Final Report Template
Final Report Template
Final Report Template
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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.
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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: …..
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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.
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.
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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
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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.
Lee, I.K. and Coop, M.R. (1995). The intrinsic behaviour of a decomposed granite
soil. Geotechnique, Vol.45, No.1, pp.117-130.
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.
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.
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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.