12.0 Overview

This lesson pulls together all the information related to the development of the project proposal in EME 807, Technologies for Sustainability Systems. Even though we start to discuss the elements of the project early on in this course, and previous lessons have prompts for you to prepare and submit various pieces one by one, this Lesson is specially built to provide all the project directions in one place. It is not tied to a specific week of the semester. Whenever you need guidance on steps and content of the project or additional instructions on your milestone submissions, this is the place you go to!

In EME 807 we are building the technology implementation proposal for a potential client in several stages so that you have time to test your ideas in the peer group and do some background research. This process is spread out over the course of the semester. It allows you to implement different skills and frameworks you learn in other lessons, and even use some of your prior lesson assignments as pieces of your project.

Questions?

If you have any questions while working through this Lesson, please post them to our Message Board forum in Canvas. You can use that space any time to chat about course topics or to ask questions. While you are there, please feel free to post your own responses if you are able to help out a classmate.

12.1 Goals and Milestones

The course project is a significant part of learning in this course. In this process, you are set to perform a detailed evaluation of a specific technology, design, or approach, and, as the next step, you explore the path of this technology to implementation in a specific setting or locale.

For your project, you will need to pick a topic – a specific technology for assessment. Here, by technology, we mean a concept, a process to produce or convert something, design, approach, or a device. It should be relatively innovative and promising from your point of view. You can choose something from the area of your professional experience or a new area that you’d like to explore. The work you do on the project will surely push you to learn more about the topic you choose, so it is good to link it to your current or future professional interest.

By locale, we mean the geographic location, but not only that! Location of the project will also dictate a variety of conditions, such as climate, terrain, available infrastructure, local market and economy, political situation, policy landscape, population, cultural aspects - all those things, in fact, will have a profound impact on how a specific technology is perceived by stakeholders and how effective its implementation may be. In other words, building and implementation of a project should always be specific to the locale to ensure maximum benefits and economic success.

To ensure successful technology implementation, you will need to look at your subject from different angles - technical performance, environmental impact, marketability, social impact - and recommend metrics for such evaluation. You will need to investigate your subject thoroughly, identify pros and cons, assess opportunities and risks. An important aspect of the project will be to apply your assessment to a specific setting and, based on your findings, propose an implementation scenario for your case.

Technology assessment report should be a competent and clear communication to inform various classes of stakeholders, including (i) policy makers, (ii) investors, and (iii) general public. If you believe that your chosen technology is a valuable piece of the sustainable local development, this is the chance to make your case! 

To develop such a compelling and well-justified communication, we will start early in the course and go step by step. The table below lists the key milestones for the EME 807 Course project development through the semester along with submission requirements and the portions of the grade assigned for each step. The specific due dates for submissions can be found in Canvas; please look them up and plan ahead.

Note: More guidance on these submissions is provided in the following sections of this Lesson.

12.2 Choosing a Topic

As the first step (Milestone 1), you need to choose a particular technology for developing your assessment and implementation scenario. It should be relatively new and show promise for sustainable development. The topic can represent a specific manufacturing process, approach, device, design, or a conversion system. You may decide to choose something close to your professional area, as in that case, you will know better where to find information, technical data, technology status etc. However, it does not have to be in your professional area and can be just a topic of your special interest. In that case, you can use this project as a vehicle to develop your expertise.

I would discourage you from choosing something of extra large scale - topics like "everything about carbon storage and sequestration" or "solar power" or "off-shore wind".. These topics do not really identify a specific technology - they are mainly industrial sectors that may contain multiple tech, both old and new, and you need to focus on something tangible. In such cases I will ask you to narrow down your focus. Furthermore, if the technology is relatively well established and implemented broadly, you may be just re-iterating the work that has already been done (and that's a bit boring..). Search for some newer and fun things to evaluate! 

Frankly, you do not need to invent. Search up and pick an emerging or developing technology and give it a thorough assessment to evaluate its promise. But remember that such an assessment would only make sense and have value when you tie it to a specific economic, social, and environmental context.

Always think where, when, and how this technology will be set to work.

