ- mental conditions, applicable published standards.
c) Comment on the similarities or differences between your specification and an industry standard method of preparing a specification such as BS 7373 or ACCESSFM.
d) Two different project planning techniques that may be used within your project and discuss their ad- vantages and disadvantages. Explain which of these two techniques you have chosen for your project and justify your reasons for doing so.
e) A Gantt chart for your design project, including an analysis of the critical path. Explain the importance of the critical path when managing a project of this kind. The Gantt chart should be shown in the appendices.