Risk Management in Engineering (49006)
Assessment Task 1 – Topic and Case Study Analysis
Specification:
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Weight
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20%
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Type
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Individual
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Length
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Maximum 2000 words
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Submission
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• Online through the Turnitin submission link on Canvas
• Multiple attempts permitted until the due date, afterward the first submission is the last one
• No FEIT assignment submission cover sheet is required
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Similarity
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There is no numerical threshold to show a student has plagiarized or not. The human academic checks for plagiarism. Turnitin can only indicate where and when a text appears similar to another text
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Due date
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Refer to the subject calendar
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Objectives:
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Incorporate the values of culture and history of Indigenous communities in risk analysis studies and the development of risk management plans
Identify stakeholders, boundaries and uncertainties in engineering projects and systems
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Introduction:
Engineers have an important role in society. They are responsible for designing, building or creating something based on a specification or guideline to meet a need. What they develop must function without any failure for its intended lifetime, especially a catastrophic failure that can result in loss of life and damage to property and environment.
Engineering is about managing risks. It is technically impossible to remove risk altogether and lowering risk commonly involves a substantial cost. Engineering as a profession progresses through both its successes and its failures. As a profession, we need to learn from failures. By analysing failures, engineers can learn what not to do, and how to reduce the chance of failure. This may seem paradoxical but is widely accepted. Failure often can spur on innovation.
In engineering, it is important to review failures, and mistakes. It is harder to learn from success, but you should always learn from failures. This is not the best practice in some engineering projects where the failure results in human and property damage; however, when a failure occurs it is very important to analyse it and learn from it. Failures have elements in common. The lessons that we learn from them can help to predict and avoid failures. A skill that all professional engineers need is the ability to predict and avoid failures no matter what their scale or magnitude from small or localised to large or widespread. Engineering failures are typically the result of:
• Human factors – both ‘ethical’ and accidental failure;
• Design flaws – typically a result of unprofessional or unethical behaviour;
• Material failures;
• Extreme conditions.
Engineering failures can be categorised based on the size of the impacted region, and the level of impact on the region.
Size of impact:
• Localised: This type of failure will only have an impact on the immediate area where the incident occurs;
• Widespread: Although the causing incident was localised, it has effects distributed over a large geographical area.
Level of impact:
• Small: Minor injuries and property damage, may not result in loss of life;
• Medium: Some loss of life, multiple serious injuries, or serious property damage;
• Large: Catastrophic failure, with extensive loss of life, and severe irreparable property damage.
By analysing past failures, engineers can prevent future failures, both minor and catastrophic. It is often the catastrophic failure that receives professional and public attention, but as you will discover, catastrophic failures are comprised of multiple smaller errors in design, communication and/or judgement. Engineering is a constantly evolving discipline due to both advances in technology and the integration of lessons learnt through failures into laws, standards, work practices and technology.
Instructions:
1. Find one case study relevant to your educational background. You can use any sources on the net (For example, you can find real case studies herewww.csb.gov, by going to “investigations” tab where you can find final reports for industrial accidents).
2. You will use the case study for Assessments 2 and 3 too. Therefore, please read Assessments 2 and 3 specifications too to make sure you select the case study with enough information for other assessments.
3. For the case study:
Set a boundary of investigation
Identify sub-systems and components/equipment and draw an reliability block diagram (RBD).
Analyse the stakeholders and explore if the case study affected or was affected by Indigenous communities
Define the inherent risks
Describe in detail the causal chain (i.e. show causality from the root cause(s) to the failure event) and provide a causal diagram for each failure.
4. All content must be written without grammatical errors and should be fully referenced in IEEE style. You must have in-text referencing and include a list of references at the end of report. Please refer to Canvas, Module 6 for referencing guidelines.
5. You can download Endnote from UTS library for bibliography management:
https://www.lib.uts.edu.au/help/referencing/endnote
6. You can download the IEEE referencing style. for Endnote:
https://endnote.com/style_download/ieee/
7. Marking criteria for your report are as follows and rubric is available on Canvas.
Marking Criteria
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Section
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Weight
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Introduction (topic, aim, importance, structure)
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5
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Case description and setting the boundaries
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15
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Sub-systems, components/equipment, RBD
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20
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Stakeholder analysis including Indigenous communities
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15
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Inherent risk determination
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10
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Causal chain analysis
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10
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Summary
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5
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Structure and presentation
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Well-structured without grammatical errors
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10
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In-text referencing using IEEE style
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10
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Total
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100
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