Furthermore, you are encouraged to explore how your project topic and goals of your assessment line up versus the seventeen UN Sustainability Goals. When you submit the final version of your proposal, you will be asked to specifically reflect on those connections in the Introduction, but you can also include those ideas in your topic justification paragraph (your submission for Milestone 1).

UN Goals for Sustainable Development

Credit: n.a. “UN Sustainable Development Goals” UN [2].

12.3 Presenting Your Project Idea

To present your project ideas to the class, you will need to develop an outline for your assessment and preliminary implementation idea and put it in a PowerPoint presentation that can be delivered to the class audience. This is Milestone 2 of the EME 807 project development.

Because it is quite challenging and time-consuming to have a synchronous session with all the presentations in the class, you are asked to supply your slides with audio commentary, which can be easily narrated in PowerPoint. It may work somewhat better than a video, as in the case of a narrated presentation you can listen to commentary separately for each slide and input your comments right in the file. If you have never done it, it is certainly a neat skill to learn. Please read more instructions at the bottom of this page.

The assessment plan should be well-rounded. Apart from technical feasibility, we need to understand the economic and policy situation surrounding the project, and certainly include any relevant insights in environmental sustainability, such as ways the technology helps combat climate change, improve cleanness of air and water, mitigate biodiversity loss etc. Think about what particular aspects of the technology should matter most for the stakeholders you are appealing to in your case of implementation. Some scenarios would benefit from comparing to the baseline technology case (status quo) to demonstrate the benefits of the new implementation.

All submitted presentations will be shared within the class, and each will be subject to peer review by your classmates. As well, as you will have an opportunity to review a couple of other outlines and provide constructive feedback. More explanation of the peer-review process is given on the next page of this lesson.

12.4 Peer Reviews of Project Outlines

The main idea of the peer review process is to collect constructive feedback on your ideas and assessment plans, as well as to learn from what other people do for the project. The list of who will be reviewing whom will be sent to the class once all the presentations have been submitted. Typically, you are assigned to review at least 2 other projects.

Note that you may need to download the presentation files from Canvas to your computer to hear the audio in PowerPoint.

All that said, try to be helpful and valuable, not just critical. But it is appropriate to provide critique if you feel it will help people improve their project. Note that peer-review is more than just a general comment (like we do on a discussion forum) -- think of making a contribution to the project quality.

Compose your review in the form of a letter to the author. For example, you can start as:

Dear  <Author's Name>,
It was a pleasure to listen to your presentation on <...topic...>. Below are my comments, which I hope you will find helpful...

Further, you will need to structure your review summary by the above-listed points. When grading your peer review, the instructor will also look at your contributions according to this rubric. 

Please email your Review directly to the author and also upload it to the Canvas Dropbox for the instructor to assess. You should be able to send email with an attachment to anyone in the class via Canvas Inbox tool. Do not assume that the Instructor will deliver your review to the author. If the author never receives your review and is left hanging, that is poor communcation on your part, which may also result in deduction of some points. 

This is Milestone 3 of course project development, and I hope you look forward to this important step and will value peer learning component associated with it!

12.5 Preparing the Technical Review

Milestone 4 of the project preparation process is the Technical Review. This task involves first of all the evaluation of the technology status – where it is with respect to technical performance, how far it is from meeting market and society requirements. This stage of your project will probably involve the reading of some research papers and other documents explaining the technical background and performance criteria. At this stage, you should present your findings about the technology readiness level (TRL – see methodology in Lesson 2). Learning details about the technological process, materials used, efficiency will also become useful in subsequent environmental and economic assessment.

Things to include in the Technical Review:

• Technical principles (how this approach or technology works)
• Schematics and images as appropriate
• Any relevant scientific information
• Technology readiness (TRL) and cases of success or failure trials
• History of development and prospects for the future
• References

While you are welcome to use any literature and online sources to collect information, the review should be your original writing. And do not forget to cite your sources. The prepared review will further serve as your resource to pull information from for your final technology assessment. However, you do not want to include the entire Technical Review as a chapter to your assessment report because it would be excessive is probably overwhelming to the general reader. This work is a big step in your education about the chosen technology topic, but you will need to be selective when you communicate technical information to the public. In the final proposal you can omit the information that is too specialized for being used in project justification.

