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The development of engineering management skills is essential to practice as a professional engineer. Engineers carry out technical analyses, but technology is always embedded in the context of society, and usually also business. Engineers therefore need to be able to integrate their solutions and planning within these broader contexts. This course covers several topics in engineering management and professional practice: project management, professional engineering competence and careers, environmental and societal dimensions, cultural and societal expectations, biculturalism and worldviews, health and safety, ethics, risk management, product liability, torts, managing people, team and conflict, structure of organisations, financial budget, cashflow, marketing, vision and strategy, intellectual property protection, among others. The focus throughout the course is on the engineering contexts, including new product development and production engineering. The course develops students' ability to solve problems in these various other areas, and produce integrative solutions for prospective engineering ventures.
The relevance to professional engineering practice is summarised by Dr Andrew Cleland (past Chief Executive IPENZ-Engineering NZ) who stated, ‘As the institution that represents all professional engineers in NZ, we really want to emphasise that students need to learn engineering management skills if they are to operate as professional Engineers. Engineers carry out technical analyses, but they need to understand how these analyses are treated in the context of the world of business – we are part of business more than we are part of science. Many engineering projects founder because the quality of the management by engineers is simply not good enough. IPENZ wants to see engineering graduates with a strong appreciation of the need for, and a good starting skill set in, many aspects of engineering management.Graduate attributes - keywords:This course contributes to the following Washington Accord (WA) and University of Canterbury (UC) graduate attributes: The engineer and society (WA6: societal, health, safety, legal, cultural issues, risk management,) Environment and sustainability (WA7), Ethics in complex professional decisions (WA8), Individual and team work (WA9: team function), Communication (WA10: communication plans), Project management and finance (WA11: contract law, project management tools, systems engineering, project costing), Lifelong learning (WA12: engagement with profession). Critically competent in a core academic discipline (UC1: professionalism), Employable, innovative and enterprising (UC2: solving complex problems, innovation process, cashflow, product route to market), Biculturally competent (UC3: Treaty of Waitangi, bicultural history, working with Māori values), Globally aware (UC5: professional mobility, worldviews, indigenous intellectual property)Mechatronics Engineering students wishing to take this course must seek approval from the Co-Director of Mechatronics AND the ENME418 Course Coordinator due to content overlap with ENEL301.
This course develops the following attributes in graduates:1. PROFESSION: Understand the origins of complexity in engineering problems, and analyse the competencies necessary for an engineering practice area.2. ETHICS: Discuss the engineering Code of Ethical conduct, analyse situations, and generate candidate response strategies. 3. HEALTH AND SAFETY: Recognise the principles in health and safety legislation, apply safety assessment methods to a complex situation, and create prospective solution plans. 4. ENVIRONMENTAL: Describe environmental considerations for engineering projects, apply life cycle and environmental impact assessment methods, review situations.5. SOCIETY: Understand the bicultural history of Aotearoa New Zealand, explain the context and implications of the Treaty of Waitangi, apply methods of incorporating Māori values into engineering decision-making, contrast societal worldviews, create communication plan.6. RISK: Understand types of risk in engineering, apply qualitative and quantitative risk preventative assessment methods, explain recovery processes, articulate human error contributions, generate solutions for engineering risks. 7. SYSTEMS ENGINEERING: Describe validation processes in systems engineering, apply project management methods, create project plans, determine life-cycle costing.8. LAW: Understand the principles of contract law and liability, articulate the implications for engineering practice, analyse engineering projects for legal liability. 9. INNOVATION: Understand the cognitive business process of innovation, create a plan for route to market, analyse innovations for competitive advantage, understand the principles and processes of intellectual property protection, describe the principles of marketing. 10. MANAGEMENT: Describe the organisational design variables and contrast their effects on structure, describe organisational processes for common work streams and identify quality processes, recognise and interpret financial statements, identify the lean wastes in a situation.11. PEOPLE: Identify personality traits and infer implications for team interactions, recognise types and causes of conflict in the temporal life cycle of teams. Identify key competencies for staff recruitment and create job descriptions and interview questions.
This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:
Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award
Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.
60 points at 300-level in Mechanical Engineering
Dirk Pons
Overall pass requirements: A pass in the course requires (a) an overall mark of 50%, (b) passing the ethics and bicultural assignment/exam questions and (c) Minimum mark of 40% required in the examination.
There are no prescribed books. Students will have access to electronic documents and course readers after enrolment.
Course related items and activities: Students are required to interview an engineer in practice and make own arrangements for this activity (may be done by telephone).
Domestic fee $1,080.00
International fee $5,250.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see Mechanical Engineering .