Assignment A1

As a team:

1. Get organized into a group of four - the GTA will assist with this.
2. Assign the component tasks to the members
3. Search the web for famous engineering disasters
4. Select one for detailed study
5. Notify the class list of your selection - no two teams may select the same disaster-analysis, no-one may use a disaster used in 1998.
6. Collect, collate, and summarise information on it
7. Team-present a 5 minute presentation on it to the class
8. The team presentation is to be quite different from what one would expect in an Engineering design class - your team presentation above all must not be just another boring technical talk, it must be interesting, short and to-the-point, covering both the technical design flaws and also the human side. A skit with very simple and very limited props, taking no more than an hour or two to prepare, will be acceptable. Situations may include: design team round-table discussion, TV talking-heads news coverage, legal enquiry, press release, enactment of the failure, technical exposition, etc. Purpose is to practice making your talk really interesting, and to sensitise students to various standpoints of players in the disaster: owners, builders, designers, environmentalists, Government, the law, interviewers, public, victims, investors, the ecosystem, and so on.
   Above all, this is a rare opportunity to have fun in an engineering class, and maybe the only opportunity to learn about (and remember) some serious engineering mistakes of the past.
9. Develop a group web page, and place it somewhere on the web, perhaps at one of the group's websites.

   A good example of what you could each do is something like the M6 modules on the course website:
   http://www.eos.uoguelph.ca/webfiles/james/wj210module06.htm
   You will see that it is more or less 5 pages long when printed, has some illustrations and references, and looks somewhat professional. (Your pages should look more like an engineering textbook than a rock video.)
   As a guide to the technical level expected, I would say do NOT delve into any technicalities at a depth more complex than a typical 2nd yr engineering undergraduate student can be reasonable expected to follow. You should explain it in terms that your audience - in this case your colleagues - would find interesting. Your audience should not be expected to have PhDs in high-energy particle physics. Some failures could for example be explained in general terms of properties and strengths of materials. We need to know in some technical detail how the engineers messed up, what happened, and maybe how it was fixed and who paid for it. You should draw a good moral or lesson from the incident.

   As individuals:

10. Synthesize your information into a short (say 5-page) report
11. Details must be historically correct, and references and list of sources and acknowledgements must be complete and accurate
12. Produce a few neat engineering sketches (or dynamic graphics displays - these are strictly-speaking not required)
13. Develop your own personal home page, and on it place a link it to your group's website on the disaster.
    
14. Evaluate your team members' individual contributions to the group' webpage (click here for the form).
15. Email to your instructors your report, webpage URL and evaluations, and a personal page of suggestions for improvements to this assignment in the future.
16. Email me permission to post your webpage on the class website.
17. Become famous and maybe rich sometime (later please).

Concluding remarks

So engineering design is fraught with the certainty of some degree of failure and those consequences. On the other hand, proponents remind us, civilization has clearly made immeasurable progress since the dark ages when we lived primitively in the wilderness - thanks of course to the efforts and enterprise of engineers like you and me. It's difficult, however, to avoid the conclusion that engineering is essentially the alteration of natural ecosystems for the principal benefit of man. Thus we probably have and continue to adversely impact the natural order of things.

Nevertheless the creation of gentler new environments can be the most exciting part of engineering design. For some inspiring confirmation of this, you should read (better still: obtain personal copies of, and read regularly):

Marking scheme

This assignment is worth 6.25 % of the Final Marks. It consists of three parts:

1. Webpage30%
2. Written Report (5 pages)50%
3. Presentation20%
4. Your evaluation of your colleagues' contributions. To see the form, click here.

The break down of the marks is as follows:

• Webpage
  a) Informative /5
  b) Presentation of Materials /2
  c) Functionality of links & btw pages /1
  d) Neatness /1
  e) Spelling & Grammar /1
  total: /10  

• Written Report

a) Description of background /4
b) Detailed & Concise /4
c) Appropriateness of text complement of discussion /7
d) Results of analysis /10
e) Recommendations /4
f) Conclusion /4
g) Spelling & Grammar /2
total: /35

• Presentation
  Content (logical flow & understandable) /3
  Voice /2
  Deportment (eye contact & nerves) /2
  Question Handling /2
  Time /1
  total: /10

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References

• Florman, Samuel C.: The civilized engineer, published by St. Martin's Press, New York, 1987 ISBN 0-312-00114-2
• -- : The existential pleasures of engineering, St. Martin's Press, NY 1976
• Harrisberger, Lee. Engineersmanship..the doing of engineering design. Brooks. 1982. ISBN 0-8185-0441-2
• Petroski, Henry: To engineer is human - the role of failure in successful design, St. Martin's Press, NY 1985, ISBN 0-312-8068O-9
• -- : Design paradigms - case histories of error and judgement in engineering, Cambridge Univ Press, 1997. ISBN 0-521-46108-1

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