12.6 Technology Assessment Report and Implementation Proposal

The technology assessment report in this course is prepared in two steps:

• Blueprint Draft (Milestone 5) - this document will be a relatively short outline of your report. It will have the structure of the final document and statment of goals, but it would only include tidbits of information for each of the seacton. This is to show that you are on the right track. 
• Final Report - this is the final deliverable, which include through technology assessment as well as the proposed implementation scenario for your locale.

Let me provide some more guidance for these steps.

At the Blueprint stage, we want to make sure that all the required sections and elements are in place, and nothing is missing. So the majority of the document will look like an extended outline, except for the Introduction and Implementation Scenario. I would like to see those two sections more developed, and at this point you should provide a clear articulation of your project rationale and goals. In the Implementation Scenario, the questions where, when, and how should get some answers. It is important to put your assessment in local context, and I will be specifically looking for that information when reading your Blueprint draft. 

On the general note, when preparing your proposal, think about a potential audience you are writing it for. It is not the most comprehensive but most compelling proposal that wins. Also be specific – tie your analysis to a specific locale – clearly, implementing a certain technology in the US, or Africa or Australia may have very different effects, promise, and final outcomes.

Your Final Report, which is submitted during the last week of the semester, should be an originally written document that summarizes your thorough assessment of a chosen technology and includes your implementation scenario. It will be evaluated based on a number of criteria, including idea justification, clear articulation of the technology feasibility as well as its social, economic, and environmental benefits. See final project rubric for more information on how the projects are graded.

12.7 Style Recommendations

During the preparation of the course project, you will have to deal with two types of technical writing, which will be principally different in style, purpose, and content.

Type 1: Technical Report

This type involves articulation of comprehensive technical information on an issue, technology, or application. The style is more of a technical paper with lots of details and graphical material, references, and the scope will be rather broad. The purpose of technical reports is to collect versatile information on an issue in one place, present it logically and fully, and make it available for further use by scientists, engineers, government representatives, businessmen, entrepreneurs, the public, and other interested parties. Technical reports may present really large volumes of information from multiple sources, and typically, the broader the view, and the more different aspects and angles of the subject matter are discussed, the better! Technical reports are extremely useful when you try to research and learn as much as possible about a specific topic. The examples of technical reports are commonly available (free or for a charge) on the websites of Government agencies such as DOE, NREL, EPA, etc. [EXAMPLE Technical Report [5]], and many commercial companies also produce such reports for their internal R&D efforts.

Type 2: Project Proposal

This type of writing should include ONLY the information that justifies the implementation of the proposed idea. The style will be geared towards a reader – a client, a reviewer, an authority, an investor, a committee, or the public – anyone who would have to make a go/no-go decision on the project. Here, any technical excursions should be articulated in a way to convince the client of the project idea (not to confuse them) or to justify an investment. The primary purpose of this kind of writing should be to deliver the idea clearly, quickly, and in the most compelling way. That would not mean the most comprehensive or most scientific way, but rather via the structure and narrative most accessible and appealing to a particular "client." In this case, including more information is not always good and can even be bad in terms of clarity and focus of your narrative. For project proposals (even in scientific and academic fields), the technical justification is much more compact, and more effort is spent on highlighting the competencies and capabilities of the proposer, and justification of expected outcomes. The language in a proposal is usually geared towards a broader audience, with fewer area-specific terms and slang, to make sure the message is understandable to a wide range of stakeholders.

These two types of writing can be parts of the same investigation. For example, a technical report can be prepared to justify project development and investigate technology alternatives. At the same time, the project proposal will deal with narrowing down the focus and transferring the knowledge into the implementation stage.

