Things to remember¶
Our students do great work, but there are limitations worth knowing about.
Budget: 60 hours per member
The project plan must work to a budget of no more than 60 hours per person, and the course expects 30–60 hours of work each, spread over seven weeks. Multiply by your team size for the total engineering effort available — then assume a good part of it goes on learning, co-ordination and writing.
Seven weeks, and a hard stop
Building runs from week 1 to the code freeze at noon on Thursday 11 March 2027. No credit is given for features added after that, so development genuinely stops — there is no quiet extra fortnight.
Students are assigned, not recruited
Group membership is decided by the department. Students express preferences but there is no guarantee they get them, so your team may not have chosen your project. They are second-year undergraduates working alongside a full lecture load.
The briefs are meant to be ambitious
Design briefs are deliberately intended to push the bounds of what students can achieve, often involving new technologies, substantial engineering effort, or research problems that have never been solved before. Expect a strong prototype, not a production system.
It is assessed as learning, not delivery
Credit is awarded for working effectively as a team, maintaining a professional relationship with the client, and each member making a substantial technical contribution. A project can succeed academically without shipping everything you hoped for.
You do not automatically get the code or the IP
The repository is submitted to the examiners via Moodle. Ownership of copyright in the source code and any other intellectual property is something to discuss and agree with the team — the organisers can advise if asked. See Intellectual Property.