59:005  Engineering Problem Solving-I    Sections 3 and 4

HW 2

Home Up HW 1 HW 2 HW 3 HW 4 HW 5, 6 & 7 Project 1 Project 2 Project 3 Project 4

HW 2 Excel, Word and Engineering Economics

Due date 3:30 pm Monday  September 10.

This homework is to be done INDIVIDUALLY (teams will be used later in the semester) starting with an empty file. Make sure that you do not use a modified file from another student, since the file characteristics will be checked.

 

Some Background

A Gantt chart is a visual method for representing the timeline of activities involve in a project. Examples are HERE and HERE with some further information HERE.

Economic analysis of a project can involve a variety of methods including Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return. The purpose of such analysis is to take into account the time value of money in making decisions. Economic Analysis forms part of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam used as part of licensing engineering practitioners.

Homework

Create an Excel file  with

  1. A Gantt chart. Choose an activity (such as a wedding, getting a job, going on vacation) that will involve 5 or more non-sequential steps. Show the planned activities in a Gantt chart in Excel, using colored cells as a method of indicating activity timelines, similar to  this example. Use weeks as the cell time unit.
  2. An economic analysis. Select values for another example project with the initial cost (somewhere in the range $50,000 to $5,000,000) in year 0 and subsequent positive returns in years  1 to 5. Use the inbuilt functions in Excel to calculate the present value (using NPV with an interest rate of 9%) and the internal rate of return (using IRR).
  3. A chart using the cost data in  2. above  in histogram format. Change the default and background colors, include a chart title and label the axes.

Make sure your name is at the top of document and e-mail the Word AND Excel documents as attachments to a single e-mail by  3:30 pm MONDAY September 10  to the class e-mail account eng_0052@engineering.uiowa.edu. Make sure that you use your name in the file names. (Late fees apply. Do check that the files are attached.)