In Chapter 1 of your Engineering Economics textbook you learned about the importance of effective project management and planning. One of the earliest steps in planning a project includes identifying potential project costs, which may be direct or indirect costs. Clearly laying out potential costs and being able to justify why they are necessary, worthwhile, or important is key to effective project management and execution.

• • For this assignment, you are being asked to identify kinds of costs (such as construction, distribution, labor, environmental, etc.), not prices with dollar signs

Audience:

Your audience for your work in this assignment will be your team. In your next team meeting, you will present your work to your team, which will be used as part of the decision-making process for your upcoming group assignment.

Instructions:

Using clear and consistent organization throughout, identify and analyze the potential costs and benefits associated with your solution.

As part of your document organization, label your sections as: “Identifying Costs” and “Identifying Benefits.”

• Important: Your group must have already held your second team meeting and decided on a single solution. The solution must be targeted to the Tampa Bay area, with a long-term goal of implementing the model you develop in other cities, states, and countries. You will identify and analyze costs and benefits based on your group’s specified solution.
• However, you will not coordinate with your group to complete this individual assignment. This assignment is individual analysis.

Required Content and Structure

1. Brief Introduction

Develop a ~1 paragraph introduction to your document. The introduction should offer specific, audience appropriate context and an overview of the content.

2. Identifying Costs

1. Using Chapter 2 of your Engineering Economics textbook as a guide, identify 4 potential costs associated with your project
2. For each cost, identify whether it is a recurring or nonrecurring cost (pg. 43)
3. For each cost, identify whether it is an internal or external cost (pg. 47)
4. For each cost, offer a short explanation (approximately 1-4 sentences, or ~25-100 words) that clearly details how the cost is related to your project
5. Develop a table that clearly lays out this information
   • Correctly label your table. Use this UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center (Links to an external site.) handout for guidance.

3. Identifying Benefits

Consider what benefits will result from the successful implementation of your project. List 3 potential benefits associated with your project. For each benefit:

1. Briefly explain how your project will lead to the benefit (1-4 sentences, or ~25-100 words)
2. Include a time estimation for how long it will reasonably take for the benefit to take effect, or be noticeable
   • Some benefits might take effect in stages, which you should list as “Immediate; Intermediate; and Long-term,” each followed by a time estimate in parentheses.
     • FOR EXAMPLE:
       • Immediate (within 1 year)
       • Intermediate (2-5 years)
       • Long-term (10-20 years)
3. Include a brief, specific, targeted statement (1-4 sentences, or ~25-100 words) that explains why the benefit makes the project worth pursuing
   • The likes of “because education is important!” is not an acceptable answer. It is neither specific nor targeted.

Submission:

• Organize your work according to the outline above. Use distinct headers for each section, and secondary and tertiary headings as appropriate.
• In the “Identifying Costs” section, only include the table and a contextualizing sentence.
• In the “Identifying Benefits” section:
  • number the benefits 1-3 with the title of the cost bolded, as a subheading
  • include the required information under each cost in the order requested
  • each piece of information should appear under its own tertiary heading, not as a full paragraph