Design Proposal: Get together with your group and decide on your choice of project. Now is the time to be very specific. Be careful not to take on too large a problem. If you have any questions, please feel free to discuss them with me. If you e-mail, include your teammates on your e-mail, and I will "reply to all." Write a short (few pages) proposal for your project.

After you narrow the topic, think about who would read your proposal.  If it is for a civil infrastructure project, you would be writing to a government agency, in response to a request for proposal.  Your proposal would be evaluated in competition with others bidding on exactly the same project.  You would have to convince the reader that you can do the job better or cheaper.  If you are proposing a scientific or medical product or procedure, you might be writing to a government agency such as the National Institutes of Health.  In this case you probably would not be competing against others with the same idea, but you would have to convince the reader that your project is more valuable than those of other proposers.  If you are proposing a commericial product, you are writing to your management or perhaps to a venture capital company from which you are seeking support.

At a minimum you should include the following sections, patterned after the format used for submitting proposals to the National Institutes of Health;

1. Describe the SPECIFIC AIMS of your project. You should be able to reduce these to perhaps three or four very concise statements, with a short paragraph elaborating on each.

2. Include a section on BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE. What is the situation prior to your proposed work? Cite the literature or patents as appropriate. How would your proposal change this situation?

3. Discuss any PRELIMINARY RESULTS, which may be the result of experience you had before you started working on this proposal, or from research you did to pick the topic.

4. Describe the APPROACH you will use for design and development of whatever you propose. This should connect closely to the specific aims above.

5. Provide a schedule of tasks and the assigned responsibilities.

6. Provide a rough cost analysis of the design and of the resulting product.

You do not need to follow this format exactly, but keep in mind that I will be looking for each of these components, and it is never a good idea to make a proposal confusing to the reader.

A note about references:  In most cases, you will be working in a field where others have worked before.  It is important that you know what has been done, and you convince the reader that you know it, by citing appropriate references.  Remember that I do not generally accept references to internet sources or other materials which are transitory.  I can occasionally make an exception if you cite a company catalog for a price or specification.   You should cite books, archival journal articles, patents and newspapers, as appropriate.  You should make an effort to cite the first document.   For example, if you are talking about relativity, you would do better to cite Einstein's papers than your physics textbook, although you might find the latter easier reading.
 
Take a look at the grading form I plan to use.