Final Report Template

Academic Year 2019-2020
Engineering Programme: For example Aeronautical

Stage 3 Project: Final Dissertation
Project Title: On the various contrivances by which

British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects
Student Name: Charles Darwin
Supervisor Name: Dr./Prof. William Whewell

PLEASE DELETE THIS PAGE AFTER READING
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GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
Your dissertation should be of the order of 20-30 pages long, perhaps with another
10 pages of appendices if you need them (e.g. plots that show how hard you worked
but which don’t really add to your discussion).
The dissertation is not unlike a lab report (very similar in structure) but on a much
more significant scale – in particular with regard to the depth of analysis of your
findings and how they contribute to your knowledge.
Reports should be written in the third person and the passive voice. In other words,
never use ‘I’ or ‘we’ in technical writing. Generally, the past tense is used when
giving details of what was done. Occasionally, the present tense is used when giving
details of the background to the work or inferring general relationships from the
results. It is good practice to use simple words and short sentences. Use of
informal/conversational expressions must be avoided. Make sure that you write in
complete sentences and use lists only when absolutely essential.
Opinions vary on paragraph layout. You are advised to use justified text (although
left justified is permissible), with no indent at the start of the paragraph and additional
spacing between paragraphs (better achieved through paragraph formatting rather
than additional lines). Use reasonable margins for feedback (and for binding)
purposes, and do not let figures or tables stray into the margins. Put page numbers
and your name etc in a footer.
Do not be tempted to reduce text size to fit more on a page. A 12-point font size is
recommended. For longer reports you may wish to number sections and sub-
sections. Bold text is only used in titles, never in the text. If you wish to emphasise a
statement, use italics. (We use bold when we expect documents to be skim-read,
such as important guidance for students, but you should not expect this for your
dissertation.)
Finally, please do not forget to check your spelling and grammar! Word will do this
for you, from the Tools menu (or use the shortcut F7). There is no excuse for spelling
mistakes in a word-processed report.
For detailed instructions please refer to the Engineering Project Handbook in
the moodle page of the module (e.g. figures, figures captions….)
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1
Abstract
Give a short summary of your project (what it is about). Mention the main objective
and summarise the results you have already achieved. This section should not
exceed 200 words.
When finished insert a page break.
2
Table of Contents (this is suggested and is dependent on the project type/topic).
1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Literature Review
4. Objectives
5. Research Methodology
6. Results
7. Discussion
8. Conclusions
9. Recommendations
10. Bibliography
11. Appendices
Table of Figures
Figures
Figure 1: Experimental set up of..
Figure 2: Design of the component used for…
Figure 3: …..
Figure n: Distribution of temperature in an orchid stem
Notation and/or Glossary of terms used.

ε: dielectric constant; ω: angular frequency of impeller,….
Insert a page break here
3
1. Introduction
This section gives the reader a flavour of what he/she is going to be faced with: the
context of the work, the objectives, scope and any constraints or limitations; the tools
used, the work carried out and the kind of results obtained; and how the report will
be laid out.
2. Background (may be incorporated into the Introduction if it doesn’t unbalance it).

