DeVry Eng 227 week 6 Course project

In Week 6, you planned the formal proposal and wrote the Table of Contents and Introduction. This week, you will complete the Formal Proposal by adding the content and research to support the content. (You may need to revise the Table of Contents and Introduction based on the feedback you receive from your professor.) Your final Formal Proposal is due by midnight (MT), Thursday of Week 8.
Guidelines
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In Week 8, your Formal Proposal should contain the following:

Be formatted as a formal proposal, following the guidelines for formal proposals in the text (including the guidelines for headings and subheadings found on pages 426-439);
Include appropriate prefatory, text, and supplemental parts.
The Formal Proposal should contain appropriate prefatory, text, and supplemental parts, including the following: a cover and/or title page; Correspondence of Transmittal; a Table of Contents; the four-part Introductory section from Week 6; appropriately labeled body sections

Guidelines

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Starting in Week 6, you will be asked to submit a formal proposal recommending ways the company can go green. The proposals may offer specific strategies (e.g., reducing printer waste such as paper and ink; phasing in an energy efficient fleet of vehicles; installing solar panels or wind turbines to power the office building, and so forth), or they may suggest general areas (e.g., IT, operations, production, researching and designing energy efficient electronic/robotic devices) in which sustainable initiatives have been successful for other companies (e.g., Google has been a leader in exploring numerous ways to reduce its carbon footprint such as installing Bloom Boxes at its data center in 2010; other major companies have since followed Google's lead in this area). The goal of the proposal is to generate sustainable green strategies the company can adopt in the short- or long term.

A good place to familiarize yourself with this topic is with Green Business Practices for Dummies (2009) by Lisa Swallow, which is available as a full e-book through DeVry's online library. See also the Webliography for additional online resources.

Your proposal should include the following parts:

Front Matter

• Title page
• Transmittal Correspondence
• Table of Contents: (All primary and secondary level headings should be in the TOC. The TOC should be designed so that it is clear the headings are not all at the same level.)

Introduction

• Background of the Problem: (Provide an overview of problem/situation or its importance. This is a critical section. It should cover three aspects of the problem/situation:
  • The past — how did this problem develop
  • The present — what is the current situation that demands action
  • The future — what will happen if the problem is not addressed.
• Statement of Purpose: (Remind readers why you are submitting the proposal. The statement of purpose is essentially the same as a thesis statement for an essay or paper. It only needs to be a sentence or two long.)
• Sources and Methods: (Discuss the research material selected to support the proposed solution and how the material will be used in the proposal.)
• Report Organization: (Provide an overview of the various sections of the report so the reader is aware of the direction and organization of the report to follow.)

The Body

• Solution(s): (Identify your solution(s) and discuss their benefits.)
• Cost: (This section should include individual costs to the organization, but may also include any cost savings that may be realized. This section should include a table or two to visualize what is presented in the body of this section.)
• Implementation: (This section discusses the steps it will take to complete the proposed solution and the time each step will take. This is usually discussed in days, weeks, or months.
• Include a Gantt Chart — a Gantt chart is a time line of the major steps of implementation and the time each step will take. This is not a project management chart, but a simple x and y axis graph that spells out the specific tasks that need to be completed, and how long each task will take.)
• Conclusion and Recommendation (In this section you will review the issues that led to the proposed solutions, then state the recommendation you want the reader to act upon.)

End Pieces

• Sources (in APA format)
• Appendices (if applicable)

Grading Rubrics

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Go to Doc Sharing to locate the grading rubrics for the formal proposal. Refer to the Week 6 formal report grading rubric for deliverables due for the first part of the formal proposal project. Refer to the Week 8 formal report grading rubric for deliverables due at the conclusion of the formal proposal project. The proposal is due in its entirety no later than midnight (Mountain Time) on Thursday of Week 8.

Best Practices

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Familiarize yourself with the course project (formal proposal) topic early. Contact your professor for clarification of details.

The formal proposal will be completed over a two and a half week period, starting in Week 6 and ending in Week 8. Week 6 establishes the outline (as a Table of Contents) for the final proposal, so it is important to have a clear vision for what you want your proposal to accomplish as you create the Table of Contents in Word's Outline View (there will be a tutorial on using this function in Week 6).

APA will be used for in-text and end-of-text citations ONLY. Do not use APA as the layout format for your formal proposal. Review the sample formal report layout on pages 426-439 to get an idea of how to design the layout of your proposal.

Review the Week 6 and Week 8 grading rubrics to determine which parts are due in the those weeks