LINCOLN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
RESEARCH PROJECT – BCE 4136

1. PROJECT PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

These notes are intended to advise you about the requirements of the project proposal.
Following these guidelines will help you to maximise your mark.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE PROJECT PROPOSAL

The length for the proposal is a maximum of 1000 words. The proposal should be developed
in conjunction with input from your coordinator, in terms of the practicality of work planned
and pointers to relevant literature to get you started.

However, this is YOUR project and the proposal should be based on what you consider to be
a suitable scope of work and appropriate methodologies.

Your proposal should give the background and rationale to the project, and a detailed
description of the work you intend to do. It must also set out a timetable for the whole project.

Upon submission of the proposal a review meeting will be conducted before approval of the
proposal.

The main sections of the proposal are as follows:

1. Introduction and background

This should be based on a detailed background to the project. It should be structured in a
way that it provides a detailed description of the area of interest, and justification of, the work
that you are proposing to undertake.
There are a variety of ways of approaching the structure of an introduction, but one common
model that works well can be described as the ‘funnel’ model. You start off broadly, with a
general introduction to the research topic. This then narrows down to a collation and synthesis
of more specific studies relating to your subject. Finally, you finish with a focused section on
how your study relates to, or fills a gap in, previous work undertaken.
The overall aim of this section is to provide the reader with a sufficient background to
understand why you are planning the work proposed and to convince them of its significance.

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 2. Aims and Objectives
The aims of your study (the goals or outcomes that you hope to achieve), the objectives (what
are you investigating and how you are going to do it), based on your understanding) that you
will be testing should be clearly stated in this section.
Please note that all of the above should be specific, reasonable and achievable within the
constraints of the project.

3. Methodology
This section should give details of the work that is planned.

4. Timeline (project schedule)

This should take the form of a Gantt chart, providing a detailed week-by-week schedule for
the data gathering and writing-up. Things change when you undertake the actual work and
we will not make you stick rigidly to this timetable if you need to modify your plans, but it is
important that you come up with a realistic plan before starting.
N.B. Make sure that you allow sufficient time to write up the project – it always takes MUCH
longer than you might think!

5. References
All references cited if using any, in the proposal text should be included in the list at the end
and be formatted appropriately – Harvard Referencing.

6. Project Budget

7. Risk assessment, Health and Safety

This section carries the anticipated risks, limitations and health and safety considerations that
should be taken into note during the project.

PROJECT PROPOSAL LENGTH

You should aim for a project proposal of maximum 4000 words, excluding the reference list
and any appendices, but including in-text citations and figure and table captions and content.
Font – Arial, Font Size – 1.5, Line spacing – 1.5 justified text

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 2. PROJECT THESIS GUIDELINES

INTRODUCTION TO WRITING YOUR THESIS

These notes are intended to advise you about how to write up of your final project thesis.
There are also details of how your project will be assessed. Following these guidelines will
help you to maximise your mark for this very important assessment.

PRINTING AND SUBMISSION

Two plastic comb-bound copies of the hard copy report should be submitted on the
designated submission day. Late submission results in mark penalties.

Note that you are also required to submit an electronic copy of your final report to email
address provided by the same submission deadline.

GENERAL PAGE FORMATTING

The project should be set out on A4 page size. Text (in Arial 12 point) should be in 1.5 line
spacing; either single- or double-sided printing is acceptable. Margins should be sufficient to
allow for binding (2cm minimum on all edges). Each page should be numbered sequentially
at the centre bottom of the page.

LAYOUT OF THE REPORT

The final project should be prepared with the following sections. Start each section on a new
right-hand page.

Front cover:
The front cover should bear the title of the project with the full name and matriculation number
of the author immediately below. Give the title of the report in upper case letters. Your
supervisor’s name should also appear on the cover, along with the year of submission.
Table of contents:
This should be the first page of your report and should list, in sequence, all relevant
subsections with their page numbers. If you have a large number of figures and tables then it
is potentially useful to include a separate list of these, but this is not obligatory.
Acknowledgements:
These should follow the table of contents. You should only thank people who have helped
you with the project. Other personal acknowledgements are not always appropriate.
List of abbreviations (optional):
Give a full list of all the abbreviations used in the report, detailing what they represent.

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Abstract:
An abstract (of no more than 300 words) should follow the acknowledgements. This defines,
briefly and succinctly, what your project is all about. The abstract should give the reader a
brief overview of the project, including relevant summary information (i.e. not full details) on
the context to the work (i.e. the key points of the Introduction), the methods used, the key
results and a summary of the interpretation and broader context as contained in the
discussion. Do not include references, or statistical results such as p-values, in your abstract.
Introduction:
This should include the relevant background to the project and a critical review of recent
research in the area. There is more than one way of structuring an introductory section, but
the ‘funnel model’, starting off with the broad context and gradually narrowing down to the
specifics of your project, is an effective way of structuring the information contained in this
section. Your introduction should conclude with a subsection which gives a brief statement of
the aims, objectives and the hypotheses that are to be tested by your project. Your previously
submitted Project Proposal will form the basis of your Introduction.
Methods:
Important note about the language you use to describe your methodology:
You should always use the passive voice, past tense.
Results:
The results section should present a summary of your project outcomes in the form of figure,
charts, tables. The results section should carry a live commentary with regards to all analyses
to keep the flow of the results obtained by you.
Discussion:
In this section you should interpret and explain your objectives and the outcomes in detail,
write about their implications. Avoid simply re-summarising the results section. Critical
evaluation of your approach and procedures is a key element of discussing your results, but
this is not an excuse to write-off all your results as flawed, just because they do not agree
with other published work.
The discussion section is fundamental to your whole project, as this is where you have the
opportunity to demonstrate your critical understanding of what the you have done. Also
discuss the limitations, drawbacks, suggestions pertaining to your project.
Citations and references:
All references cited if using any, in the proposal text should be included in the list at the end
and be formatted appropriately – Harvard Referencing.

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PROJECT LENGTH
You should aim for a project report of maximum 10000 words, excluding the reference list
and any appendices, but including in-text citations and figure and table captions and content.
Font – Arial, Font Size – 1.5, Line spacing – 1.5 justified text

3. PROJECT PRESENTATION AND VIVA GUIDELINES

As part of the overall assessment for your community service project you are required to
produce a poster which illustrates and summarizes your work.

Size:
A1 portrait orientation poster

Key points of poster design:

Layout: make it easy for the reader to navigate their way through the material presented.
Take time to try out different layouts of information by planning out different options on paper.
Bear in mind that humans tend to navigate primarily from top to bottom and secondarily from
left to right.

Color: use a simple palette rather than trying to cram in as many colors as possible. Think
about using consistent colors to link sections referring to the same topic or data. Lightly
shaded boxes can be an effective way to highlight points you want to emphasize.

Text: Use one or two fonts maximum, of sufficient size to be easily read from at least 1m
away (24pt is an absolute minimum) and do not include too much text; 200-300 words is ideal.
You need to communicate the main points in a concise and clear fashion rather than go into
a lot of detail.

Graphics: figures and tables should be adapted from versions used in the written thesis to
maximize clarity. Leave out unnecessary details to keep the focus on the data; keep legends
short and readable. Tables can be difficult to process so consider if this is the best way to
present things. If including images make sure they are of a sufficiently high resolution to avoid
pixilation

Sections: make sure that you use clear sections to signpost information being presented.
The balance of material should reflect the significance of different parts, so the introduction
and methods should be fairly brief; the main focus is on the results and interpretation.

Poster Presentation: 3 – 5 minutes presentation followed by VIVA session