Final Project Recommendation report

ENG 115: Final Project Overview

Work with your group members to select an issue that you want to resolve in your major field of study. For example, if your major is HVAC, you might want to determine the best way to recycle old AC units. If your career path is engineering, perhaps you want to explore the best way to provide apprenticeships to engineering students.

This recommendation report should discuss the question of the feasibility of a new project, process/procedure, product, system, etc. You should consider questions of possibility (is it possible to create, implement or do what your findings suggest?), economic wisdom (is the solution cost prohibitive?) and perception (will stakeholders see the wisdom in your proposed solution?).

Step 1: Determine the Problem

After discussing potential topics with your group members, submit your proposed topic to me for approval. Topics should be limited in scope (not so broad that they cannot be properly researched) and realistic.

Step 2: Establish the criteria for the solution

Criteria are the standards from which you measure your options. Criteria can be necessary and it can be desirable. The solution must be feasible. It must be reasonably possible to implement the solution (consider the feasibility questions).

Step 3: Determine the possible solutions (options)

List the possible courses of actions from doing nothing to taking immediate action. Sometimes the options are clear—create a plan for recycling old AC units or they might include several steps as outlined below.

Step 4: Study each option according to the criteria established in Step 2.

Once you have identified your options, study each potential option. This step requires both primary and secondary research. For example, if you are researching whether or not you should replace the copier machine, then you may want to invite several different companies to demonstrate their products (primary research). Secondary research might involve reading online reviews from several different sources about the products. To make the analysis clear, create a decision matrix.

Be able to explain the following three decisions for your decision matrix:

· Why you chose each criterion—or didn’t choose a criterion the reader might have expected to see included

· Why you assigned a particular weight to each criterion

· Why you assigned a particular rating to each option

Step 5: Draw conclusions about each option.

Draw conclusion about the options you have studied and ranked in the decision matrix.

· Rank all of your options.

· Classify each of the options into one of two categories—acceptable and unacceptable

· Present a compound conclusion—which option offers the most technical solution; which option offers the best financial solution

Step 6: Formulate the recommendation based on your conclusions.

If you conclude that Option A is better than Option B—and you see no obvious problems with Option A –recommend Option A. Your responsibility is to use your educated judgement and recommend the best course of action/solution.

If none of the options are going to be a complete success, be honest about the potential problems each option may present. Give the best advice possible even if the advice is to take another completely different course of action.

2