The ultimate finale to 4 years of a Civil Engineering education is now here, the Capstone design project. It can be a lot of fun but it can be just plain torturous as well depending on the group you are in. Some students choose their closest CE friends thinking that will make for a good group while others show up the first day not knowing who their group members will be. The class is divided into four person teams with each person taking on a certain expertise, structures, hydrology, site/transportation, and construction scheduling/cost estimating.
The task you are charged with is to recommend and design a facility on a certain piece of property at Clemson University. We are given a survey of the site and the decision on what to build and how to build it is left up to the group. There are four required submittals and presentations, the proposal, the conceptual design, calculations, and the final report.
Our conceptual report was due on Wednesday and several groups spent Tuesday night working in the computer labs most of the evening. One of my team members stayed all night until 7 AM. Wednesday in lab was spent assembling our documents and trying to hold our heads up off of the desk. All in all though we did well. We turned our report in with about 45 minutes to spare. Halfway home, but its definitely an uphill road.
Use your sick-nasty rhetoric skills to "jedi mind trick" your group members into doing their part.
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, it sounds like you're getting a lot out of this proposal assignment; you have to write one for your CE design class.
I believe we have a similar project for mechanical engineering and I can say I have very mixed emotions about it. I know it will take a lot of hard work, but I hope that it will be fun to utilize all I have learned for the past 3 years. I hope that I will be a valuable group member and that everyone will give their best effort.
ReplyDeleteGlad you got it done. As stated above ME has a similar thing. Right now I'm in the "pre-Capstone" class and its really teaching me group dynamics. I'm becoming very familiar with group dynamics and I'm sure you are too. Good luck with the rest of the semester.
ReplyDeleteWow sounds like a major undertaking. One of my friends is a senior civil engineer and he works with the steel bridge group that competes nationally. Huge time commitment!
ReplyDeleteAs a participant in the Capstone lab, I agree with all of the above. After presenting our groups conceptual proposal, I definitely learned the hard way that its not what you present, its how you present it. The presentation is truely the key in the capstone lab as well as in the real world and can make or break a project proposa.
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