Project Engineering and Assurance

There is a problem with requirements that allude to optimisation Requirements that call for minimum or maximum or their alter-egos, minimised and maximised are lazy.  When it comes to specifying minimisation in a project or problem, a few issues arise, like: Ambiguity : Firstly, minimisation is not a criterion so much as it is an activity. The term is ambiguous if it is not clearly spelt out specifically. It might refer to minimizing costs, time, errors, waste, or any other specific parameters. Without clear and specific definitions, it can be challenging to determine what exactly needs to be minimized and how to measure the achievement of that goal. Conflicting objectives : Projects are systems and systems consist of many interrelated elements. In many projects, there are multiple objectives that need to be balanced. Specifying minimization of one factor may conflict with the maximization of another. For example, minimizing costs may conflict with maximizing quality. It is importa...

Projects have been described as systems devoted to delivering systems. To describe this more fully: "a project can be conceptualized as a collection of people, equipment, materials, and facilities organized and managed to achieve a goal". Design development is a process subset within an industrial project. L ike the overall project, design development can be conceptualised as a collection of personnel, tools, information and conditions managed to achieve a goal. However, unlike the overall project, design is concerned with delivering a description of a technical system rather than that physical artifact itself. The word "design" is derived from the Latin designare or to designate. Design is therefore describes the act of choosing properties. In order to choose the most favourable properties (of anything), trade-offs and analysis is required to compare alternative choices. This is ultimately decision-making. Therefore, at it's heart, design development is nothi...

Reviewing is key design control and part of decision-making strategy within engineering design. Design reviews entail judging whether design choices increase the likelihood of success; where design success is the degree to which requirements are satisfied by the results of design and development. Since design choices follow decisions, design reviews ultimately interrogate the decision-making during design and development. Key questions might be the same as for for any decision: What are we trying to achieve insofar as requirements, objectives and goals? What alternatives were considered and how were these disqualified? What assumptions are being made? Have we avoided similar problems that were experienced on previous projects? How might design choices modified to improve the likelihood of being successful? There isn't just one type of generic design review. Design requirements cut across several domains such as regulatory compliance, functional performance, physical form, mai...

The technical system, as a concept that was developed by the late Vladimir Hubka, refers to a perspective for analysing, evaluating, designing and optimising complex systems. Technical systems consist of the following elements: The technical object - the physical manifestation of the system, for example a pump, electrical transformer or a steel structure, that transforms an input into some sort of output The technical objective - the goal or outcome that is desired from the performance of the technical object The technical operand - the physical input which is transformed by the technical object and which is in the form of information, energy or matter The technical operation - the sequence of processing steps by which the input is transformed into an output The technical operators 1 - the resources of the system or components of the technical object that drive or guide the operation For example, a bicycle (object), consisting of two wheels, a frame, handlebar, pedals, a bic...