This is where you set the context for your work. What is the problem needing to be
solved and why? The difficulty here is avoiding going back to the Garden of Eden.
You need to start your story at the right point, but you need to place your work in a
context beyond the immediate scientific problem. Current societal topics are a good
place to start security, energy, sustainability, productivity, virtual engineering, etc.
Spend some time discussing the broader engineering issues, then gradually narrow
the discussion down to the technical area in which you will contribute. Background is
also where you place technical commentary that you have no intention of covering in
detail (i.e. that won’t appear in the literature review. Background should not delve
deeply into theory1 but can include reasonable technical discussion (once the scope
has narrowed to your own area of contribution), referring forwards to a Theory
section or an Appendix as necessary. If the Background section needs to provide the
opening to your story, it also needs to conclude leaving the reader wondering about
the state of the art (who has done what to date) in the subject area of your project.
3. Literature Review
The common error in the literature review is to present it as a list: of people who did
something – but you can’t quite remember or explain what – in your subject area; or
of things that you read at some point during the project; or a combination of the two.
The literature review should continue the story started in the background section, but
here you make the reader understand why your project is timely, relevant, novel and
using an appropriate methodology2, all backed up by hard evidence (citations and
summaries) of what others achieved, or failed to achieve, or concluded, or just got
plain wrong; and all without yet setting out what you are going to do. You need to
demonstrate that you’re going to build on the relevant work of others and learn from
their experience. The other purpose of the literature review is demonstrating that you
know your stuff in your subject area: you do this by the quality of your summary and
critical analysis of what others have achieved; just trotting out facts and/or opinions
is not going to work.
4. Objectives
This section is more than just baldly stating what you would like to achieve. You
must show how your objectives have been influenced by what you recounted in the
literature review. You must also be clear and specific about the scope of your study,
again demonstrating your expertise in the subject area.
4
5. Methodology
Here you describe your approach to meeting those objectives (activities, equipment,
analytical or computational tools, etc), including a critique of why this approach was
chosen over others available.
6. Results
Here you present of your results along with supporting text which ensures that the
reader understands the data (description of post-processing or evaluation methods,
analysis of uncertainties, exposition of tables/charts/figures, correlations and/or
paradoxes).
In the case you have developed a working prototype within your project, describe the
prototype in detail here and describe the testing process giving testing results.
7. Discussion
The most important part of the dissertation – here you assess critically what your
results mean; how they compare with the work of others; what value they might have
to the engineering community and whether they introduce or support a new product,
process, analysis technique or other innovation. Do not simply repeat in words what
is obvious from your figures and tables – this is, sadly, a common mistake (Culligan-
Hensley et al. 1995 – this is an example of a bibliographic reference in your text)
8. Conclusions
Start with a concise summary of what you achieved in the project. You should cover
the following points:
- What were the highlights of the project? How successfully did you meet your
objectives? Where and why did you fail to meet objectives? How did your
actual progress match your original plan? Was your estimating of time and
resource accurate? How effectively did you manage the risks identified at the
start of the programme? With the benefit of hindsight, were there risks for
which you failed to prepare adequately?
- Also discuss any problems which you encountered with e.g. equipment,
software, shortage of resources (expertise/materials/etc) or
events/circumstances external to the project.
- Finally, explain how you achieved the learning outcomes for the project, listed
in the module description (also repeated in Appendix A to this Guidance).
You may add any other project closure considerations, which you have covered in
your Engineering Management study.
9. Recommendations
5
Offer a concise summary of further opportunities created by your work. Discuss any
lessons to be learned for the benefit of future students.
10. Appendices
Appendix A
Appendix B
….
11. References
Atkinson, J.H. (1993) The Mechanics of Soils and Foundations, McGraw-Hill,
London.
Atkinson, J.H. and Taylor, R.N. (1994) Moisture migration and stability of iron ore
concentrate cargoes. Centrifuge '94, (Singapore) (eds. C.F. Leung, F.H. Lee and
T.S. Tan), pp. 417-422. Balkema, Rotterdam.
Culligan-Hensley, P.J. and Savvidou, C. (1995) Environmental geomechanics

and transport processes in Geotechnical Centrifuge Technology, (ed. R.N.
Taylor), Blackie Academic and Professional, London, pp. 196-263.
Lee, I.K. and Coop, M.R. (1995). The intrinsic behaviour of a decomposed granite
soil. Geotechnique, Vol.45, No.1, pp.117-130.
“Special Relativity.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 July 2019,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
The above list are examples of the Harvard System. In the text the reference is given
as "Martin (1990)" or (Martin, 1990)", depending on the context, and the references
are listed alphabetically at the end of the text.
The following examples show the style for presenting the references.
 A book by a single author, or a group of authors working together as one

author:
Atkinson, J.H. (1993) The Mechanics of Soils and Foundations, McGraw-Hill,
London.
 An article in an edited book:

Culligan-Hensley, P.J. and Savvidou, C. (1995) Environmental geomechanics
and transport processes in Geotechnical Centrifuge Technology, (ed. R.N.
Taylor), Blackie Academic and Professional, London, pp. 196-263.
 An article in a journal:
Lee, I.K. and Coop, M.R. (1995). The intrinsic behaviour of a decomposed
granite soil. Geotechnique, Vol.45, No.1, pp.117-130.
 A paper in a conference proceedings:
6
Atkinson, J.H. and Taylor, R.N. (1994) Moisture migration and stability of iron
ore concentrate cargoes. Centrifuge '94, (Singapore) (eds. C.F. Leung, F.H.
Lee and T.S. Tan), pp. 417-422. Balkema, Rotterdam.
In the Harvard system the list order is alphabetical. Note the convention of giving full
journal titles, titles of papers in journals and first and last page numbers.
It is assumed that any references you have used and cited have been read by you. If
you have obtained references second hand (i.e. from a paper that summarises other
sources) then they should be referenced as such.

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Academic Year 2019-2020

Engineering Programme: For example Aeronautical

Project Title: On the various contrivances by which

Student Name: Charles Darwin

Supervisor Name: Dr./Prof. William Whewell

When finished insert a page break.

Figure n: Distribution of temperature in an orchid stem

Notation and/or Glossary of terms used.

Insert a page break here

2. Background (may be incorporated into the Introduction if it doesn’t unbalance it).

Culligan-Hensley, P.J. and Savvidou, C. (1995) Environmental geomechanics

“Special Relativity.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 29 July 2019,

 A book by a single author, or a group of authors working together as one

 An article in an edited book:

 A paper in a conference proceedings:

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