THE POLYTECHNIC

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MODULE : ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

MODULE CODE : BUS-ENM-311
SUBMITTED TO : MR NELSON NSIKU
SUBMITTED BY : JONATHAN MALAMULA
REG NUMBER : BEE/17/SS/012
DUE DATE : 18TH JANUARY, 2021
1. Define technology, technologist, scientist, engineer, innovation chasm and engineering manager.

 Engineer
An engineer is a person who uses and has scientific, technical and other pertinent
knowledge, understanding and skills to create, enhance, operate or maintain safe,
efficient systems, structures, plant processes or devices of practical and economic value.

 Technologist
This is a person who uses or applies technology

 Technology
This is the theoretical and practical knowledge, skills and artefacts that can be used to
develop products and services as well as their production and delivery system.

 Scientist
This is a person who aims to produce theories that can be tasted experimentally in the
public domain and valued according to criteria such as simplicity, elegance,
comprehensiveness and range of explanatory power.

 Innovation chasm
This is a phenomenon where by technical people who do not appreciate business may be
partially responsible for situations where by high-quality and successful research and
development projects often fail to lead to creation of new products, new businesses or
new industries.

 Engineering manager
This is a person who simultaneously uses his or her abilities to apply engineering
principles together with their skill in organizing and directing resources among people
and projects.
2. List factors that an engineer or engineering team has to consider when designing a new project
 Ease of maintenance
 Appearance
 Quality
 Environmental concerns
 Production or construction method
 Cost and economic viability
 Safety
 Materials used
 Moral and ethical concerns

3. Describe the role of engineers in modern society.

The role of engineers is to deal with difficult and dangerous projects; making ethical
decisions; providing needs, fulfillers of aspirations, generators of the driving force behind
prosperity, building dreams and fantasies of a nation and are also potential saviors of the
world.

4. Evaluate without ancient technology and engineers humankind would still be living today as
small bonds of hunters and food gathering tribe people

This implies that without technology people would only focus on hunting as a source of food
and would only live in small packs for security purpose as such without ancient technology
people would not have been able to produce excess food as to allow other people to major in
other activities as such with ancient technology and engineers people would still be
uncivilized.
5. Discuss whether engineers in training should take engineering and technological management as
a subject
Engineers need engineering management as a subject in order to be well equipped with
managerial decision they need to make if selected for leading a company or organization. As
such they need people skill and awareness of different situation provided by engineering
management so that they can run an organization without much difficulties.

6. Various skills that technical people must have

 Team work
 Communication
 Environmental skills
 Marketing skills
 Professionalism
 Entrepreneurial skills

7. The successful engineer of today needs more than merely technical skills and knowledge.
Discuss the non-technical skills and knowledge areas that an engineer should acquire.
Communication skills
An engineer must be able to interact with other people as well as fellow engineers in
order to
pass out information in a clear manner.

Ethics
An engineer must be ethical in order to understand different ethical conditions to prevent
misunderstanding between people of different cultures or religion.

Team working
Engineers must have a team working spirit as to help each other archive a project in time
and also help each other to understand how to interact with each other.
 Innovative skills
They must be able to think outside the box to bring in things that raise peoples standards
of living and bring out creative ideas which can be used by other people as well.

Marketing
Engineers must be able to find ways in which they can sell there products and how they
can promote people, companies or industries to request or hire there services.

8. Briefly discuss the life cycle of a shaft, plant, factory or any other facility.
The life cycle comprises of different stage which are inception stage, high-growth stage,
maturity stage and decline stage. During inception stage there is the initial project stage which
is involved where there organization starts and other pre-projects run, it also involves the
concept phase were preparations are made to start an organization. The high-growth stage is
where by the definition phase comes into play and maintenance and upgrade projects are
done. During the maturity stage they are expansion project and also undergo the
implementation phase. Finally the decline stage involves the close-out phase and disposal
projects.

9. List the type of projects that may be initiated during the life of a shaft, plant, factory or any other
facility
 Maintenance projects
 Upgrade projects
 Expansion projects

10. Briefly discuss the environment in which engineers work.

Engineers work under different environments as such engineers consider the market in which
consists of consumers and their needs, purchasing power and behavior. Engineering managers
also analyses its organization, management , resources and objective in order to stay in line with
the environment there in. there must also be analysis of the suppliers, competitors,
intermediaries, opportunities and threats for engineers to cope up with their environment.