Outcome 5: An ability to design a system, component or process

Level 5 performance characterized by:

• Develops a design strategy, including a plan of attack, decomposition of work into subtasks, development of a timetable
  
• Suggests new approaches and improves on what has been done before
  
• Develops several potential solutions and finds optimum
  
• Understands how areas interrelate and demonstrates ability to integrate prior knowledge into a new problem
  Thinks holistically: sees the whole as well as the parts
  
• Uses computer tools and engineering resources effectively
  
• Supports design procedure with documentation and references
  
• Develops a solution that includes economic, safety, environmental and other realistic constraints
  
• Applies engineering and/or scientific principles correctly to design practical processes
  
• Recognizes practical significance of design outcome/answer (i.e. no outrageously sized reactors, 600 m towers, or pipes 1 mile in diameter!)
  

Level 3 performance characterized by:

• Uses a design strategy with guidance
  
• Can follow a previous example competently
  
• Can develop and compare multiple solutions to a problem, but does not usually arrive at the best result; conducts optimization but neglects one or two key aspects
  
• Can use prior knowledge to design individual pieces of equipment competently when guided to do so
  
• Does not think holistically: does not see the integration of the pieces clearly
  
• Minimal or incorrect use of computer tools and engineering resources
  
• Design is done, but procedures and equations are not documented or referenced
  
• Includes only minor or cursory consideration of economic, safety, and environmental constraints
  
• Applies engineering and/or scientific principles incompletely or incorrectly to design a practical process
  
• Gives an answer, but does not check its practicality
  

Level 1 performance characterized by:

• No design strategy; haphazard approach
• Cannot design processes or individual pieces of equipment without significant amounts of help
• Only focuses on one solution to a problem; no optimization attempted
• Unable to relate prior knowledge to the design problem
  
• Has no concept of the process as a sum of its parts
  
• No use of computer tools and engineering resources
  
• Design is done incompletely without the proper equations and without references
  
• No consideration of economics, safety, and environment
  
• No application of engineering and/or scientific principles
  
• Design is incomplete, no answer is given