Question

ASSIGNMENT: A CRITIQUE OF THE DELIVERY OF HOLISTIC SUSTAINABILITY IN ELECTRICAL SYSTEM DESIGN

PLEASE note a key phrase in the brief is: It is important that the student takes the perspective of their prospective profession in this assignment. They should consider to what extent their chosen profession can or cannot influence the delivery of holistic sustainable solutions. Some aspects may be beyond the profession’s control, others within its sphere of influence. The barriers to delivery of holistic sustainability solution in your prospective profession should be discussed and where possible, enabling factors that would enable increased delivery of sustainable solutions should be debated. Students are also required to discuss how they can incorporate Design for Sustainability methods with any engineering formal design process.

Answer 1

I would like to explain it with the help of a thesis the various ways of knowing sustainable design were found using a qualitative research method known as phenomenography. This research method revealed the critical variations in the ways 22 practicing engineers described their experiences of sustainable design. By examining the experiences of practitioners having to deal with sustainable design on a day to day basis, a clearer picture of sustainable design in practice was attained.

By understanding different ways practitioners have expirienced sustainable design, recommendations are made of how to improve both the practice of sustainable design and the education of engineering students about sustainable design.

Implications for the practice of sustainable design include the need to:

• Focus on identifying clients’ problems in collaboration with the clients themselves, rather than accepting a set of declared requirements;

• Identify and solve all design problems within a larger societal and environmental context;

• Understand that different people have different ways of experiencing sustainable design that will influence their actions.

Implications for improving the education of engineers about sustainable design include the need to:

• See professional development, including undergraduate education, as a combination of developing more comprehensive ways of experiencing practice, and skills development;

• Make explicit throughout engineering programs the focus on developing ways of experiencing the practice of sustainable design and engineering in general;

• Structure courses and programs around students reflecting on and challenging their own understanding of sustainable design, including from those experiences gained outside formal learning;

• Help students to develop more comprehensive ways of experiencing the practice of sustainable design; • Locate skills development within the context of engineering practice;

• Develop academics’ ways of experiencing sustainable design, to enable them to improve the learning experiences they offer their students.