Applied Project Management for Engineering

1.0 Introduction

The engineering design process is a series of steps that engineers follow to come up with a
solution to a problem. While designing a simple two gear gearbox may be easily accomplished
by an engineer and may not require as much planning more complex engineering problems
may require a more systematic approach.

For you are asked to design a variable speed gearbox for a client. Your boss asks you to oversee
construction and take up technicians and junior engineers in your team as well and you have a
very short time to do all this. You may be a good engineer but if you try to do everything
yourself you will find it difficult to complete a design project.

Just like any other project, engineering design projects require carefully planning and continuous
monitoring. In this topic, we will learn:

What causes projects to fail.

How to plan a project using work breakdown structure (WBS).
How to use WBS to create a project schedule.
How to use the project schedule to estimate completion times.

2.0 Project Failure

Lets look at some projects which failed due to mishaps during design stages. Remember in most
design cases many innovative components are new and untested. There is a large scope to get
things wrong. We have a lot to learn from failed projects.

1.) Mars Climate Orbiter :

"The 'root cause' of the loss of the spacecraft was the failed translation of English units into
metric units in a segment of ground-based, navigation-related mission software, as NASA has
previously announced," said Arthur Stephenson, chairman of the Mars Climate Orbiter Mission
Failure Investigation Board. "The failure review board has identified other significant factors
that allowed this error to be born, and then let it linger and propagate to the point where it
resulted in a major error in our understanding of the spacecraft's path as it approached Mars.

2.) VW Emission Software: Emission regulation project went wrong when lab tests did not
account for real scenarios and cost VW as much as $18Billion in losses.

3.) Sinclair C5 car: Roofless car designed for rainy English weather lead to eventual closure
of the company.

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 4.) Airbus A380 Design: Use of different CAD programs led to delay of 2 years costing
$6.1Billion (USD).

There are many design failures. These failures have ended up in costing money, time and even
lives.

Is it that the brilliant engineers in this project made a mistake?. Why was such a failure caused?.
How can a basic error have been overlooked in the Mars Orbiter case ( and that too by rocket
scientists ). Has any of your projects ever failed? (Lets be very honest).

3.0 Project Deliverables

Take the example of the Variable Speed Gearbox project . Suppose your manager asks you to tell
him how long the project will take? How do you determine the length of the project? Do you just
take a guess?

While it is useful to look at the different stages in a project first, we will skip that for now and go
straight to the project planning stage. Once your project is initiated, a project scope document is
made. The scope document or charter defines the scope of the project and marks a boundary
around what has to be done. It also notifies stakeholders of what is not part of the project.

The project scope contains the objectives or deliverables of the project. The deliverables are
what the project must deliver. Once you have listed the key deliverables of the project then you
have to work downwards to determine what all sub level deliverables are needed to achieve the
key deliverables.

Remember a task can be further divided into subtasks. Each piece of work in the project needs to
be broken down into smaller pieces all the way to the most basic level in order to determine the
number of tasks as well as the time for the project. This is useful because while it may be hard to
determine the duration of a complex project, it is easy to determine the duration of subtasks that
make up the project.

This breakdown of tasks into smaller components is technically termed as Work Breakdown
Structure (WBS).

4.0 Work Breakdown Structure

Using WBS we can break down a project deliverable into tasks, the tasks into subtasks and
further on until we reach the basic level of the tasks.

Lets take a very simple example of making an office chair.

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 As the design engineer for Kings Inova Officeworks company you have been asked to deliver a
custom designed chair for a client. The client has asked for a specially built chair for a disabled
office staff. You are to submit a timeline and schedule for the project to your manager.

1.) Key Deliverable : Chair for Disabled Person

Chair For Disabled

Person

2.) Tasks to achieve the goal.

Chair For Disabled

Person

2.Cosntruct and 3. Quality Check and

1.Design the Chair
Finish Deliver

3.) Further division of tasks:

Chair For Disabled
Person

2.Cosntruct and 3. Quality Check and

1.Design the Chair
Finish Deliver

1.1CAD Model of 2.1Leather works 2.2Frame 3.1Deliver to

Design and specs Construction Client address

1.1.1Anthropomet 1.1.2Design 2.2.1Purchase 3.1.1Check against

ric Data Process/Specs Required Material client request

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