Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The Importance Of Writing Engineering Reports And Proposals

By Jocelyn Davidson


An important aspect of engineering is the ability to convey ideas, project information and findings to people concerned. The main objective of doing engineering reports and proposals is to obtain grants from agencies, also to publish in journals and for progress updates to the relevant authorities.

It is important to consider the purpose or intention of writing engineering documents before beginning writing. The sole purpose should be to make the reader convinced that you have the proper qualification to carry out the project which is viable both in scientific and economic aspects. It is wrong to assume that your job as an engineer is not to convince but it is because most people do not understand the engineer language.

The people you are writing for are also an important aspect of your writing. They need to know something knew about the project. Explain the problem or the reasons why the project is beneficial to them clearly. In addition, provide background information to put the proposed solution into perspective. The reader needs to understand that you are an expert in that particular field and also understand the general approach to the problem.

Proposals are written by consulting engineers as well as engineers in academia. They are written to seek funding from funding agencies for projects or for approval by management. Another reason for writing them is to send to clients, prospective or otherwise. They indicate what the task is about, how it will be done, the cost, time frame and objectives of the task.

There are at least six basic elements of a proposal. The abstract summary is one page long and is a brief and summarized proposal. It explains the purpose of the project, expenses to be incurred, qualifications and program essentials. In the introduction section, the purpose, background and brief overview of the project are objectively and clearly spelt out.

The project objectives, methods and evaluation are to be found in the project description section. A time frame and the budget bearing all the over heads and estimated cost are also found here. They should in form of charts, diagrams and tables. In the last section is a list of particular team to be involved and their education and professional qualifications.

Engineering reports are similar to proposals in that they also contain an executive summary and introduction. In contrast, reports have extra sections such as theory and analysis where laws and equations applied are defined. In addition, the method section includes the instruments and apparatus used. Findings are explained in results section and discussed. From the results, conclusions and recommendation are made. The rest of the document also contains the literature cited, acknowledgment and appendix.

Finally, writing must be organized in such a way as to boost readability. The headings and general text of the documents should be formatted in the appropriate way. Any graphs or pictures used in the text are to be labeled appropriately. The style of writing ought to be determined by the content of document.




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