You are to write a report on a Civil Engineering related innovation. The innovation can be a device, a method or a material. It must be a new or recent innovation, and therefore not already widely implemented. The report shall not exceed 2000 words but should aim to be at least 1800 words.
You are encouraged to write about an innovative idea of your own. If this is the case, it must be clearly indicated. Show that it is truly original by comparing it to anything similar that is already in the literature. You must explain its advantages and disadvantages.
If you do not have an original idea, you can find an interesting innovation in the literature to write about instead. In this case you are still expected to add some original content, which must be clearly indicated. This original content could be a proposed improvement, a wider application, or an approach to encourage uptake. It must be a specific and useful contribution, and be clearly identified as your own input.
You are not expected to simply champion the innovation. Your report must critically evaluate it. Imagine you have been asked by an employer to determine whether the innovation should be adopted or not. Do not rely on promotional material, it may be misleading. The science behind any innovations must be properly considered within the report.
Good quality figures (images, diagrams or graphs) should be used to help describe the innovation. A caption must be added underneath, consisting of a numbered label, e.g. Figure 1:, followed by a short description. Tables should be captioned above, using e.g. Table 1: , followed by a description. Include the source for any figures or tables in brackets at the end of the description, unless they are your own work. You must refer to all figures and tables in the text explicitly using its label, e.g. “… the results are shown in Figure 3.” Figures and Tables should be positioned above or below the relevant paragraph for the convenience of the reader.
The report should contain credible references (use Harvard ReferencingLinks to an external site.) to evidence any information that is presented as fact. Use peer reviewed journal papers where possible. Avoid newspapers. If you find a useful newspaper article, try to use the source of the data as the reference instead. Web pages should be avoided too. They may become unavailable or the content could change. Government documents or reports from professional bodies are good for references.
You can distance yourself from claims that you cannot verify yourself by writing, e.g. “According to Lucas and Al-Shamma’a (2014)…” or “Shaw and Tan (2017) claim that this is because…”. It is better to attribute specific information or opinions in the text in this way, rather just including the citations. If citations are used by themselves, they should be placed next to the relevant text within the sentence rather than at the end of a sentence, e.g. “Buildings are becoming more energy efficient (Smith, 2016) (Jones, 2018), so the cost…”.
The paragraphs should be formatted to distribute the text evenly between the left and right margins, as in this document. The pages should be numbered, with the exception any title page. If contents are included, these should be separately numbered using roman numerals.
The list of references, and any title page or contents pages should not be included in the word count.
You should include a word count, including a breakdown for each page, in your submission.
The report should be clearly written and concise. Try not to use more words than necessary, and keep sentences short. Short sentences (<20 words) allow the reader to understand and move on more quickly.
