A main chunk of the time spent in the 4th year MEng course goes into working on the Group Design Project (GDP). I was lucky to find that the company I had worked with during the summer was sponsoring a project which was an extension of my previous work with them. Considering that I could spend less time doing background reading and avoid having to start a project from scratch, I went ahead with it as my first choice.
After getting acquainted with my team mates and supervisors, it was time to get down to business. However, there was a serious problem. Everyone in the team had a different interpretation of the project description. Everyone had a different understanding about the deliverables and overall aim. The supervisors advised us by giving us their points of views. But things get difficult when they insist that the team (of indecisive students) make the final decision on matters regarding what course the project will take. The main difficulty when having to make decisions is when one has to work with incomplete information.
This remains the primary issue preventing solutions to problems from being straightforward. So much so that the IMechE encourages that Universities expose their students to such situations early in their education. Intentional or not, this is exactly what has happened with my team’s GDP for the year. Instead of making a test rig and validating it with experimental data, my team and I realised that we were expected to behave as an amateur R&D team for the sponsor company and produce a test rig which will assist in validation of field data. It is a project that inspects what works and what doesn’t.
The sponsors have given their requirements and have asked us to carry on. But bring in the academic impact of the project: the weightage of the GDP and the limited time scales, suddenly it all looks immensely challenging. I can’t help but laugh at my reason behind choosing to work on the project: It is familiar and so easier, I had said.
The trick now will be to manoeuvre this vague-industry specified design project into something that can be graded in an academic setting. This means that we need to make sure that the academic supervisors and industry sponsors are in agreement with the manner in which the project will be worked on. There will be the necessity to have some efficient book-keeping: tracking deadlines, risk assessments, correspondence records, meeting records, log book entries. Factor in all this and the GDP doesn’t just call for an application of the subject specific skills you’ve theoretically acquired through 4 years, but also all aspects soft skills, organization and leadership. From my point of view, it looks massive and imposing but I quite relish the coming challenge. There is never any fun in it if it is easy.