Block 1 · 15 credits. The professional side of engineering: what being a registered engineer means, how to keep developing, and how to make decisions that are ethical, sustainable and safe.
Assessment: A1 professional development portfolio, 30% (week 5) · A2 functional requirements report on a case study, 70% (week 9).
The running example in the seminars is a campus delivery robot that moves equipment between labs. It’s a good test case for every topic below.
Week 1: the professional engineer
- UK-SPEC and professional registration: the five competence areas and EngTech, IEng, CEng
- CPD and reflective practice: Gibbs’ cycle, SMART goals and evidencing growth
- Writing a problem statement: interrogating a brief before solving it
Week 2: responsibility
- Engineering ethics and duty of care: ethical theories, the five principles, real dilemmas
- Sustainability and lifecycle thinking: the triple bottom line, LCA and the circular economy
Week 3: hazards, risk and safe design
- Hazards and risk assessment: hazard → harm, risk matrices, registers and controls
- Designing for safety: inherent safety, safe failure, Swiss cheese, HAZOP, FMEA and safe systems of work
Week 4: systems
- Systems thinking: elements, boundaries, feedback loops, emergence and leverage points
- System architecture and lifecycle: architecture vs design, decomposition, functional and physical views, and the lifecycle
Revision
- WM199 practice questions: test-style questions with hidden worked answers
- glossary: every term across the course