Request for Proposal: Eliminating Discomfort Caused by Cold Hands while Riding in the Cold
Team Members: Andrew Kim, John Hcy, Wayne Hsu, and Omar Khan
Request for Proposal (RFP)
The Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document which identifies an issue concerning a community and frames it in the form of an engineering design request. The document is written on behalf of its stakeholder outlining their values, responsibilities, goals and problem or opportunity.
Process
The first step to this project is identifying and seeking out stakeholders. The primary stakeholders to this project represent the community addressed in the Request for Proposal (RFP). The identification of the primary stakeholder is in effect the identification of the community. The second step is identifying the problem. For out RFP, we decided to first approach the community itself seeking out individuals cycling on St.George street. We surveyed a few riders and quoted testimonials regarding problems faced by the community. Thereafter, we met with and spoke to professor Nurul Habib of the University of Toronto, a specialist in transportation planning. From him we learned of the experiences of the community and the issues they have. From the issues we chose the issue that can be solved by first year engineering students.
The design team came together in order to standardize the problem. First, we started working with a general problem statement - one prone to change: aerobic exercise (cycling) in the cold and the comfort issues associated with it. For this we, the design team, did preliminary research on cold weather, frost bites, wind chill, and correlation between temperature and comfort. However, after further communication with the community and research we decided to scope the problem down further to the present issue in the RFP: eliminating discomfort caused by cold hands while riding during the cold season. This was also due to the overwhelming amount of research we were responsible for had we stuck with the previous problem. Also, scoping down the problem statement forced us to widen our community to accommodate motorcyclists as well since they are also victims of the issue.
Another subtle step the design team had do undergo was to identify the gravity or significance of the problem we were proposing. Is the issue of cold hands faced by riders a need to solve or does it represent itself as an opportunity for further improvement? We realized that the answer is not a simple yes or no. The problem, we realized, can escalate into a safety hazard in the case of extreme. However, for the most part, the problem was an opportunity for first year engineering science students to solve. Before proposing the problem, we defined the requirements, set the objectives and constraints and stated our criteria and metrics for the solutions. We also proposed reference designs and compared them using comparison tools.
Reiteration
The process discussed above describes the events that make up the Request for Proposal revision 1.0. The following will briefly describe the process undergone by the team to make Request for Proposal revision 2.0.
The revision was prompted by both internal and external factors as a consequence of critique and feedback from the teaching team. Some of the improvements requested in the feedback were very large while others were relatively small. For instance, the engineering problem was not communicated in the form of an engineering problem. This was very vital to our piece as its absence kept the RFP from being an engineering proposal. The design team met 3 times during the week at alternating day intervals. This allowed sufficient time to diverge improvement ideas, converge ideas, and implement them into the revision. One large improvement to the RFP consisted of restructuring the reference design section and requirements sections. The revision ensured that the reference design section compliments the requirements. Hence, the requirements were built off of the reference designs which guaranteed that the solution would have to be better than all proposed reference designs.
Below is the RFP revision 2.0. The revision contains an addenda on the front page which displays the amendments made to the original copy.
The Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document which identifies an issue concerning a community and frames it in the form of an engineering design request. The document is written on behalf of its stakeholder outlining their values, responsibilities, goals and problem or opportunity.
Process
The first step to this project is identifying and seeking out stakeholders. The primary stakeholders to this project represent the community addressed in the Request for Proposal (RFP). The identification of the primary stakeholder is in effect the identification of the community. The second step is identifying the problem. For out RFP, we decided to first approach the community itself seeking out individuals cycling on St.George street. We surveyed a few riders and quoted testimonials regarding problems faced by the community. Thereafter, we met with and spoke to professor Nurul Habib of the University of Toronto, a specialist in transportation planning. From him we learned of the experiences of the community and the issues they have. From the issues we chose the issue that can be solved by first year engineering students.
The design team came together in order to standardize the problem. First, we started working with a general problem statement - one prone to change: aerobic exercise (cycling) in the cold and the comfort issues associated with it. For this we, the design team, did preliminary research on cold weather, frost bites, wind chill, and correlation between temperature and comfort. However, after further communication with the community and research we decided to scope the problem down further to the present issue in the RFP: eliminating discomfort caused by cold hands while riding during the cold season. This was also due to the overwhelming amount of research we were responsible for had we stuck with the previous problem. Also, scoping down the problem statement forced us to widen our community to accommodate motorcyclists as well since they are also victims of the issue.
Another subtle step the design team had do undergo was to identify the gravity or significance of the problem we were proposing. Is the issue of cold hands faced by riders a need to solve or does it represent itself as an opportunity for further improvement? We realized that the answer is not a simple yes or no. The problem, we realized, can escalate into a safety hazard in the case of extreme. However, for the most part, the problem was an opportunity for first year engineering science students to solve. Before proposing the problem, we defined the requirements, set the objectives and constraints and stated our criteria and metrics for the solutions. We also proposed reference designs and compared them using comparison tools.
Reiteration
The process discussed above describes the events that make up the Request for Proposal revision 1.0. The following will briefly describe the process undergone by the team to make Request for Proposal revision 2.0.
The revision was prompted by both internal and external factors as a consequence of critique and feedback from the teaching team. Some of the improvements requested in the feedback were very large while others were relatively small. For instance, the engineering problem was not communicated in the form of an engineering problem. This was very vital to our piece as its absence kept the RFP from being an engineering proposal. The design team met 3 times during the week at alternating day intervals. This allowed sufficient time to diverge improvement ideas, converge ideas, and implement them into the revision. One large improvement to the RFP consisted of restructuring the reference design section and requirements sections. The revision ensured that the reference design section compliments the requirements. Hence, the requirements were built off of the reference designs which guaranteed that the solution would have to be better than all proposed reference designs.
Below is the RFP revision 2.0. The revision contains an addenda on the front page which displays the amendments made to the original copy.