These two types of writing should not be mixed up, though. If you are writing a technical report, you are dealing with a broad variety of factual data and need to make sure that every description or key statement has justification and references. You can go broad and deep without yet knowing which of that information will be ultimately needed. You do not have to convince anyone of anything, but rather build a resource and sometimes provide objective recommendations based on your research. On the contrary, if you are writing a project proposal, you should focus on the client and how they would read it and understand your information. If you overload them with technicalities and present ALL of your great research, chances are they will lose focus and will not appreciate the idea you are trying to deliver in the long run. Here, a concise and compelling presentation most often wins over a sophisticated and scientific one. If there is information that is interesting and relevant to the topic but does not directly “sell” your ideas to the client, maybe it’d rather be omitted not to become a distraction. Sometimes less is more, but you need to make a careful call here not to become too plain and too simplistic in your message, either.

Your Technical Review should be prepared in the style of a technical report (Type 1). You should feel free to collect any information that helps you to learn the topic and present the key findings without reservation. However, the Technical Review will only serve as a resource, an informational depository for the project proposal to pull data from, and in no way should it be presented as an organic chapter in the final proposal as is.

Your Final Proposal should be prepared in the Type 2 style. The assessment you perform should not be just a class exercise, but rather should justify the project implementation in the specific societal context. Introduction and Conclusion sections should speak of that purpose in particular, since, as you know, most proposal reviewers with their busy schedules will read those sections first and then see if they want to go on and read the rest.

Use of Graphics

Use of graphic information, such as images, plots, maps, schematics, charts, tables, etc. is highly encouraged. I agree with a common statement that often a picture is worth a thousand words. Representation of your findings or background information in the figure helps organize it, summarize it, and to make it an easier reference. Also, it increases the credibility of your proposal and makes it easier to read, especially since most of us are visual learners.

However, there are a few things about figures to keep in mind. First, please be sure that the graphics you present are indeed relevant and actually serve the purpose of making your message clearer rather than vague. Pictures should not be just placeholders (they can be on a website, but not in a technical proposal) – they need to have a good load of useful information. Second, quality is essential. Nothing irritates the reader more than a copy/pasted blurry image with a barely readable font. If you cannot get a good-quality image to use, better include none. Third, provide a caption. Ideally, the figure in a technical document should be readable independently of the text, at least at first approximation, so provide a short but informative title under the image of what it is that you are showing. And also if you include it, the text narrative should refer to it and use it in the story. The same tips go for tables.

A few words about image credits. These days, millions of pictures are available from the internet, and they are easy to borrow. Many of those images you find are in fact subject to copyright, meaning that you cannot use them publicly without permission. This is important to keep in mind if you think of publishing or distributing your work in any way. So I recommend two things:

• Create your own graphics – it is fun and makes you better understand the information you present (and you also earn extra credit for this in the final proposal!).
• Provide credit for any borrowed graphics in your reports (this should include the author/organization that owns the image and URL you got it from). In case your report ever goes public, you will be able to track it back to the source and work out any permissions you need.

Page limit and formatting

Please follow these format requirements when preparing your final document for submission: 

• Font: size 12 pt / any professional font of your choice
• Spacing: at least 1.5 (except for reference list)
• Page limit: 20 including graphics (over-limit papers will be returned for re-formatting)
• Title page (including project title, author's name, year, SDG icons for the goals addressed)
• Figures and Tables should be numerated for easy reference.
• Figure captions: under the figure / Table captions: above the table. 

12.8 Grading Rubric for the Final Proposal

In EME 807, the course project activities will account for 50% of the total course grade. 30% of those 50 will be distributed over the preliminary submissions (topic description, outline, and technical review). The other 20% of the total 50 will be assigned to the final report, which will be graded independently as a final document. The following grading rubric will be used for grading the final report (based on 100 pt. scale):

12.9 Summary

This Lesson 12 is an essential guide on how Course Project is developed in EME 807. I hope it clarified the path for you and answered some of your questions on where to start and how to proceed.

Overall, the project proposal activities in this course are seen as strong motivators for students to develop a number of important transferable skills that will benefit them in their future careers. Some of those skills are:

• Searching and critically assessing information (research)
• Compiling and citing information sources (both printed and online)
• Delivering “pitch” presentation / recording presentation for online delivery
• Technical report writing
• Critical review of written and verbal communications
• Combining various types of data (technical, economic, etc.) in higher-level analysis

You have done it all. Congratulations! I hope you found this process rewarding and are ready to build on it! Best of luck with your future endeavors!